Draft Surat Underground Water Impact Report - part 3: Bubbling gas issues

In the last couple of days, the Lock the Gate Alliance which represents a coalition of landholders opposed to coal seam gas in the Surat Basin released a video called Condamine River Gas Leak. It shows footage from an organisation called Gasileaks taken along the River at an “undisclosed location”. There was bubbling activity at the surface of the river and some kind of meter that went berserk when placed near the bubbles.

Frackman in Roma July 2010

The footage was filmed by local landholder Dayne Pratzsky who has been a long-term vocal critic of the industry. I remember Pratzsky as “frackman” for his wonderful attention-grabbing outfit he wore  when he heckled the State Government Community Cabinet in June 2010.  When we published the Lock the Gate footage on our Facebook page today (without comment),  a local man named Andrew Thomas pointed out this phenomenon was not uncommon in the gasfields region. “I grew up at a location near Orallo and all the bores would light up if you wanted them to - the gas comes out of most bore holes,” Andrew said. “It has been happening for well over 150 years around Roma and Surat and lots of other places - get a life and move on.”

It might be difficult for Pratzky and other blockies in the Lock the Gate Alliance to do exactly that. This is their life and they don’t want to move on. Yet I fear they – and others who want a moratorium of the industry – are placing themselves too far outside the conversation about how the industry should evolve. Origin Energy, the petroleum tenure holder in the location where Pretsky filmed (a fishing spot south west of Chinchilla known as the "coal hole") confirmed what Thomas told the Western Star on Facebook “According to local knowledge it goes back at least 30 years and naturally occurring gas has been a phenomenon in the Queensland Western Downs region for more than 100 years,” Origin said.

The public face of Lock the Gate Alliance is its media-savvy president Drew Hutton. He was the one who publicly announced  the Chinchilla leak.  Hutton, a prominent member of Queensland Greens, said he was unconvinced by Origin’s response and challenged them to prove it. Hutton said Origin should “release its seismic and other data...to establish whether or not the leak is linked to the company's coal seam gas operations.” Hutton said he consulted “several highly competent hydrogeologists” who told him there was a good chance the leaks were “linked to the de-watering of the coal seam aquifers and possibly fracking opening up pathways for the methane.” 

With neither Origin nor Hutton willing to offer their sources, it is difficult to know who is right. And water quality remains one of the great unknowns of this massive new industry. Yet this problem can be solved just as land access and now water depletion. The 2010 Queensland land access laws redressed the power imbalance between gas companies and landholders and the new Draft Surat Basin Underground Water Impact Report  which I reported about on Monday (Part 1) and Tuesday (part 2) deals with the water depletion issue. The report specifically ruled out a role for monitoring water quality. That prompted an anonymous respondent to my Tuesday piece to ask the legitimate question: if "It will not monitor water quality (eg for contamination from fracking)", who WILL monitor water quality?  

The answer to that question is the same as the answer to who will monitor water depletion: a mix of the Queensland Government Department of Natural Resources and Mining and the petroleum tenure holders themselves. Many in the Roma forum on the report I attended asked if this was not leaving the fox in the charge of the henhouse. The Queensland Water Commission’s response to that was to say, if they did something wrong, they’d be found out. There would be anomalies in the results that would stand out.

If this is correct then we need to maintain trust. Trust of the companies to do the right thing and trust of the regulator to pick up the anomalies if the companies don’t do the right thing. The gas majors all have the profit imperative but are bound by a number of strict rules and environment conditions they have to satisfy to get the green light for their enterprises. With the pressure to meet their export commitments once the gas comes online in 2014, those companies will need to ensure they are squeaky clean so the regulator does not have a reason to hold them up.

What does need to be looked at is the quick gobbling up of Australia’s natural resources.  According to mining critic Paul Cleary, Australia has the 12^th largest reserve of gas but is the world’s second largest exporter and heading towards number one. Gladstone Port in Queensland is the home of four of the eight big LNG plants and Incentives by the Bligh Government drove gas consumption for the local market. Now the high price of oil is driving this massive investment in coal seam methane for LNG. The problem is the price of natural gas on the New York-based Henry Hub has been declining for over a year and will mean the companies will have to reforecast earnings or else dig for more gas.  

With governments greedy for the royalties, knowing when that saturation point comes will be critical for the success of the industry and the regions they serve. As the Surat DWIR proves, having good legislation supported by science will be critical in keeping an even keel.

Surat Underground Water Impact Report - part 2

This is the second post on the subject of the Draft Surat Underground Water Impact Report now out for review after the Queensland Water Commission today took its finding to Roma yesterday and Chinchilla today. See yesterday’s post on the background to the report and the geological formations involved.

This post looks at how the model was derived and examines the monitoring regime put in place by the QWC.  There were three key steps in designing the flow model: conceptualisation, construction and calibration.  In the conceptualisation phase, the designers took into account geological data and formation contacts in databases held by the Geological Survey of Queensland and the Department of Natural Resources Groundwater Database.

They also took into account the distribution and depth of the geological layers of the Walloon Coal Measures based on previous studies and developed hydraulic parameter estimates based on pump and drill tests, existing models and reported results.

They devised 19 model layers based the formations from the shallowest (Condamine Alluvium) to the deepest (Permian Sediments) and mapped out the groundwater flow between the layers. The layers are recharged by rain in the outcrop areas on the edges of the Basin. The model is further complicated by the Walloon Coal Measures (the main CSG bearing formation in the Surat Basin) which itself contains various layers of sediment of varying permeability. The model allocates three layers to the Walloon for simplicity.

The model covers an area 550km x 660km each divided into a 1.5sq km cell stacked into 19 layers.  Once constructed with initial hydraulic parameters, the model was calibrated to replicate pre-CSG conditions in 1995.  It was calibrated using groundwater levels from 1,500 bores in the groundwater database.  The model was designed to make predictions from the 1995 data both including and excluding petroleum impacts.  They added uncertainty analysis to provide 200 different predictions of drawdown for each model cell at different time periods. The upper and low five percent of the 200 were discarded as outliers and the maximum value of the remaining predictions was used in the report. 

The report estimates the CSG industry will draw an average of 95,000 megalitres of water a year over the life of the industry.  It will be higher in the next three years as the industry expands with the QWC with an average of 125,000 ML a year over the period.  This is why getting the water monitoring strategy right is so important. 

