The POOL ROOM

[Merv and Sharon]

Yes thanks Les. I was told that last night also by the city engineer (past) from Ipswich. Also said that a dam on the Mary river was scheduled as long ago as 1980! Given the infrastructure growth it seems about time!

Unpopular view on the Sunshine Coast.

Merv

[Rebel1]

Merv, I am in two minds about the Traveston Dam. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of the green tree hugging types who don't want any dams at all, Irrespective of where they are sited.

I guess in some ways I'm a bit distrustful of bureaucracy and the effort and money which is expended on keeping us, the voting public, aware of the issues. I look at most of this expenditure as an attempt by bureaucracy to "educate" and "justify" their decisions or as a way to condition the voting public to the decisions made.

In regards to wivenhoe and somerset dams I am somewhat attracted to what is theorized on this site: http://wivenhoesomersetrainfall.com/

I read somewhere that the evaporate loss of wivenhoe is 1.8 Mtrs per year. That is a whole lot of water approx equal to the increases we have experienced in the past week. I also recall a comment made that a houseboat moored on wivenhoe would reduce evaporation of water equivelant to the water needs of a family of 4 living on that houseboat. So that houseboat and residents would have a neutral impact on the dam.

I think the Brisbane experience with the supposed drought is an excellent example how absolutely lax we as a population and the state bureaucracy had become. Prior to the water shortage we had enoggera dam taken out of service and all that water sitting there doing nothing except to provide a nice backdrop for a few picknickers. Now back in service it helps to reduce the drawdown from Wivenhoe. Same situation with other smaller dams around Brissy.

I wont go raving on about maintenance of the water mains throughout Brisbane but suffice to say the more recent expenditure to prevent leakage and spills have saved many millions of Ltrs. of water which was just going down the gutter in previous years.

When one examines the water release chart I posted earlier, it is obvious that we now use approx half that we did 5 years ago and we do that with 5 years of population growth. We were using 25000ML per month now reduced to an average of 10000Ml. so the same volume of water will now last at least twice as long.

I'm more interested in seeing efficient management of assets as opposed to just throwing capital at the problem. I think this is more what is being said in the before mentioned web site.