North South Pipeline
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The Victorian Labor Government is planning to build a pipeline from Northern Victoria to take Eildon and Goulburn water to Melbourne in an effort to try and secure Melbourne's water future.
The pipeline is part of the Victorian Governments Foodbowl Modernization Plan, which involves upgrading some of the leaky irrigation infrastructure. The government claims that this will save a lot of water, 225 billion litres and use this as justification for taking what they call Melbourne's "75 billion litre share" of the water. Despite the governments claims, many people believe that a lot of the governments claims are incorrect and deceptive, or that they are figures and statistics used incorrectly for the governments benefit.
The plans have come under fire from a group called Plug the Pipe, who, with support from the Victorian Farmers Federation, claim that there simply isn't enough water to take. The Plug the Pipe group has huge support from farmers and most other rural and remote Victorian people and businesses, as they believe that their whole lively hoods will be taken away because of the lack of water, which is essential to farming and food production. They believe that Labor is stealing the water. They also believe that the plan is "environmental vandalism", because of the risk to several rare species, wetlands, native forest and 57 highland water ways that are in the proposed path, not to mention 160,000 t/year greenhouse emissions caused to pump water from the North of the state to the South, over the Great Dividing Range.
The Plug the Pipe group (as well as many irrigators, businesses and individuals) claims that the pipeline will take desperately needed water away from the Victorian "Foodbowl", which provides 73% of Australia's food, as well as significantly strengthening the Australian and Victorian economies through exporting the food that isn't needed by Australia. They claim that the Eildon and Goulburn water systems are already in crisis, with not enough water for its own users, let alone Melbourne.
The Victorian Liberal and National Parties, (who have again formed a Coalition) are against the plan, and support Plug the Pipe efforts order to stop the pipeline from going ahead.
On the 20th October 2006 the Victorian Premier released a report "The Central Region Sustainable Water Strategy" in which the government claimed it wasn't viable to take water from the Goulburn Valley to Melbourne. The CSIRO have since released several reports stating the same and commenting on the detrimental effect it would have on both the environment and the agricultural production which contributes so much to Victoria's economy. The auditor general released a scathing report concerning the governments lack of accountability in regard to the project and its unwillingness to conduct the appropriate environmental and fiscal studies to justify the projects claimed benefits to the communities. 70% of Victoria's 79 municipal councils have also voted in favour of the project being halted until proper investigations are conducted.
Mr Brumby, however, disputes these claims, saying, "Our estimates on Food Bowl are actually quite conservative … Even in the dry years you've got 690 gigalitres of water lost," he said.
"I'm more convinced than ever it's the right project."
References:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/review-to-guide-murraydarling-water-deals/2008/05/19/1211182704302.html http://business.theage.com.au/drips-to-the-fore-in-water-planning-20080427-28vp.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/08/17/2007938.htm
http://business.theage.com.au/holding-could-use-some-tunnel-vision-20080511-2d1f.html?skin=text-only
http://abc.com.au/news/stories/2008/03/03/2178280.htm
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21674273-5010020,00.html