The water monitoring strategy involves monitoring of water levels in coal seams and surrounding aquifers. It will not monitor water quality (eg for contamination from fracking) or the volume of water extracted from wells. QWC will not conduct the monitoring – that will be left to the gas companies. Someone said to me today that was like leaving Ned Kelly in charge of the bank vault but the QWC assures us the companies have legal responsibilities and any anomalies will quickly be exposed.

The monitoring has six broad objectives. 1. Establish background trends not attributable to CSG. 2.Identify changes in aquifer conditions in petroleum development areas. 3. Identify changes in aquifer conditions near critical groundwater use (eg towns that rely on groundwater), 4 Identify changes in aquifer conditions near springs. 5. Improve future groundwater flow monitoring 6. Improve understanding of connectivity between aquifers.

There will be a regional monitoring network which will have 142 monitoring sites across the region (27 already exist) which will have 498 monitoring points (104 already exist). These sites will target different strata of the Surat and Bowen Basin including the Condamine Alluvium, Main Range Volcanics, Mooga Sandstone, Orallo Formation, Gubberamunda Sandstone, Westbourne Formation, Springbok Sandstone, Walloon Coal Measures, Hutton Sandstone, Evergreen Formation, Precipice Sandstone, Clematis Sandstone and Bandanna Formation.

At each site, water data is collected at least once a fortnight.  Queensland’s regulatory requirements provide for the UWIR to be updated every three years but there will also be an annual report.

Draft Surat Underground Water Impact Report - part 1

Surat Cumulative Management Area

I had much underground water on my mind today.  That was because I attended both sessions today in Roma where the Qld Water Commission were explaining their Draft Underground Water Impact Report (pdf, 8 meg) for the Surat Cumulative Management Area to the public.  The quick and dirty bottom line is that I don’t think the data supports a moratorium of the industry and as a worst-case scenario says the impact is moderate and manageable. However this is the first of several posts that will drill down into the report in some detail.  

The Surat Cumulative Management Area is a rough triangle drawn between Emerald in the north, Roma in the west and Toowoomba in the south-east. The geology of the region is complicated as the nature of the water. I had several concepts challenged including what are the Bowen and Surat Basins, what is the Great Artesian Basin and where is the gas stored. The Great Artesian Basin is not a continuous geological formation but a hydrogeological basin across many alternating geological layers. Similarly I used to think the Bowen Basin as the land roughly inland of Mackay including all the big coalmining areas of Emerald and Moranbah. The Surat Basin roughly went from Dalby to Roma.  But it turns out my understanding is that is faulty too. The Bowen Basin lives below the Surat Basin, it is only in the strip-mining areas at Moranbah where its coal formations come to the surface. 

Petrol and gas is a different mining process to coal and covered by different legislation.  The Draft Underground Water Report was required because the law allows petroleum tenure owners to explore for petrol and gas on private property and by necessity, there is some interference with the water on those tenures including the removal of the water. This is particularly so in coal seam gas production which works by reducing water pressure in the seams to release the gas. In the Surat Cumulative Management Area most of the mining is done in the Walloon Coal Measures (Surat Basin) or Bandanna Formation (Bowen Basin) which are geological layers of the Great Artesian Basin which have low permeability rocks alternating with high economic value aquifers and feed important springs.

The problem is that when water is removed, it affects a wide area around the gas well. This is compounded if there are a number of nearby wells also drawing out water. Today most of the groundwater in the Surat Region that comes to the surface is used by agriculture, industry, stock and domestic – some  215,000 megalitres a year. CSG is only responsible for 17,000 ML at the moment but that will rise sharply in the coming years as the four big projects (Santos GLNG, Origin APLNG, British Gas QCLNG and Arrow Surat Gas Project) take off.

When water is removed from the coal formations, water from surrounding aquifers will flow in.  So when the water pressure is reduced, it doesn’t necessarily mean less water. However it does mean there will be a decline in the water level of the bore that taps that aquifer.  The question is by why how much and to answer that question the Queensland Water Commission developed a groundwater model to predict the impacts of the CSG industry. They used vast reams of already known data on water levels and bores which they added to the known plans of tenure holders plus some science about the way underground water moves through the region.

The resulting flow model was complex. There are 19 interacting layers and three million individual cells in the model. It was calibrated to get close matches with known 1995 results from bores giving the team a high degree of certainty they were in the ballpark. They also added ‘uncertainty analysis’ taking the 95 percentile of 200 different predictions for each well. In other words,  they were taking the worst case scenario in 20.

For each well the QWC set a trigger threshold of drawdown.  For consolidated aquifers such as sandstone, the trigger was five meters, it was two metres for unconsolidated (shallow alluvial) aquifers such as the Condamine Alluvium and just a 0.2 metre drop for springs, including watercourses connected to springs.

If the modelling showed the “Immediate Affected Area” (an IAA) of that well exceeded that threshold in the next three years, then the responsible CSG company must undertake restoration measures to restore the bore’s capacity to supply water, or provide the bore owner with an alternative water supply.  This is known in the legislation as “make good" requirements. It could mean adjusting the bore, improving the pressure, drilling a new bore or finding an alternative source. QWC have identified 85 bores in the Surat Region which will exceed the trigger, all of them in the Walloon Coal Measures.

There was also a secondary measure of long-term impact if an IAA exceeded the threshold at any time in the future. This modelling identified 528 bores affected, mostly in the Walloon but some in the Springbok Sandstone (104), Hutton Sandstone (23) and Gubberamunda Sandstone (1).  It is less clear what the Commission expects to happen with these bores though the Roma session talked about gas tenure holders being “proactive” with bore owners in this category.

Part 2 of this will discuss the monitoring regime QWC is putting into place to determine the trigger points.

Lot's lot: The Death of the Jordan

“You can almost jump across this river. In other places, you don’t need to even jump. You can just cross it. It’s ankle deep.” This was an Israeli scientist’s sad assessment of the dying Jordan River. Gidon Bromberg’s anecdotal evidence was backed by his team of Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian environmental scientists which says large stretches of the Jordan River could dry up by 2011. (photo: Getty)

A report from the EcoPeace / Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME) group say the river is in grave danger from excessive water diversion and pollution as well as being treated as a backyard dump. An astonishing 98 percent of its fresh water is currently being diverted while discharge of large quantities of untreated sewage is threatening to cause irreversible damage to the river valley. In the last 50 years, the river’s annual flow has dropped from more than 1.3 billion cubic meters to less than 30 million cubic meters and it has lost half its biodiversity due to habitat loss and the high salinity of the water.

