Crazy Greenie-inspired use of dammed water

Dam water is used to keep rivers flowing while severe restrictions are placed on water use by people



Severe water restrictions were introduced in Canberra because more than half its supplies were pumped into rivers downstream. A report from the Canberra branch of Engineers Australia said environmental flows last year from two key reservoirs to maintain the Cotter and Queanbeyan rivers had "seriously reduced the total quantity of water held in reservoirs". "As a result, it has been necessary to impose severe restrictions on water used by ACT and region consumers," the report said.

Since the report was written, the ACT has come out of the drought, the Government has reduced its environmental flows, making more water available to the community, and water has been sent from the Cotter River to the Googong River. A spokeswoman for Chief Minister Jon Stanhope said yesterday: "A lot has changed since then." A 2004 ACT Government report found that the ACT was allocating more than half of its total water resources to environmental flows, providing an average of 272 gigalitres to the environment out of the average 494 gigalitres available.

Engineers Australia, which represents 27,000 engineers, said that the release of such large quantities for environmental purposes had a serious impact on the ACT's water resources and called for additional storage facilities to address the issue. "The current need for water restrictions arises from the fact that since January 2000, flows in the Cotter and Queanbeyan Rivers have been very much less than average, with the result that storage in the reservoirs has been substantially depleted," the report said.

Since 2000, the ACT has faced the threat of water restrictions more often than any other Australian town or city, the report said. "We are concerned regarding the impact these releases have had on the supply of water to residents of the ACT and region which has resulted in the need over a period of two years to restrict water supply to households," it said. The group recommended to a meeting of the Environmental Engineering Society that additional water storage facilities be built as a matter of urgency.

Source

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