Is it time to seriously look at piping water from the far north

A proper national project .... jobs jobs jobs and the ability to irrigate the country

Australia already has a reputation for producing some of the best and cleanest produce in the world maybe it's time to capitalise particularly with a middle class rising throughout Asia the demand for fresh good quality produce will only increase.
With proper irrigation and an abundance of land perhaps an opportunity to become the food bowl for the world is right under our noses.

Better than an NBN

Why from the north ?
We have a brand new desalination plant in Sydney doing nothing.
Its affecting nsw farmers and its a lot closer .

good god man, you will never make a politician, you are too practical in your thinking.

Trouble is that would mean a 10 year planning strategy budget, then environmental strategy budget, then a complete rethink because the other party thought this up and as we are now in power we cannot use their plans.

But damn you do make sense, enough wind and solar out in the middle to create pumping stations getting where its needed/wanted

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harry potter said..
Is it time to seriously look at piping water from the far north

A proper national project .... jobs jobs jobs and the ability to irrigate the country

Australia already has a reputation for producing some of the best and cleanest produce in the world maybe it's time to capitalise particularly with a middle class rising throughout Asia the demand for fresh good quality produce will only increase.
With proper irrigation and an abundance of land perhaps an opportunity to become the food bowl for the world is right under our noses.

I think it was argued that the energy required to pump water from the north is the same or more than the energy required to desalinate it further south. It makes sense when you think about it. Its not like the water in the north is running downhill.

So, where is the government that has the balls to spend that sort of money for infrastructure?

And over irrigation causes salinity problems.

The whole idea sounds pretty kooky to me...

Has anyone actually examined the feasibility of it? I see nothing but additional environmental issues, and such massive cost to make it economically unviable, but I say that without any relevant evidence or knowledge.

In 2005 Colin Barnett, the then Liberal Opposition leader of WA, suggested using the water from the Fitzroy River in the Kimberleys' to solve Perth's water problems.

His solution was a Canal.

A Canal like in the below picture, but 3700km longer.

Some said 'Why the Fitzroy? it would be easier getting the water from the Snowy RIver in the East.'

Barnett said it would cost 2 Billion. Others said it would cost 5 Billion.

Some said the water would completely evaporate 1000km short of Perth.

Barnett even suggested we could make money from tourists wanting to go on Canal cruises through Australia's arid interior.

Far Canal.

The Federal Liberal party led by John Howard refused to commit any Federal funds to the proposal.

3 days out from the State Election Colin Barnett finally showed his costings for the Canal. There was an obvious 200 million dollar error in his costings.

That was that. Labor cruised to victory and Geoff Gallop became Premier.

Considering we just spent over $1Billion dollars NOT to build a road here in Victoria a $200 million blowout to Complete a project doesn't seem at all bad.

Cost vs benefit analysis. Then let's talk.

irrigate locally , the soil up that way is very productive given moisture, then transport the produce, as jobs jobs jobs go, your well off the mark, a few thousand acres needs little labour due to machinery tech, 9000hect farms in my region have 3/4 crew, of those most seem to be from the uk or ireland on work visas due to difficulties in finding australian work forces, you dont understand the complexities of irrigating large volumes of land in our harsh climate,

They have studied this - it will cost many many billions, has considerable environmental concerns, and huge power requirements in places 100's of Kms from any grid. Plus what you see on TV is the grazing properties, while its not great for grain farmers they just have to wait it out.
Even if a grazier can access irrigated water, the properties are not suitable for irrigation it would cost 100's of thousands to properly distribute in across the farm.

This article is just to divert water from northern Australia, to the drier parts of northern Aust, let alone further south.


theconversation.com/damming-northern-australia-we-need-to-learn-hard-lessons-from-the-south-53885

While we are talking about water from the north, what is the story with Sandalwood plantations up there? Why is all this great supply of water used to irrigate something that's not edible?

Far from a food bowl, it sounds like it gave way to consumerism.

The solutions to all Australia's problems exist,..............except the politician problem, or should I say the electorate problem.

While the electorate keeps swinging Labor, Liberal, Labor, Liberal, Labor, Liberal, nothing of importance will ever be achieved.

The pollies over the years have legislated themselves such a sweet deal that all any of them care about is getting re-elected.

Whichever party becomes government just cancels whatever good the previous government did just on principle because it is them and us.

It is a hopeless situation because the electorate has been dumbed down so much that it does not know what it's vote means.

Call me cynical but that is the way I see it. I have stood at polling booths many times for both Labor and Liberal and watching the voters and their attitudes is a mind blowing experience.

Do we still have Australia or is it just one of the states of Facebook???

Further to my above, Has anybody here ever heard of "The Bradfield Plan"??

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradfield_Scheme

It was supposed to follow on from the Snowy Mountains River Scheme while the machinery and workforce had been landed but word came down from the British Royalty to not let the colonies develop any sort of independance.

If you think Australia is a soverign nation, you are living in an illusion.

I think in the Durack novels, they talk about long long years of drought, up north, in the very areas that people are assuming are always flowing with an abundance of water.

Australia is not just a country where there is always a huge amount of water just flowing out to the ocean.

Here's some food for thought about how viable these things are:

www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-30/ord-irrigation-scheme-defended-by-chairman-david-menzel/8757498

Sometimes you forget how different other parts of the world are. If you want to grow rice, is Australia really the place to do it when there are other countries with regular monsoonal rains?