FoEME is an unique environmental peacemaking movement and a tri-lateral organisation that brings together Jordanian, Palestinian, and Israeli environmentalists. FoEME say their primary objective is the promotion of cooperative efforts to protect their shared environmental heritage. This, they say has a double purpose, that of advancing sustainable regional development and the creation of necessary conditions for lasting peace in the region.

The Jordan River is sacred to three religions. It is mentioned in Genesis: "And Lot lifted up his eyes, and saw that the Jordan Valley was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord." A pillar of salt near Deir Ain Abata in the Dead Sea is said to be Lot’s wife, after she turned to watch the destruction of Sodom. The Jordan is also the traditional baptismal site of Jesus and many of Mohammad’s venerable companions are buried near its banks, making it a holy site for Muslims around the world as well.

The Jordan Valley is also of immense ecological significance. The Valley is part of the 7,200-kilometre Great Rift Valley and is at the centre of one of the most important bird migration flyways on the planet. 500 million birds migrate annually through this narrow corridor between Europe and Africa. The area is also an important Middle Eastern wetland; both Birdlife International andWetland International have declared the entire river basin a significant bird and wetland area, maintaining many globally valuable species that are regionally or globally threatened or endangered species. The plight of the river is adding the strain on these species.

FoEME’s Israeli co-director Gidon Bromberg took journalists on a tour of the region to tell them what is killing the river and to tell them how much water is needed to save it and where the water would come from. Al Jazeera’s Orly Halpern said the river “was a narrow foul brownish stream that gurgled its way south”. Bromberg said the sewage from an additional 15,000 Israelis living in the upper Jordan Valley, 6,000 Israeli settlers, 60,000 Palestinians and 250,000 Jordanians provides the Lower Jordan with most of its water."No one can say this is holy water," said Bromberg. "The Jordan River has become holy shit.”

In their water quality study released 3 May entitled “Towards a Living River Jordan” (pdf) FoEME said the Lower Jordan needed 400 million cubic metres of fresh water annually to return to life. They suggest 220 mcm should be provided by Israel, 100 by Syria and 90 by Jordan based on the historical usage of the water. In addition, the report says the river needs an annual minor flood event to flush out the salinity of the water. It said Israel and Jordan are building new waste water treatment plants which will remove the pollutants but further action is now required to allocate fresh water.

But FoEME is pleased by the first steps. Earlier this year, the Israeli Ministry of Environment released the Terms of Reference (ToR) for their proposal to rehabilitate the LJR from the Sea of Galilee to Bezeq Stream at the border with the Palestinian West Bank. The Israeli side presented the ToR to Jordanian and Palestinian stakeholders for comments during FoEME’s Regional Advisory Committee in February. FoEME praised this as a “first step towards rehabilitation and encourages the international community to support Jordan and Palestine in the development of their own ToRs as partners to the rehabilitation effort.”

FoEME say a billion cubic metres of water could be saved if appropriate economies were introduced in Israel, Jordan and Palestine. "In the middle of the desert we continue to flush our toilets with fresh water rather than using grey water or even better - waterless toilets; and we grow tropical fruit for export," Bromberg said. "We can do much better in reducing water loss and we need to treat and reuse all of the sewage water that we produce."

Fiddling and Burning: the corrosive death of the Murray

Imagine Brazil without the Amazon, Egypt without the delta, and a Mississippi missing more than just its four ‘i’s. As implausible as these ideas seem, that seems to be exactly the fate of Australia as a slow truth emerges that the Murray-Darling Basin is almost beyond salvage. The loss would be profound. This astonishing network of water drains one seventh of an arid continent, is over 3,000 kms long, meanders through four states, houses ten percent of the nation’s population; and is the dairy, grain and fruit bowl to half the country. The Murray-Darling Basin is an effective food provider but is a thirsty consumer of water. 70 percent of all Australia’s irrigation takes place in the shadow of Murray floodlands. But now the party is coming to an end. The Murray rivermouth is dying and the nearby lakes are turning acidic.

An acidic river is not a happy specimen. The acid is sulphuric, caused when underwater soils become exposed to the sun. You would not want to wade in a sulphuric acid river, because it is capable of burning flesh. Acidity is also the last stage before a river dies and and there is no known cure. Today, a briefing of scientists was told that if the Council of Australian Government (COAG) didn’t act on the problems in their meeting next week, “we're going to confront an environmental and human catastrophe the like that which we have not seen or even imagined possible 20 years ago.”

The speaker was Peter Cosier of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists. Cosier is concerned and he is a passionate campaigner on water. Two weeks ago Cosier was a home town key-note speaker at a Conservation Council of South Australia water policy summit. In his speech (pdf) he described himself as someone who spent much of his professional career fighting for a healthy Murray. He called his audience a “preselected group of people” who were a rare antidote to the bewildering silence elsewhere in Adelaide at the nature of the disaster that lies ahead.

Cosier believes that the current strategy for dealing with drought-related problems is best described as “praying for rain”. He says this autumn has been the fourth-driest on record for the Murray-Darling basis while the river system is in serious decline. Some dairy farmers in NSW are facing a zero water allocation in the irrigation season for the fourth year in a row. This will mean many farms will go under as they have no water to use for irrigation.

But lack of rainfall is not a new problem for a continent prey to the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) weather patterns. Rainfalls have been this low in the past but the river has never been this low. What is new is global warming, as even the usually sceptical The Australian admits. Murray Darling Basin Commission head Wendy Craik told the paper’s rural writer Asa Wahlquist that the higher than average temperatures were causing higher evaporation. Craik says that a rise in temperature of just 1 Celsius each year causes a 15 percent reduction in the river flow. The past three years in the basin were the warmest on record, with last year the warmest yet at 1.1C above average. If Craik’s calculations are correct, there’s almost half the river gone in the last three years alone.

The health of the river affects doesn't just affect humans. The Coorong wetland at the very bottom of the Murray Darling Basin is so hyper saline, that organisms can no longer live in it. Migratory bird numbers are also in freefall. The river system is home to one million shorebirds who begin their 10,000km migration to Siberia from the bottom end of Australia. But a new large scale aerial survey study covering the eastern third of the continent by researchers at the University of New South Wales shows the population has plunged by 75 per cent since 1983. That’s three-quarters of all birds that have disappeared in one generation. Co-author of the study Professor Richard Kingsford says loss of wetlands due to river regulation is a main contributor to the mystery. “But it appears,” he said, “such a threat is largely unrecognised in Australia's conservation plans and international agreements.”

