Water, Water ... Nowhere - Tasmanian Times

Charles and Claire Gilmour

Let’s not be misguided, imagine Great Lake in a couple of years time when the pulp mill is online – we will have situation where Great Lake is rendered useless, you will be able to jump across the South Esk and Meander rivers and their tributaries will be dry. All the while the pulp mill will be sucking drinking water from the city of Launceston. By that stage poor old dwindling Great Lake is expected to water half of the midlands, as far south as Brighton, along with the Cressy irrigation scheme and generate power through Poatina. Makes you wonder why Evercreech (which was a massive prime agricultural dairy farm bought out by Gunns) was ever planted out in plantations – it being the headwaters of the South Esk river.

GREAT LAKE is the 3rd biggest body of water in Australia, and when full is some 320km to walk around. It has been abused, but still some see it as our saviour – it can’t and won’t be – it is simply an over-used flooded marsh.

As an historical reference, in the late 1960s early ’70s the height of Great Lake dam was increased by some 10-15 metres by rocky fill. It took until about 1995, some 25 years later, for the water in Great Lake to touch any part of that increased dam height. At that stage Great Lake was about 5-7m from being full, it is currently 16 metres from being full. The only dam holding back Great Lake at the moment, is a tiny little hand made wall that was built at the turn of last century. Which stands in front of the multi-arch concrete dam built in the 1930’s – which is currently sun baking in the central highlands. The multi arch concrete dam sits behind the rock fill dam which hasn’t seen water for years.

There was far less power requirement in the 70s or ‘80s, no pulp mill and the need for farmers to irrigate was very much a new invention. Around 1995 the hydro in it’s ‘wisdom’, determined that there was some 5 to 7 % loss of water from the pipe outflow at Great Lake to the metal pipe at Poatina. That distance is quite considerable and is basically a 3m by 3m rock tunnel and water was seeping through the rock fissures. (This makes a mockery of Llwellyn’s spin on the Meander dam purposely built to leak). Some smart people said it was simply the increased pressure of the water, but the Hydro chose to jettison 60% of the volume of Great Lake – in 95/96, which took about 2 years – in order to shut off the pipe line to allow the tunnel to be sealed with concrete, at a cost of some 10 million dollars. Great Lake has never recovered volume wise – because of the pressure of irrigation, further industry demands, evaporation, and dry seasons.

Accordingly, we are already 13 years into low levels of Great Lake, with at least another 25 years to get it back to 1995 levels. Bear in mind, Great Lake can come up 2 metres over winter, but goes down, say, 2.1metres, some years it may come up 2.8m but goes down 2.9m. As years go by, it’s a step backward every year. In biblical proportions of rain, Great Lake is only capable, because of its poor catchment area, of rising 30 cm a week. However in full usage of Poatina I have seen it fall 40 cm a week. Ultimately, more is going out than in.

Historically, when Great Lake gets to less than 16% full, it takes 15 years of average to above average rainfall along with careful outflow, for the lake to get anywhere near 70 % full, therefore creating water insurance.

Great Lake looks like a big body of water, but it is very shallow in most places, and in fact the Poatina pipe line can only suck another 2 metres or so, before the Poatina pipe line is high and dry.

Lake Augusta, which feeds Great Lake via Liaweenee Canal, is fed by 2 small creek systems – one in the north and one in the west. Where those two creeks join, it was damed so to flow down the Liaweenee Canal and into Great Lake. Proper lake Augusta is only about 1.5 metres deep. This water used to naturally flow down to the townships of Ouse and Hamilton, where they currently have severe water problems. (Great Lake used to be a series of 5 lakes- which ran down the Shannon River and ultimately watered Tunbridge, Bothwell, Kempton, Brighton – again areas that are suffering severe water shortages.)

There is no doubt the south will be contributing their share of water to the pulp mill.

30 years ago a wise old man said to me, (Charles), that stopping and diverting all this water, would eventually create problems. He was right. At the time, the Hydro spin doctors claimed they were only storing excess water for power generation, whilst always maintaining natural flows down each creek that they damed. This was a furphy. All these natural creeks are now bone dry and have been so for decades. (Such as the Dee River, Shannon River, Ouse River, Nive River, and the Lake River which is the outflow of Arthurs Lake via Woods Lake), which used to supply towns such Ross, Campbell Town and Oatlands ….again … areas suffering sever water shortages).

All this diversion of water not only has created problems for some areas in the southern midlands municipalities, but this imbalance, this robbing peter to pay Paul, is now for what? so robbing Paul can give it all to little John and Robin!

Add to this, Paul’s government wanting to waste the public’s money by building a pipeline to the likes of Tunbridge etc, when nature has already given natural pipelines – they are called natural rivers and creeks – which are and will, with Lennon’s anti-environment brainwaves, remain bone dry! Open the valves and restore the natural flow, correct the imbalance to the parched areas and this will save the cost of a pipeline from Poatina. And where will the power come from people ask? Well not a hell of a lot is being generated by Poatina at the moment, so for a start power could be created by wind, solar, creating investment in more environmentally conscious power systems, ultimately be power wise, live within our means!

With continued water sucking plantations and catchment destruction, Gunns pulp mill, and Lennon not having a clue about water, it is not hard to predict what the future holds – tight fresh water rationing on the one hand and people being supplied with their own treated waste water in the other – whilst the plantations, the pulp mill, our John, get the best water and turn it into useless and deadly effluent. What a vision!

In a climate changed world we are not as water blessed as we are led to believe. In a drought affected situation, Lennon’s government is continuing to create a dangerous and costly situation by not being remotely water wise.

Lennon is not drought proofing, his clap trap is nothing more than a desperate attempt to doubt proof. The public should be extremely concerned about where their water supplies are and will be going, and the Lennon governments past and present performance to act in the best interest of the public.

And where, pray tell are you Will Hodgman? We can give up on idiots, but where there’s a Will, there should be a way! Are you going to continue to support a backward, unaccountable Labor state government or will you think about the children of the not so distant future? It’s not too hard to be a clairvoyant, considering all that so far has come to pass. Hope you kept your reference copy Will – “and we all must remember this one, ‘when drinking our own waste water’, and there’s ‘our John’, pumping past ‘vast quantities of freshwater’. If you can’t explain the support for such a pulping monster to us Will – you harder critic, unless you change your tune, will be having to explain it to your children and grand children.

For anyone who doubts, grab a map, take walk, take a look, take a photo, it’s not rocket science. And keep in mind when you look at the map every creek and river south (to Hobart) of Arthurs Lake, Great Lake and Dee Lagoon is bone dry because of hydro development.

Regardless of the fact that Launceston is robbing the south through Hydro catchments, Hobart’s water supply, being the Derwent, is bolstered by the simple fact, that every creek and river that would normally flow, have been boxed together and sent down pipe lines and canals, via the Bronte and King William systems, ultimately giving Hobart a false sense of security.

Are we living in a fool’s water paradise?

We personally live in what used to be, until recently, one of the highest rainfall areas of the state and still we’d suggest to people buy a water tank or two – seriously, it’s safer than relying on the Lennon government.

If this water situation is not properly looked at and corrected in the next couple of years, in the next 10-12 years it WILL create anarchy. And ultimately this will be Lennon and Howards legacy to Tasmania. What do you think, and what do you intend to do about it, Mr Rudd and Mr Hodgman?