Ok there is another solution I've heard to irrigate the interior & its to build a kilometer high moutain range down the west coast inland a bit .
This would create the conditions to give us rainfall in the interior buy changing our climate.
Ireland has less average rainfall than Australia its how we use & store it thats the problem .
But if we did use the desalination plant in Sydney at least it wouldn't be a total waste of money like it is .

Yep, when the benefits outweigh the costs someone will get onto it. Haven't the engineering fraternity already worked out that because of our vast distances and elevated temperatures, open canals evaporate too much water to make them viable? Water is already a valuable commodity to some businesses and the rights to it are traded just like any other commodity. For instance a large agri-business might calculate that it's yields will not be good enough for an upcoming season and will sell its water usage rights to another business for that period and not plant a crop.

If CY O'Connor could pipe water over 500km away 100 years ago, surely this could be achieved with today's tech.
The only issue is, back then no one considered the long-term consequence of taking so much water from the Perth area and sending it East.
These times there's a lot more information and studies around the affect of removing water from certain areas.
There's plenty of water in the north. Both in rivers and underground. I pump out and reinject about 30ML a day of it.
But there are very strict environmental guidelines about where and how much water can be used and how much needs to go back in the ground.

Fertile farming land was pretty much all taken up generations ago. The demand for produce as seen some farmers/corporations expanding their lands into less desirable areas which means more risk and more reliance on the weather.
I feel for them. They work hard and have invested a lot. But Australia is a desert. Has been for millennia, previous generations new this and drove their live stock to more fertile areas in time of drought.
Other countries clear rain forest, we try to cultivate desert into usable land through water schemes etc...
There is only so much practical room and natural resources left.

By going to my farm near Dalby from Gold Coast I could see the straight contrast.
200km of the sea and land is completely dry.But when you drive you will see many Deepwater markers on the roads inside.
It means that once in the year there is an abundance of water even deep inland.So the main concern for our engineers was to drain this water as soon as possible to the sea.You can't find a single project to capture this water that falls and may last for years if retained beside dams.We simply need to build more lakes inside wast Australian land. Capture this rain that falls once or few times a year in excess.

There's been plenty of proposals to build dams here Macro, trouble is that no-one wants to lose usable land or endanger a lesser known sabre-toothed lungfish to a dam and so they become a political hand grenade and never get built. Most of the population aren't affected by drought because they just turn a tap on and water comes out and they then complain about the government corporate monopoly gouging them with the bill. Until the majority of the population turn the tap on and no water comes out, or the price of water goes through the roof, no-one will do anything about it.

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Macroscien said..
By going to my farm near Dalby from Gold Coast I could see the straight contrast.
200km of the sea and land is completely dry.But when you drive you will see many Deepwater markers on the roads inside.
It means that once in the year there is an abundance of water even deep inland.So the main concern for our engineers was to drain this water as soon as possible to the sea.You can't find a single project to capture this water that falls and may last for years if retained beside dams.We simply need to build more lakes inside wast Australian land. Capture this rain that falls once or few times a year in excess.

Read this:

https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-au/books/peter-andrews/back-from-the-brink-how-australia-s-landscape-can-be-saved/GOR006151836?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI4oaCrb7X3AIVk6mWCh01wAnLEAQYASABEgLbwvD_BwE

Gaddafi did it for his country... I think the Brits, and French later bomb some parts of it though.
I'll save you my cynicism in respect to our chances.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man-Made_River

Whhoaaah... HW here we come!

^And we can get refugees to provide the Labour on these remote projects!

stop irrigating to grow cotton and rice ! and use the water to grow vegies and fruit !!!

mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-11/meet-the-singaporean-businessman-transforming-the-pilbara/9526810

Seriously
Our primemunster is a banker who hides his tax free millions in off shore accounts.
They gave 400 million to a group of sychophants to produce a study on the great barrier reef with favourable results to their desired outcome
They can't create reliable public transport in any city in the country
They allow migrant workers in by the plane load to be paid in wages from their country of origin
(The latest one I've heard of is exploritory drilling and drilling offsiders in the NW)

They are bankrupting us
Not them
They are doing it on purpose
Distracting us with tv and other nonsensical fluff
The only option we have left is to riot and eat the rich

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theDoctor said..


mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-11/meet-the-singaporean-businessman-transforming-the-pilbara/9526810

Seriously
Our primemunster is a banker who hides his tax free millions in off shore accounts.
They gave 400 million to a group of sychophants to produce a study on the great barrier reef with favourable results to their desired outcome
They can't create reliable public transport in any city in the country
They allow migrant workers in by the plane load to be paid in wages from their country of origin
(The latest one I've heard of is exploritory drilling and drilling offsiders in the NW)

They are bankrupting us
Not them
They are doing it on purpose
Distracting us with tv and other nonsensical fluff
The only option we have left is to riot and eat the rich

welcome to SB .... have popcorn... wing nutters will arrive shortly ...

If anyone wants to donate to assist the farmers and others doing it tough theres links at the bottom of the article

www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2018-08-01/drought-dos-and-donts-of-donations/10057862

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SandS said..
stop irrigating to grow cotton and rice ! and use the water to grow vegies and fruit !!!

Problem now is companies like Woolies Mc Bank and foreigners are buying our water entitlements, Woolies owns the most water in Australia, why so they can squeeze out family owned growers.

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choco said..

SandS said..
stop irrigating to grow cotton and rice ! and use the water to grow vegies and fruit !!!

Problem now is companies like Woolies Mc Bank and foreigners are buying our water entitlements, Woolies owns the most water in Australia, why so they can squeeze out family owned growers.

make them grow veggies and fruit with it and no probs ,as long as they are not exporting our food !!