It is unsurprising that birds, like humans, would not thrive in a corrosive environment. Evidently, praying for rain is no substitute for good policy. This will not be easy problem to solve, as witnessed by a century of inaction and almost wilful neglect. And science is not yet agreed on an answer to the problem of southeast rainfall decline. Chris Mitchell would know more than most. He is the director of the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, a partnership between CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology. Mitchell's advice is simple. He says we must simply adapt to a drier climate and manage the system according to that downturn.

But as Peter Cosier insists, that means acknowledging the anthropic involvement in global warming. Its extremely likely if the current level of inaction and lack of global political will continues, temperatures will increase by an average four degrees worldwide by the year 2100. This would be the warmest average temperatures on Earth in 40 million years. Even if the world agrees to IPCC’s hopes of cutting global greenhouse emissions by 70 percent in 2050, Cosier says the planet will still be a drastically different place thanks to climate change. Fellow South Australian Gary Sauer-Thompson says the river is dying from the mouth up and the combination of salt and acid will move upstream and progressively contaminate the lower Murray. Cosier says solutions are available, but the pace of political reform is too slow. “We need a long term solution for the lower lakes and we need it before this summer, he said. But he warned his audience they would have to take action themselves to make it happen. “There is no “they”, there is only us,” he said.

Climate change and the age of water wars

The UN has identified 92 countries as being in severe danger of global warming related acute water shortages that could eventually lead to resource-based conflict. Mainly in Asia, Africa and South America, these countries are home to two thirds of the world’s population and among the world’s poorest. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon told the first Asia-Pacific Water Summit in Japan yesterday that the planet faced a water crisis that could be very bad news for Asia due to massive population growth, rising water consumption, pollution and poor water management. Ban said the consequences would be grave. “Throughout the world, water resources continue to be spoiled, wasted and degraded,” he said. “Water scarcity threatens economic and social gains and is a potent fuel for wars and conflict.”

Ban was speaking to the results of a study by London based NGO International Alert. Their report showed that 46 nations and 2.7 billion people are now at high risk of being overwhelmed by armed conflict and war because of water shortages due to climate change. A further 56 countries face political destabilisation, affecting another 1.2 billion. The report entitled “A Climate of Conflict” (pdf) highlights four key elements of risk: political instability, economic weakness, food insecurity and large-scale migration. Climate change will have a direct affect on fresh water supply. It identified several water issues arising from these risks including falling water levels in the Ganges basin, longer droughts on the margins of Africa’s Sahel, glacial melting in the Andes and the Himalayas and rising sea levels.

The worst threats affect those countries least equipped to deal with the crisis. Most lack the resources and stability to deal with global warming. International Alert’s secretary-general, Dan Smith, said the Netherlands will be affected by rising sea levels, but will avoid war and strife because it has the resources and political structure to act effectively. “But other countries that suffer loss of land and water and be buffeted by increasingly fierce storms will have no effective government to ensure corrective measures are taken,” he said. “People will form defensive groups and battles will break out.”

The UN has declared 2008 to be the International Year of Sanitation. It states that over 40 per cent of the global population, some 2.6 billion, have no access to latrines or basic sanitation facilities. As a result millions suffer from a wide range of preventable illnesses, such as diarrhoea, which claim thousands of lives each day. Young children are worst impacted. The UN Millennium task force on Water and Sanitation believes the problem can be solved for just $10 billion annually (about 1 percent of the world’s military spending).

The task force’s 2005 report on water and sanitation (pdf) sought to answer two questions: what is involved in a global expansion of water supply and sanitation in a sustainable manner and how can water use be optimised to meet the challenge. They found that in order to achieve their water and sanitation targets by 2015, the world’s richer countries needed to increase donor aid, the middle ranking countries needed to re-allocate aid to those most deserving, create support for ownership of water supply and sanitation among the poorest, focus on community mobilisation in the areas most at need and most importantly more planning and investment in water resources management and infrastructure.

Asia’s burgeoning but disparate population presents one of the greatest challenges. In the next two decades Asia's urban population will swell by 60 percent and a large proportion of this growth will take place in cities of half a million or less. It will be more difficult to manage water resources prudently in these smaller cities because they do not have the technology, financing, expertise and political support of Asia's mega cities. The Manila-based Asian Development Bank’s study of water resources calls it a strange anomaly. “These smaller centres are receiving conspicuously less attention from national and international policy makers," it said. “Unless the present policy and focus change radically, these centres are likely to be major water and waste-water `black holes' of the future.”

Africa is the other major problem area. Potential 'water wars' are likely in areas where rivers and lakes are shared by more than one country such as the Nile, Niger, Volta and Zambezi basins. The Cuito and Okavango rivers between Angola, Botswana and Namibia’s Caprivi Strip have also suffered due to large scale agriculture, urbanisation and the effects of the Angolan civil war. Tensions also erupted between Egypt and Ethiopia when the latter country considered the construction of dams on the White Nile. Lester Brown, head of environmental research institute Worldwatch, sees the problem starkly. “There is already little water left when the Nile reaches the sea,” he says. “Water scarcity is now the single biggest threat to global food security.”

Galway days

Yesterday was the first day of the annual Galway racing meeting festival. Over the next seven days up to a quarter of a million paying customers will pass through the gates at Ballybrit racecourse on the outskirts of Galway city for Ireland’s largest racing carnival which has taken place each year since August 1869.

The event is now so popular Ballybrit has drafted in dedicated air traffic controllers to deal with the 84 helicopters registered to land at the track. A bevy of politicians, property developers and entrepreneurs will be avoiding the legendary traffic jams around the area by using one of the 300 landing slots a day at the racecourse. The new travel option costs €700 for a few minutes to escape the snarl and is growing in popularity.

Galway is Ireland’s most westerly city and the only city in the province of Connaght. Galway is a boomtown and is one of the fastest-growing cities in Europe. It has a population of over 70,000 and receives thousands more visitors every summer to what has been called the party capital of Ireland. The narrow streets are crammed with people in search of traditional bars and music.

Galway was first settled in 1124 when the King of Connacht Tairrdelbach mac Ruaidri Ua Conchobair built a strong castle called Dún Bhun na Gaillimhe ("Fort at the Mouth of the Gaillimh"). By the end of the 12th century, the English forces of Henry II defeated a western army and forced the King of Connaght to retreat and sue for peace. The first Galway city charters was granted to Galway over six hundred years ago, but the most comprehensive one which introduced the position of Mayor in the Borough, was granted in 1484.

