Hinterland resident, Sammy Ringer describes himself as a “tree-changed ex-sap opera writer with an interest in wildlife and water”
NEARLY TEN YEARS and many thousands of pages of wasted paper later, the Maleny Water Group is ready to lay down their fighting pens and keyboards and call it a day on the controversial Maleny pipeline.
The surveyor’s pegs are in place, the tender’s close to being awarded and, defying both logic and gravity, the pipeline will go ahead. Does it matter? Yes, it does. Perhaps not this pipeline itself but the sort of Neanderthal thinking that underpins the ‘pipes, pumps and dams’ approach to water issues. Think the Traveston Dam.
A township rich in innovation, community spirit and rainfall has been bludgeoned into accepting a really silly solution to increased water demand.
Back in 1999, the then Caloundra City Council announced Maleny was running out of water and that a pipeline would have to be built – from the Lander’s Shute water treatment plant in Palmwoods back up the hill to Maleny.
The water in question actually originates in the Obi Obi Creek on the plateau around Maleny. It runs down into Baroon Pocket Dam and from there down the hill to the Lander’s Shute treatment plant. Bringing that water something like 8 kilometres back up to the top of the mountain range seemed an odd approach to the problem.
The Maleny Water Group includes various resident scientists and engineers, and never questioned the fact that Maleny, with its growing population, needed to look at a better water supply. They were rankled by Caloundra City Council’s way of thinking.
An early report for Council looked at two options only – upgrading the weir and a pipeline. The former was apparently not viable so the latter was the obvious choice.
Or was it?
What about retrofitting rainwater tanks in town? Too expensive?*
How about increased off-stream storage?
Did they look at environmentally friendly ‘cluster supply’?
Did they dare to look at recycling?
And stormwater harvesting – did they look at their own report that told them Maleny gets something like 12 times the amount of water it needs each year – but it washes away as storm water? This water could be cleaned up through wetlands and put through the Maleny treatment plant.
None of these options involve the huge sums of money and power needed to pipe water back to where it came from.
But the very serious people who come up with ideas like the Traveston Dam and the Northern Pipeline Interconnector have an almost phobic reaction to anything that’s not pipes, pumps and dams.
Although stormwater harvesting is accepted all over the world, the Queensland State government doesn’t really have guidelines on this in place and are running scared of anything that sounds like ‘indirect potable reuse’. Despite the fact that the cleaned up water would be of better quality than the Obi’s natural flow.
The budget for the pipeline is $4.5m. The increased greenhouse gases from pumping the water are being calculated now.
As construction progresses, a website will bring updates on both the cost and the impact the pipeline will have on residents in its pathway.
The existing Maleny water treatment plant will be pulled down. More worryingly, they are also talking of pulling out the weirs to ‘increase environmental flows’. This is errant nonsense. Once we stop pumping water out of the weirs, the flows will be just fine. And it may occur to them that having a ‘backup’ water storage may not be such a bad idea. Pipes and pumps do break.
Sometime in 2010, all those of you on Maleny town water will be hooked into ‘the grid’ via the pipeline. You will immediately be put onto Level Two restrictions and the cost of your water will go up (which may not be a bad thing). You’ll also have fluoride – but, most depressingly, you’ll have lost a chance to make Maleny a true model of sustainability.
It’s sad there seems to be so little vision in government – dams and pipelines will not solve long- term problems and someone, someday, will have to stand up and say ‘There has to be a better way.’ It won’t be this generation who insist on that ‘better way’.And it won’t be us but the children of this generation who will face the real water crises that will arise from the blinkered thinking of today’s government – at all levels.
* How much would it cost to retrofit with 10,000 litre rainwater tanks, the approximately 800 houses in Maleny township on reticulated water? (Please note that there are more than 800 houses in Maleny township but those built since 2006 already have 10,000 litre rainwater tanks installed).
Around $1600 for the tank and a further $1400 for pumps, pipe and installation. That comes to a total of $2.4m – and that doesn’t take into account savings for bulk buying and installation and subsidies from state or federal governments.
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