A FORECAST drop in water availability in the Goulburn/Broken system of 14pc by 2030 should be the nail in the coffin for the State Government’s controversial plans to pipe 75 gigalitres a year from the Goulburn River to Melbourne, according to anti pipe campaigners.
The Plug the Pipe group and Opposition rural water spokesman Peter Walsh said the CSIRO research showed the system was barely sustainable and could not support the extraction of more water for Melbourne.
The State Government has made its $600m and Melbourne Water’s $300m investment in the first stage of upgrading the Goulburn Murray Irrigation District conditional on receiving a third of the anticipated water savings down the pipe to Melbourne’s Sugarloaf Reservoir.
Water Minister Tim Holding said the report’s findings showed why capturing water and returning it to rivers, irrigators and urban communities was an essential part of the Brumby Government’s Water Plan.
“With climate change, 11 years of drought and the lowest streamflows in our history, planning for long-term water security has never been more important for northern Victoria,” he said.
“This is why the $2 billion investment in modernising irrigation infrastructure to capture approximately 425 billion litres of water is so important to the future of this region.
But Plug the Pipe spokeswoman Jan Beer said given the forecast drop in water in the Goulburn/Broken system the Government should be looking at piping water north into the Goulburn, rather than the other way round.
The group is planning an anti pipe rally on the steps of parliament on June 3.
“This pipeline project is looking flimsier with every day and with every report that now is published,” she said.
“There are a huge number of alternatives for Melbourne, all of them cheaper, but Brumby is just set on his pipe grids to drought proof Melbourne. Who is going to drought proof us?”
Mr Walsh said it defied commonsense to take water from a system that was barely coping under current inflows.
“In the face of such dire projections, it is patently ridiculous of the Brumby Government to propose removing more water from this stressed system to service Melbourne’s needs.
“These findings should leave no-one in doubt that if the pipeline is built, the environment and communities north of the Divide will suffer.”