The Local Government (Ireland) Act of 1898 democratised Local Government away from the prerogative of the landed gentry. In 1937, the Local Government (Galway) Act re-established the town of Galway as a Borough and incorporated the inhabitants and successors as a City Council under the name of “The Mayor, Aldermen and Burgesses of the Borough of Galway”. The city’s growth was acknowledged when the status of County Borough was granted to Galway in 1985.

However the current council are dealing with a major embarrassing headache. Over 230 people have become ill in the last three months due to an outbreak of cryptosporidium parasite that has contaminated large areas beyond the city and is threatening to spread into neighbouring counties. The city council is advising that tap water should not be used for brushing teeth, gargling, making ice or washing salads. Even the Archbishopric of Tuam has had to find an alternative source of holy water to avoid poisoning parishioners.

The use of bottled water is a daily reality in Galway because of poor environmental planning and enforcement. Dodgy environmental dealings and cowboy housing schemes have left many parts of the city and the county without waste systems connected to the main sewers. Many people have been prevented from building new homes on their family lands as a result of a decision by Galway County Council not to allow any more connections on the massive mid-Galway water scheme.

The city remains subject to a boil water order after three months. Now Galway's vintners and hoteliers are considering suing Galway City Council. Val Hanley, Chairman of Galway City Vintners and proprietor of the Hanley Oaks Hotel, told a Galway newspaper that the vintners and the Irish Hotel Federation had discussed the ongoing water crisis. The cryptosporidium outbreak has already cost both memberships in purchasing ice, water and filtration systems in order to keep customers safe. The racing festival will be provide a welcome distraction for the city and, one would assume, the vast quantities of bottled beer consumed will prove a welcome change from the bottled water.

Australia's Troubled Waters

The National Water Commission’s baseline water assessment (pdf) has revealed that Australia’s total water resource has diminished by 20 per cent in the last ten years. The report released yesterday compared a 2005 baseline against the previous audit taken in 1996-1997 and found that a series of dry years and double counting of surface water and groundwater resources had contributed to the shortfall.

The report noted that only 10 per cent of all rainfall enters the river system or recharges ground aquifers. The remainder is lost to evaporation and water use by plants. Agriculture was by far the biggest consumer of water using 65 per cent of the usable total (mostly for irrigation). Household use and the water supply industry used 11 per cent each with other industries accounting for another 7 per cent. NSW’s Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area was the top region in for water consumption. Dam storage levels across Australia declined 18 per cent in the period between 2002 and 2005 with NSW (33 per cent) and Victoria (22 per cent) hardest hit.

The water audit is another grim addition to a litany of statistics that point to a water crisis situation in the world’s driest inhabited continent. On 20 June, Media Monitors produced a media release (pdf) about the current water debate in Australia. They examined media coverage of the debate and found that the majority of discussions on the issue focus on problems rather than solutions. Its damning findings were that practical actions to address the water crisis were blocked by what it called “Federal-State politics, dead-locked in competing claims and counter-claims by vested interests and stymied by NIMBYism”. It concluded that although there was universal awareness that a water crisis was happening there is very limited objective information and education for the public to make informed decisions.

Media Monitor presented their analysis in a report (pdf) called “Water in Australia: A Drought of Action, a Flood of Politics, Vested Interests and Nimbyism”. The report did a detailed content analysis of water issues in 1,200 articles in the Australian media between 1 January and 30 April 2007. The report found that community awareness is close to 100 per cent with a total of 80,000 media reports discussing water issues in the period measured. This figure included TV, radio and press coverage but mostly ignored Internet coverage.

The report found there was no cohesive bipartisan strategy (pdf) in place to manage Australia’s scarce water resources. The most significant roadblock is the often fractious nature of the State-Federal political relationship. State premiers advance local interest and are critical of Canberra and the other state governments. Meanwhile the federal government stands accused of usurping state rights to gain political advantage. The divide between Labor governed states and a Liberal Commonwealth adds to the general suspicion.

Most media coverage focuses on what the report calls the “politics of water” or the policies, proposals and viewpoints of politicians and vested interests. This involves claims and counter-claims by politicians, environmentalists, farmers, lobby groups and residents potentially affected by infrastructure projects. This chorus of opinion drowns out the little factual analysis that remains. The coming federal election is likely to exacerbate the trend. In terms of public support for options, recycling is most preferred ahead of desalination with building new dams a distant third. But all solutions suffer from considerable opposition with the ‘yuk factor’ being a major obstacle to recycling.

Nimbyism is rife in the public debate. The report quoted two examples. Firstly, residents in the south Sydney area who vocally oppose a planned desalination plan at Kurnell on the grounds of disruption to marine life and expense Secondly, the fishing industry on Bribie Island who have “angrily vowed to fight any move to build a desalination plant in the area, warning that such a project would demolish their business” according to the 12 April edition of Brisbane’s Courier-Mail.

The study expressed surprise at the relatively little coverage of practical measures that are available to combat the crisis such as domestic water saving techniques, water tanks, more efficient irrigation and reducing industry’s use of water. The report also criticised the media for their simplistic attitude to heavy rainfall and the erroneous belief that the end of the drought is the end of the problem. There is insufficient recognition that regardless of drought conditions there is “long-term deep-seated inadequacies in Australia’s policy, infrastructure and management systems in relation to water”.

While the report acknowledged that it is difficult to make recommendations based on media debate analysis alone, the seriousness of the issue demands immediate and strong action. It argues that some of the substantial federal communication budget should be directed to a national public education campaign on water (the current amount spent is insignificant compared to the budget allocated to the WorkChoices PR campaign). It also advocates a stronger role for neutral scientific bodies such as CSIRO and suggests a National Water Summit to debate research papers from national and international experts. Finally, and perhaps, most optimistically, is the reports desire to see a more widely based bipartisan approach to water management in Australia.

Nonetheless the alternatives are dire. Continued water shortages along the patterns of the last few years will lead to greatly increased water prices, contribute to rising electricity prices, lead to power shortages, will cause food prices to skyrocket, kill agricultural industry, cause the death of the Murray-Darling river system and impact the Australian lifestyle and the ability to take gardens and swimming pools for granted. Australians of the future will look back dimly at the parochialism of the early 2000s that destroyed their inheritance.

