In the last week the idea of rolling out a water pipeline from Tasmania to Victoria and South Australia has been given another public airing. In The Age of 30 April Kenneth Davidson said that “long-standing Liberal and chairman of the Docklands Science Park, John Martin… has been negotiating with the Tasmanian government to buy surplus water to sell to potential mainland customers at a fraction of the price of desalinated water”. ( http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/memo-premier-its-not-too-late-to-get-us-a-better-deal-on-water-20120429-1xsum.html )
According to Davidson, last year the Kew branch of the Victorian Liberal Party had prepared a motion for the Liberal State Council meeting in October ”to renegotiate the contract for the Wonthaggi desalination plant with a view to saving billions of taxpayer dollars and to use such of the valuable infrastructure as would facilitate the transfer of readily available excess water from Tasmania to Victoria and hence to South Australia, creating $18 billion of extra gross domestic product and facilitating the expansion of mining in the Roxby Downs area”.
The day after the Davidson article, John Martin was interviewed on ABC radio. He explained that a 6 metre diameter pipeline could be rolled out from Tasmanian catchments to Melbourne within a year of getting the requisite approvals from governments.He estimated the cost to be in the vicinity of $800 million, designed to supply 500 gigalitres per annum to Melbourne. The system would operate much like a Roman aqueduct, the water moving purely by gravity from the Tasmanian source, which would be situated just below a hydro system. According to Martin, some of the 500 gigalitres would be pumped into Melbourne storages and the rest could be piped to both the Murray-Darling agricultural heartland and on to South Australia for use in the extraction of “rare earth” deposits, which are estimated to be worth trillions of dollars. Once extracted, the “rare earth” would be transported to Tasmania for further water treatment, the final product being used for such things as parts for magnetic drives for computers.
Davidson reported Martin as saying that Tasmania has “5000 gigalitres available in the North West area alone and the proposal is to use 1500 gigalitres of that to supplement the Melbourne water supply [total unrestricted Melbourne usage is 500 gigalitres], fix any problem in the Murray-Darling Basin, assist irrigation and make Adelaide’s water supply fresher and more secure…. Tasmania is very much in need of the funding that royalties on the water could produce. The water produces hydroelectricity as a first duty… The reorganisation of water supplies in south-east Australia would be achieved by this scheme which is extremely economical and will deliver greater benefits than the Snowy Scheme. The renegotiated contract should be a win-win situation for all Victorians.”
This reads almost exactly like an earlier plan that was submitted to the Tasmanian government several years ago, when a “consortium” was negotiating with the relevant minister, David Llewellyn, about a pipeline from the Arthur-Pieman hydro catchment to Melbourne. Is it the same consortium that is now negotiating once more, but this time from within the Victorian Liberal Party?
Whatever the case, the new element in the proposal appears to be the Roxby Downs connection, unless that has always been there but hidden from public view. In this context it is interesting that the latest news on BHP’s expansion plans in South Australia to secure exploration ground around its “vast Olympic Dam copper, gold and uranium mine in South Australia… is for five exploration licences covering 3700sq km of its West Roxby project, 90km southwest of Olympic Dam.Apart from securing more ground around Olympic Dam, which BHP is planning to expand in stages at a cost of more than $30 billion, the deals with the juniors follow the surprise emergence of Rio Tinto in the area last year in a big-spending farm-in with Tasman Resources at the Vulcan prospect, 30km northeast of Olympic Dam.In addition, London-listed South American copper producer Antofagasta and Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Metals have made moves into South Australia to take up the hunt for Olympic Dam-style deposits”. (sourced from Barry Fitzgerald, The Australian, 1 May).
This is massive.
What are the ramifications for Tasmania if the plan, as articulated by John Martin, gets the green light? One obvious question is about the transport and refinement of “rare earth” in Tasmania. If it is more economic to transport the material to Tasmania than to treat it on site in South Australia, even with a massive injection of Tasmanian water via the proposed pipeline, then just how much water is required to refine the material once it is extracted? Related questions are about the nature of the “rare earth”, its radioactivity and waste disposal after treatment.
There are other questions which also feed into this mix. The last time around, the proposal on Llewellyn’s desk also contained the sweetener of a pipeline to the midlands, which was part of the David Bartlett-JonathanWest plan for a “food bowl” to replace the best food producing regions in the north and north west, which were needed for “Plantation Isle”. So how does that fit in with the Martin plan?
Which brings us to the inevitable question about the plantation estate and water catchments, as if you couldn’t guess. John Martin has made the point about “making Adelaide’s water fresher”.
Where are the catchments in Tasmania that can not only do that, but give good quality water to the good people of Melbourne as well? Well, certainly not anything from the whole of the east, from Tomahawk to Sorell. Clearfelling, silting, spraying of monocultural plantations and so on has put paid to that. But are the Arthur-Pieman catchments any better? Sorry about that. The horse has well and truly bolted from that stable. There’s a report written somewhere about the dead Arthur River, isn’t there?
But who knows where all these dots will be joined up. Wouldn’t it just rot your socks if the whole useless plantation estate also wrecked the possibility of adding value to Tasmanian water? What a nice farce that would be. But at least there’s some good news in the pipeline. Ashort report by Rose Grantin ABC rural news during last week, headed “Tasmanian hardwood plantations sold for conversion to pasture”, noted that “The swing from hardwood plantations to pasture and livestock is gaining momentum this year… (and) some quite big plantation parcels have recently been sold with a view to restocking with dairy cattle, or beef animals or, lambs.” ( http://www.abc.net.au/rural/tas/content/2012/05/s3492999.htm?site=hobart )
Ain’t it just wonderful that all Tasmania’s politicians, lock stock and barrel, Labor, Liberal, Green, independent or whatever other label they put on themselves, are totally in agreement about Plantation Isle. As far as woodchipping and a pulp mill are concerned the only things they differ about are whether they should trash all forests, or just some of them, or none,and where the pulp millsite should be. But they’re all in love with Plantation Isle. Meanwhile plantations are being bulldozed all over the place. Perhaps they need some advice about how to help the good residents of Melbourne and Adelaide get fresh water by saying to them that Tasmanian water is well filtered by well-sprayed and well-leafed nitens trees, known for their nutritional enhancement qualities.
Then we could all just get on with it and build a pipeline straight to Roxby Downs, so they can do all their refining in the one spot. But then, you can just see how Tasmanian politicians would love to get heaps of that “rare earth”. How about the Longreach site? Or would the Gunns’ pipeline be too small?
