THE Victorian Government simply cannot justify sending water across the Great Divide, says PETER RYAN
It is economic and environmental madness for the Brumby Government to press ahead with the construction of a pipeline to take water from the Goulburn River to Melbourne.
The Coalition strongly opposes the pipeline but supports upgrading the irrigation system.
Water savings from the upgrade should remain in the Goulburn Murray region and be divided equally between the environment and farmers.
Our opposition to the pipeline is shared by a broad cross-section of the community, including the Australian Greens, the Victorian Farmers Federation, the Institute of Public Affairs and the public at large.
Why are so many seemingly disparate groups united in their opposition to the pipeline?
The Government claims the pipeline will provide Melbourne with water security, but it won't.
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Melbourne is currently on stage 3a water restrictions, but the situation in northern Victoria is far worse.
Eildon is at 23 per cent capacity and allocations are at just 4 per cent.
Bendigo and Ballarat, which are served by a pipeline costing about $300 million, continue to have severe water restrictions.
It is apparent to almost everyone that a drought that threatens Melbourne's water storages is likely to be as or more severe in the north of the state.
Premier Brumby, Water Minister Tim Holding and a gaggle of highly paid advisers and consultants have a different view.
They believe there will be plenty of water in the Goulburn, even if Melbourne's storages are running on empty.
What is more, they are prepared to wager $750 million of taxpayers' money on the pipeline in the belief they are right and everyone else is wrong.
The arrogance underpinning their position is staggering.
The Opposition believes Melbourne should be developing a portfolio of water-supply options, thus spreading its risks. There are more economically and environmentally sound options that can be developed than those the Government is proposing.
They include using recycled water from the Eastern Sewage Treatment Plant. This project will generate more than 100,000 megalitres of class A recycled water each year, which could be used to replace potable water used by industry and for watering public parks and reserves.
Recycled water could also be piped to the upper Yarra River to supplement environmental flows, allowing more water to be taken from Upper Yarra dam.
There is also a range of local water-supply projects but the Government appears to be discouraging these smaller-scale solutions.
Melbourne Water estimates 500,000 megalitres of water falls in metropolitan Melbourne annually, with most of that entering Port Philip Bay and Westernport as stormwater runoff.
Research by Monash University suggests it is possible to retrofit a stormwater and rainwater capture system in a suburb like Glen Waverley.
Why are these economically and environmentally appropriate solutions being ignored by the Brumby Government?
The Government has deliberately misled the Victorian community in justifying the pipeline project.
Among other examples of this, the Government based its projections of water yield from Melbourne catchments on rainfall over the past three years.
In contrast, it has estimated the water savings available from irrigation infrastructure renewal on rainfall patterns over the past 115 years.
The practical effect of this is that it has underestimated future urban supplies but overstated the water that can be saved by investing in irrigation infrastructure.
With a mixture of sleight of hand and political spin, the Government has tried to convince irrigators they are getting a good deal by allowing Melbourne Water to take 75,000 megalitres of water in exchange for investing $300 million into irrigation infrastructure modernisation.
Last week the prominent environmentalist and Australian of the Year Tim Flannery more colourfully described the Government's justification for the pipeline as "bullshit".
Irrigators have not been fooled.
The strong and sustained community protest against the pipeline proposal is testament to this.
Prior to the 2006 election, the Government stated it would not take water from north of the divide.
Six months after the election this commitment was trashed.
When the Coalition takes government, it may be that for a brief transition period the pipeline would continue to be used until alternative supplies for Melbourne come on line.
We simply don't know what sort of a mess Labor will leave after departing government.
However, the Coalition is opposed to Melbourne relying on water from the north-south pipeline and remains committed to not using the pipe as a matter of first principle.
In the long-term, a Coalition Government would only use the pipeline to meet critical human needs or if an emergency situation developed, and then, only until alternate water sources became available, making Melbourne self-sufficient.
Peter Ryan is Leader of The Victorian Nationals.