Murray-Darling's empty basin

The Murray-Darling summit ended yesterday in deadlock with the States failing to agree with the Federal Government's $10 billion plan to take control of Australia’s largest river system. Prime Minister John Howard and the premiers of NSW, Queensland, Victoria, and South Australia met in Canberra to discuss the proposal. The parties claimed they had made progress and plan to meet again on 23 February in order to reach a compromise.

The Prime Minister's water plan includes $3 billion to help farmers in unviable areas get out of the industry. It will also buy back water licences and return that water to the environment. The Government has also allocated $6 billion for improving irrigation technology, with the water saved being shared equally between growers and the environment. A new Murray-Darling basin authority would be created to oversee the river systems and the aquifers that lie beneath it. The authority would have five full-time Government-appointed commissioners who would report to the Federal Environment Minister. But the plan is contingent on the four Murray-Darling basin states (Queensland, NSW, Victoria and South Australia) agreeing to transfer most of their powers to the commonwealth.

Only NSW Premier Morris Iemma is ready to cede his state's constitutional rights over water. The other states have serious reservations and said the scheme was underfunded as the irrigation plan may include areas outside the basin. Howard said the states were stalling in order to inflict pain on his government and the public would lose patience with them. The PM offered concessions in yesterday’s meeting including guaranteeing existing water volumes and leaving some aspects of catchment management under state control.

Even prior to Federation in 1901, the colonies of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia had problems managing the Murray. The boundary was the top of the bank on the Victorian side and the river was an important means of transport. When irrigation first started taking water from the river in the 1880s, it caused conflict with users of the river for navigation. The parochialism of the states meant they reached no agreements on use until a severe drought in the early 1900s. They signed the River Murray Waters Agreement to regulate the main stream to ensure that each of the states received their agreed shares of the Murray's water.

The agreement was finally superseded by the 1992 Murray-Darling Basin Agreement. The new agreement recognised the fact the river system was too big to be managed by state governments. The commission contained representatives from each of the partner governments. Ultimate control remained with each state. Just as the 1902-05 drought and irrigation problems were the catalyst for the earlier agreement, the current drought and over-irrigation has finally brought the parties together in an effort to once again beef up the commissions powers over one of the world’s great river systems.

The Murray-Darling has a million square kilometres drainage basin, 14% of Australia’s land mass. The basin drains three-quarters of New South Wales, half of Victoria, much of southern Queensland, and a small part of eastern South Australia. Although it gets a mere 6% of Australia's annual rainfall, over 70% of Australia's irrigation resources are concentrated there. Both the Murray and Darling Rivers have lengths greater than 2,500 km making the Basin one of the world’s major river systems. The Basin is in a semi-arid zone, and its ratio of discharge to precipitation is extremely low (less than 0.05) due to the evaporation rate double the rainfall rate. The situation is complicated by the large annual climate variability due to the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on south-eastern Australia.

The basin is also important for its bio-diversity. Prior to 19th century European settlement,a third of Australia’s mammal species, half of its birds and a fifth of its reptiles were found there. Many of these species are now extinct or endangered. The basin has 30,000 wetlands, 12 of which are listed under the international Convention on Wetlands. Like the fauna, many wetlands are suffering due to human activities and some have lost half of their area.

Efforts are concentrating on understanding how to stop the river system from slowly dying. Massive demand has dramatically reduced its flow, led to the occasional closure of the South Australian ocean entrance, and added to its choking salinity. Climate change will add to the long-term problem with the elimination of Alpine snow and increasing bushfires. The University of NSW Laboratory for Ecosystem Science and Sustainability have launched a $1.7 million study into the interaction between water, soils, trees and fires in the high country. According to project lead Professor Mark Adams, unchecked bushfires create large-scale forest regeneration that uses more water than the mature forests they replace, "Research shows that the 2003 fires, for example, will likely reduce flows by more than 20 per cent for the next 20 years in the Kiewa River, a major tributary of the Murray," he said.

Jakarta Drowning

The Indonesian capital Jakarta has been inundated by rains and flooding that have so far killed at least 20 (the BBC is reporting 33 deaths) and made 350,000 people homeless. With rain forecast in Jakarta for the next two weeks, the situation is likely to get worse before it improves. A health ministry official said 20 people in Jakarta and suburbs have died as of Sunday afternoon, mostly either by drowning or electrocution. Homes, schools and hospitals have been flooded out paralysing transport networks and forcing authorities to cut off electricity and water supplies.

The rain started on Friday and has since been incessant on Jakarta and nearby hills. Government agencies are struggling to deal with the scale of the homeless. Some are staying with family and friends on higher ground and others are sheltering in mosques and government buildings. Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso has declared the “highest alert” after heavy rains in the upper areas around the city of Bogor (60km south) caused more rivers to burst their banks, sending three meter deep torrents of muddy water into residential and commercial areas of the city.

Flooding in Jakarta is not unusual, especially during the wet season of October to February. Forty percent of Jakarta, or 24,000 square meters, is on low land, and 78 areas are prone to flooding due to poor drainage. This time around, the floods have inundated not only the slums but also many middle-class residential complexes. The worst-hit areas are still submerged in three metres of water and in East Jakarta, water levels were recorded at six metres. In South Jakarta, flood victims tried to open the Manggarai floodgate to drain the water but city authorise refused. If the gate was opened half of Jakarta, including exclusive Central Jakarta, where ex-president Suharto lives, would be severely affected.

The state-run Antara news agency reported the flood water had reached close to the presidential palace and business centres in downtown Jakarta. Sutiyoso blamed massive development of luxurious villas and residential complexes in Bogor and Puncak, accusing the local government administration of sacrificing water-catchment areas for economic reasons. "The floods in Jakarta are partly due to environmental damage in Bogor," Governor Sutiyoso said. "The Puncak area is a water catchment but there are now many villas there, causing the downpour to run straight into the river." Antara is now reporting that Indonesian President Yudhoyono has instructed Sutiyoso to open the Manggarai sluice claiming there were no worries about floods reaching the State Palace. "For the sake of the people, the Jakarta governor is expected to open the sluice no matter if floods inundate the Palace," said Yudhoyono through a spokesman.

Water is not a new problem in Jakarta. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) arrived in Java in the 16th century. They built a walled city they called Batavia, near Jakarta Bay. It was to serve as the VOC capital for the next three centuries. The Dutch altered the cultural make-up of the city by bringing in non-Javanese slaves from present day Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Japan, supplemented by migrants from Europe, Arabia, India, and China. The Dutch built up their city with a series of canals and railways.

