With the water in Sydney's dams reaching an all time low due to the drought and population growth, we turned to alternative options for water and arrived at the verdict to build a Desalinisation Plant. Basically extracting the salt from sea water and using it, which is a pretty obvious thing to do given our "country is girt by sea".
Apparently though that there are some devastating environmental impacts in the area of the De-Sal plant, but that price was deemed acceptable as it will be located in Sydney's environmental disaster which is Kurnell.
So apart from some minor enviro protest, its a done deal.
But then it rains... its pouring and we all rejoice because the Dam is "HALF FULL"... I though in my pessimistic state tend to think of it as remaining as "HALF EMPTY" and therefore, before the Drought returns (which it will surely do given the El Nino / La Nina effects) we should build the damn De-Sal plant. But the Greenies say "no! look at the rain! we're saved!"...
Anyone with half a brain should realise that Australia is in serious shit if we do not provide water from other sources as opposed to drying up our natural water courses... has anyone seen the photos of the Murray Darling Creek? It used to be a mighty river... now its no good except for tadpoles. And all this enviro concern is over a headland of land in Sydney's south that is already riddled with petro-chemicals and other nasties.
De-Sal Water... its the best and only way forward.
3 comments:
Agreed. The other very strong point of fact is that Australia is constantly growing in population - demand for water is always going to increase not only for every day household use, but also with the increased demand for food which requires more water for irrigation.
It's not like we can just order more water from the sky.
Fact is, they have been able to find a record drought in Australian history - it lasted 96 years.
If we went through that again, this country will cease to exist.
De Sal - only viable option because all this talk about recycle this, capture that is yet to yield any viable solution - and we don't need this in place ten years from now, we need it NOW.
-DM
Is this desal plant just going to magically appear then? Why is it going to take any less time to come on line than a recycling plant would.
Regardless, there is no magic bullet solution that is going to save our water woes. It is my understanding that the desal plant will provide only 7% of the water supply, making it clear that water usage habits will need to change.
either that, or reassess the need for 100,000 approvals for immigrants to relocate to Australia each year already adding to natural population growth.
A lesson can be learned from the Aborigines in this. They realised Australia was a land of limited natural resources like food and water and they moderated their own population in areas to compensate.
Modern Australia is more focused on tax dollars and exports than managing it's resources. Lil' Johnny wants Australia to be an economic powerhouse on the world stage but to do so he needs a big population.
Bzzzt.
Australia will not support that kind of population growth sadly.
We have a LOT of land for sure, but much of it is uninhabitable and all we have done is overcrowd areas with limited resources.
Of COURSE something is gonna give.
My view - radically limit the population in areas that supply that kind of resource.
-DM
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