Communities Against Desalination  Inc. 

Submission Tally

Communities Against Desalination is rapidly gaining public support with nearly 1500 people having signed our prepared submissions to present to the Queensland Water Commission on the 12^th February. Our target is upwards of 10,000. We have less than 4 weeks now to concentrate our efforts and let people know about the government’s proposal to construct up to 4 desalination plants across South East Queensland.

Events

Your support is needed at the following events which are both open meetings.

Marcoola Surf Club at 6pm Monday 1st February &

Bribie Island Hotel Sylvan Beach at 10am Sunday 7th February.

These gatherings will give you an opportunity to meet and speak with your local council and/ or State representatives.

On the 27^th January CADI representatives from Tugun, Bribie, Brisbane and Marcoola will meet Daniel Spiller (Acting Principal Executive Director), Mary Boydell (QWC Commissioner) and Peter Sommer (Acting Senior Director of Regional Planning and Policy) at the Marcoola Surf Club. This meeting affords us an excellent opportunity to raise our concerns and stress the primary fact that communities in South East Queensland are against desalination.

Rain Water Tanks

In our last bulletin we suggested that rain water tanks play a significant part in achieving sustainable water supply solutions. To support this concept the following key points have been derived from technical reports and papers provided to us by Dr Peter Coombes.

1.The Relative Efficiency of Water Supply Catchments and Rainwater Tanks in Cities Subject to Variable Climate and the Potential for Climate Change by Dr PJ Coombes and ME Barry

Most of our water has until recently been supplied through rainfall runoff collected from inland catchments. Australia’s highly variable climate has meant we have needed to construct large dams to secure water supply to our cities. The future reliability of urban water supplies, dependant on single centralized sources of water, is uncertain due to the combined pressures of population growth, highly variable climate and the potential for climate change.

This study analysed the relative efficiencies of runoff into dams supplying Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney and of rainwater harvesting in those cities. It established that both sources responded differently to drought conditions and the affects of climate change. The catchments that supply our cities exhibited a disproportionate decrease in yield as the rainfall decreased compared to the more uniform performance of installed rain water tanks. A 50% decrease in the median rainfall causes between 60-85% reduction in the runoff into our dams. Alternatively, rain water tanks suffer only a 15-30% reduction in yield. Similarly, climate change affects reduce rain water tank yields by 5-8% whilst runoff to dams is reduced between 19 – 53%.

This study highlights the potential for rain water tanks to supplement water supply from dams during drought and to buffer the anticipated impacts of climate change.

2. Establishment of Integrated Water Cycle Management System Models- Pimpama/ Coomera and Gold Coast Residual Areas by Dr Peter Coombes

On the Gold Coast integrated water cycle management systems have been implemented in a greenfield development at Coomera/ Pimpama. This development will feature rain water tanks, waste water recycling and water efficient plumbing fixtures on all allotments.

This study looked at modeling to determine the impact that these integrated water design features at Pimpama/ Coomera would have on the Gold Coast Region’s water supply resources. It was found that the use of waste water recycling and water saving plumbing fixtures alone caused little or no increase in the region’s water supply resources.

However when rain water tanks of varying capacity were factored in for each allotment, the region’s water supply is extended for an additional two years.

The really impressive result however, was achieved by determining the impact of retrofitting just 1% of the existing Gold Coast housing stock. An additional 20 years of water supply would be available.

3. Integrated Urban Water Cycle Management: Moving Towards Systems Understanding by Dr Peter Coombes and George Kuczera.

The urban water cycle is currently managed as separate centralized entities, ie Water Supply, Waste Water and Stormwater. These processes have endured over 100 years. The associated infrastructure costs, water quality and environmental concerns however are increasing to unsustainable levels. A systems approach is required to find optimum solutions for urban water cycle management that includes decentralized approaches used to supplement current centralized management methods.

The urban water cycle begins with water taken from streams usually stored in dams or reservoirs. The water is processed to produce potable water by filtration and chlorination. Then it is taken via extensive pipe work to our residential commercial and industrial communities. This potable water is also used for irrigation of parks and gardens.

This water is also used to transport wastes through sewers to treatment plants via extensive pipe work which discharges the treated effluent back into our streams.

Rainfall in our serviced urban areas is drained to our streets and it too is taken via extensive pipe work for disposal into receiving waters.

Quite simply, with the installation of rain water tanks our potable water demand is reduced as is the volume of stormwater runoff from each allotment. Integrated water management within an allotment can achieve up to 80% reduction in the water demands placed on the centralized supply.

Energy

Our committee has been examining the amount of energy that is stipulated by the Queensland Water Commission as being required to run a 400ML/D desalination plant. For us to best understand we've correlated this figure in terms of  household consumption. Effectively this equates to the power required for a little more than100,000 homes.

To provide these energy levels to a desalination site 132KV overhead electrical power lines are required. Consider for a moment what this means to your community and our environment. 

In Closing…

Communities Against Desalination Inc has opened a bank account with the Bendigo Community Bank. We welcome any financial support that you might be able to offer and suggest a $5.00 donation which can be made by direct banking or counter deposit to:

Communities Against Desalination BSB: 633-000 A/c Number: 1389 14528

As a not for profit organization our running costs are minimal however there has been expenses to cover and to date these are being covered by donations from you.

Finally, with 1500 submissions now in hand we’d like to ask each of these people to pass the word around. If all of us collected another five submissions from within our own networks our target would be in sight very quickly.

Warm regards Debbie Johnson.