The current piped system of drinking water is ineffective being swamped by the continual growth of the city. 80% of Jakartans supplement their supply with underground water which has become steadily depleted. In low-lying North Jakarta, groundwater depletion has caused serious land subsidence, making the area more vulnerable to flooding. It also allows saltwater from the Java Sea to contaminate the coastal aquifers.

More than 2,000 millimeters of rain falls on Jakarta every year and there is rarely a year without floods. Jakarta's canals and rivers are now the major focus of the government's attention to control escalating environmental pollution levels. The Dutch made sure Batavia had a comprehensive and engineered network of rivers, drains and canals. But their canal system never fully managed to cope with the drainage problems and by 1846, almost a century before Indonesian independence, they were resorting to doing what they still do today - sorting out the problems only when floods occurred.

Old Batavia was built on marshland and much of the capital remains below sea level with weak drainage and major tides resulting in the outflow of rainwater slowing down. But environmentalists blamed the flooding on modern causes: years of bad city planning, which has led to building-work on green-field sites. This is the worst flooding in Jakarta since 1996 when at least 30 people were killed. The wet weather has also caused extensive flooding damage in the Borneo province of West Kalimantan, as well as large parts of East Java, including Indonesia’s second city, Surabaya.

Toowoomba Days

Today, Woolly Days went to Toowoomba to research a university project into what has been happening there since the recent vote against the proposal to treat recycled sewage for drinking water. Located 130kms west of Brisbane, Toowoomba is Australia’s second largest inland city after Canberra and has a population of about 110,000 people. Toowoomba is spectacularly sited 700 metres above sea level on the crest of the 3500km long Great Dividing Range which separates Australia’s crowded eastern seaboard from the sparsely populated harsh outback lands of the interior.

Toowoomba was originally a swamp near the settlement of Drayton. The swamp was drained in the 1850s and quickly overtook Drayton as the premier settlement of the district. Drayton is now a suburb of Toowoomba. The town is currently in colourful bloom after September’s Carnival of Flowers. The festival is Toowoomba’s premier annual attraction. It started in 1950 when a crowd of 50,000 people crowded the main street on opening day to watch spectacular procession of decorated floats, bands, marchers and machinery. The carnival lasts for a week and features prize gardens, decorated homes and street entertainment. This year the council protested after one of the competitors in the festival was known to be a serial infractor of Toowoomba’s strict water policies. The council has asked organisers to change the rules so that only those adhere to water policies be allowed compete in future.

Water, of course, was the great debate that brought Toowoomba to national and international attention. In July the voters had their say and rejected the recycling proposal by margin of about 20%. The proposal was heavily backed at three levels of government, by city mayor Di Thorley, Queensland Premier Peter Beattie and Federal parliamentary secretary for Water, Malcolm Turnbull. The proposal had $460,000 of funding allocated and was conducted as a major campaign. There were blind taste tests and education sessions in shopping centres, home shows and Garden fests. Chemists appeared on talkback radio segments. They had TV and newspaper ads to explain the process and more ads to encourage the “yes” vote. They printed and distributed 45,000 copies of the water usage leaflet. They even conducted a debate on Phillip Adams' national radio program Late Night Live.

But it was all to no avail. Significant sections of the local population were opposed to the idea. They were led by local land developer and ex-mayor Clive Berghofer, the wealthiest man in Toowoomba. A Berghofer anti-proposal advertisement read “People won't come here; others will leave. Property values will drop and jobs will go.” Though disappointed, the council have abided by the decision and have stated categorically that there will no retreated sewage used for drinking water in the city.

Notwithstanding the vote Toowoomba continues to face critical water shortages. It was forced to go on to Level 5 water restrictions after the vote. Level 5 is the highest restriction in Queensland water system. By contrast Brisbane is at now level 3 but about to go to level 4 at the end of October. Toowoomba’s move to level 5 was delayed until 26 September to avoid media competition with the Carnival of Flowers. It means that Toowoomba residents are now banned from watering gardens, cars or lawns with hoses or buckets. They will be able to bucket grey water from their laundry, shower or bath on to their gardens. Its three dams (Cressbrook, Perseverance and Cooby) are at a precarious 20.3 per cent capacity. That is supplemented by bores that supply up to 20 per cent of demand. Drilling of new bores has started as well at a cost of $3 million as well as a project to tap into the Great Artesian Basin which is expected to cost $6 million. Toowoomba will also take part in the Queensland Government’s Home Water Wise service and rebate scheme. The scheme enables government approved plumbers to inspect homes and fix leaky taps and replace inefficient shower-heads. Consumers can also obtain rebates for items such as rainwater tanks and grey water systems.

But even with the new bores and rebate schemes, Toowoomba will still be facing the prospect of empty reservoirs by 2008. An end to the draught seems too much to rely on. The recycling scheme may yet be forced onto its unwilling citizens.

Voters say no to “Poowoomba”

As expected, the voters of the Queensland town of Toowoomba have rejected the advice of their mayor Di Thorley and voted convincingly against the proposal to treat recycled sewage for drinking water. The compulsory referendum took place on Saturday July 29 and resulted in a 61.6% vote against the proposal out of an eligible voting population of over 60,000 people.

The question posed was ““Do you support the addition of purified recycled water to Toowoomba’s water supply via Cooby Dam as proposed by Water Futures – Toowoomba?”
The poll was the first of its kind in Australia and is being used to gauge community attitudes to recycled effluent, which is already in widespread use overseas and in some parts of Australia. The outcome was hailed as a resounding victory for the no campaign, led Rosemary Morley, coordinator of a group calling itself Citizens Against Drinking Sewage. Morley had insisted Toowoomba would not be a guinea pig for the rest of Australia in adopting the plan. They ran an emotional campaign and warned of the damage the plan would do to Toowoomba’s reputation. Their advertising had phrases such as “People won't come here; others will leave. Property values will drop and jobs will go.” Mayor Thorley meanwhile had argued that recycling sewage for drinking water was the most economically and environmentally effective way to fix the city's critical water shortage. But as ABC reporter Peter McCutcheon described the result, it was “science versus the yuck factor, and the result was emphatic”. In other words, people thought their water would taste like shit.

However the vote against science is not the end of the road for recycled water in Australia. Queensland Premier Peter Beattie said regardless of the referendum outcome, other parched south-east Queensland communities would likely have to vote on the same issue in the future. He conceded that a program of education may be necessary to sell the idea when he said “we will have to go out and explain the truth about recycling". The NSW town of Goulburn may take up the cudgels now that Toowoomba’s citizens have decided against it. Goulburn was so desperate for water last year it considered trucking it in at a cost of $1million a week. Their mayor believes that a $40 million recycling plant is now the only viable solution. Unlike Toowoomba however, Goulburn’s elected officials are unlikely to conduct an election to implement the proposal. Given the current drought, the National Water Commission has asked for volunteers to trial new schemes to recycle effluent for drinking, but apart from Goulburn no other town or city has so far come forward.

