PUT simply, we need to buy more water. Bendigo, Kyneton and Castlemaine residents have paid $100 million for a pipeline from the Goulburn system and are facing $1000-a-year water bills to pay for “increased water security”. The problem is we are not getting it. In August last year then Coliban Water chairman Gordon McKern said this coming summer would see stage two water restrictions for Bendigo. It seems that statement came with a proviso – that it would rain. This same thinking is what got us into trouble in the first place, so much trouble that there was only about four months of water left when the line began pumping water. Without it, we would have all faced a dry Christmas in more ways than one. Farmers are falling over themselves to sell us their permanent water rights. Coliban Water is not having to approach them to buy it, they are approaching us to sell it. With that in mind, surely it is foolhardy to simply stop buying permanent water rights purely because we have hit our “targeted” 20,000 megalitre mark. Coliban should invest even more in buying permanent water and spend less on water saving measures which, after all, will only be effective if there is water to save Buying water on the spot-market also has a degree of uncertainty which does not augur well for an easing of restrictions. For many years Bendigo’s economy has been hit hard by stage four restrictions and anything that can be done to ease the position must be done. Even when the pipeline was being built there was fear that insufficient effort would be put into obtaining water to send down it, despite assurances that Bendigo’s water supply problems would be solved. Those fears have not yet been sufficiently allayed. Now is certainly not the time for either Coliban Water or the state government to rest on their laurels. With little chance of anything above 50 per cent allocation from the Goulburn system this year, we will once again face the most severe water restrictions in the state this summer, and probably next. If climate change continues, as is expected, we could be stuck here forever. For a water authority and a government to claim that as a solution to our water crisis is almost criminal. More needs to be done.
Comments
Comment #1
(Posted by Sam Evans)
You are an idiot Radford. The people of Bendigo are paying higher water rates because your "Newspaper" pressured the people of this town and the government into building a pipeline from one dry water source to an even drier area. Then you have the audacity to complain about the higher water rates. Come On Radford havent you won a Walkey. Do you think about that when you write drivel like this. I think the Weekly should stick to what it does best and try to sell property and make some money for the people who own this terrible rag. Sod Off