Opposers of the recycled sewage plans have come up with some bizarre reasons as to why it’s not safe. Queensland National leader Lawrence Springborg claimed that recycled water can turn male fish into females. When he was questioned on why he did not support plans to use purified recycled water for drinking, he cited what he said was research detailing its sex change powers. Mr Springborg said studies had shown high levels of the female sex hormone oestrogen in recycled water, which impacted on animal life and potentially humans. Democrat Senator Andrew Bartlett labelled the claim as "a red herring" and "alarmist misinformation". He has launched a petition calling for south-east Queensland to fully accept the idea and recycle all waste and storm water.

It is possible that the entire state of Queensland may be asked to vote on the matter in 2008. But as Patrick Weller, professor of politics and public policy and director of the centre for governance and public policy, at Griffith University has argued in today’s Australian: the democratic process of referendum, while appealing on face value, may not be the best way to solve issues like the water problem. Firstly, referenda are usually stated in black and white terms whereas public policy needs to grapple with many complex grey issues that can't turned into a yes or no answer. Secondly, they encourage a coalition of negatives. Though who disagree don’t have to agree with each other on why they disagree. Weller points out how the republican model was defeated in the referendum of 1999 by a coalition of monarchists and direct election republicans who otherwise were polls apart in their views. Because the solution to the water issue was going to be unpopular whatever the result, it was sent to referendum. But it was precisely the sort of hard choice that should have been taken by an elected government. Ultimately, that is a Federal government decision.

Parliamentary secretary for water policy, Malcolm Turnbull, played down the national significance of the vote, and he defended the Government's decision to make the poll a condition of Commonwealth funding. He said “the majority of the Toowoomba community does not support the indirect potable reuse of recycled water." He said the offer of Government assistance for the Toowoomba Water Futures project has "by that vote" been declined. Turnbull said he respected the decision but rejects the rationale. "Reuse of recycled water for drinking purposes in the manner proposed is sustainable and it is safe," he said but, "it is not compulsory”.

It may not be compulsory for Toowoomba now, but its citizens will pay a longer-term price for their decision. People worried about their property value will see then slump soon enough when the real water crisis becomes apparent. As the water dries up, maybe the emotive nonsense spouted by anti-recyclers will dry up with it. In the meantime, Toowoomba remains a safe haven for real estate and male fish alike.

Mary River dam to get go-ahead

Today, the Queensland government announced that the controversial Mary River Dam will be confirmed next week. Water Minister Henry Palaszczuk says the project is going ahead despite claims that the dam will leak.

Water is a major issue for Queensland. The Bureau of Meteorology has predicted 60% less than average rainfalls this winter and the long-lasting drought has had severe impact on the contents of Brisbane’s dams. As of June 13, Level Three water restrictions have started in most south-east Queensland council areas. It means outdoor watering with hoses is now prohibited.

The problem is exacerbated by the Queensland population boom. According to Australian Bureau of Statistics’ data for the September 2005 quarter, Queensland’s population grew at 1.9%, nearly double the 1% rate in the rest of Australia, and faster than any other State or Territory. Queensland is in the middle of the worst drought in over 100 years. The Government response is to build the Mary River Dam about 150km north of Brisbane.

Renegade Labor MP Cate Molloy has threatened to cross the floor and vote against the proposal. She is the local member for Noosa and is considering introducing a private member's bill to try to stop the Traveston Crossing dam. If she does, she will be automatically expelled from the ALP.
Queensland Premier Peter Beattie is unmoved. He said "The facts of life are, I spoke to Cate about it last week when Parliament was on. I'm happy to talk to her again, but no-one should misunderstand our determination, we have to do this. We have to do every aspect of this water plan or people will not have water.”

University of Queensland professor, David Williams, says more than one metre of water could be lost each year to evaporation at Traveston Crossing and up to three metres to seepage. “It could lose huge amounts of water through the base of the storage," he said. Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg agrees with Williams and says the site has been twice been ruled out before. "They'll find that this dam is an absolute folly," he said.

Peter Beattie announced on Thursday, 27th April 2006 the Queensland Government proposal to build a mega-dam on the Mary River at Traveston Crossing. It will inundate the central Mary Valley in Queensland's Sunshine Coast hinterland. It covers an area bigger than Sydney harbour. 900 landowners’ properties (roughly 76 square kms) would be resumed as part of the proposal and the Bruce Highway and railways which links Brisbane with tropical Queensland would need to be re-directed. The Greens believe the likely cost of the dam will be $300 million. However Democrat Senator Andrew Bartlett believes the true cost will be over $1 billion when the cost of resuming the properties, roads and infrastructure is taken into account.

What irked the local communities most was that the decision was taken without any notice or consultation with the local community. Now the community is fighting back. A local group called “Save the Mary River Coordinating Group” was set up to resist the proposal. The Sunshine Coast Environmental Council (SCEC) have described the environmental and economic impact as “significant and unacceptable”. They say large scale water infrastructure will not only permanently affect the Mary River catchment but will degrade the fisheries of the nearby Great Sandy World Heritage Area which includes Fraser Island. According to “Eco”, the Sunshine Coast Eco news, three of southeast Queensland’s most endangered species and ecosystems are likely to be devastated by the Mary River mega-dam. These are three nationally listed animals – the Mary River Cod, the Queensland Lungfish and the Mary River Turtle. They also say that the resultant extremely shallow water level will create an ideal environment for huge numbers of pest species - blue-green algae, water hyacinth, salvinia, cabomba, cane toads, mosquitoes, rodents and carp.

The local Cooloola council is not averse to dam-building. However they see this super-dam as being counter-productive. Shire Mayor Mick Vernados said "There are a number of alternate dam locations at a much lesser cost than a huge mega dam and they're not going to disrupt and dislocate 1,500 people or more, they're not going to throw economies of this region into chaos and they're certainly not going to put at risk people's lives and livelihoods."

Those in favour point out the relief in metropolitan water shortages when the dam is built. Opponents say the dam fails to address underlying causes of metropolitan water shortages - environmentally unsustainable growth coupled with wastage and inefficient use of water.