3 Mar 07

THE water crisis is starting to take on all the sinister overtones of the 1970s Hollywood classic Chinatown.

All that is missing is the body of Los Angeles water company executive Hollis Mulwray.

There are the salad bowl farmers starved for water but forever pumped with government lies and promises.

There is the salt water influence through the Tugun desalinator and the secret one proposed for Bribie Island.

There is the looming rip-off for water bills where charges in cents will be replaced by charges in dollars. Water wastage around southeast Queensland continues.

There are profits which become dividends and dividends which become profits.

There are nosebleeds, political tricks and smokescreens.

True, there is little early evidence of Chinatown-style adultery but in the hot and steamy atmosphere detailed above why rule anything out? Including a request for intervention on water pricing from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

Remember the 1970s? When you installed a swimming pool you filled it from the hose next door because your neighbour did not have a water meter.

The Jake Gittes character played by Jack Nicholson in Chinatown in 1974 can stride back into the studio lights whenever he is ready.

If he is lucky he can infiltrate the private Local Government Association briefings which are under way for Peter Beattie’s backbenchers.

The briefing held in Brisbane yesterday will be followed by others.

Message? When Treasury starts talking about councils in southeast Queensland and their accumulated water profits totalling billions it is not necessarily a mirage.

Nor is the LGA barking up the wrong tree when it highlights different figures from councils’ dividends on water charges.

In the case of the Gold Coast City Council, there is $80 million in water dividends annually which subsidises general rates.

Peter Beattie’s message? Councils are water profiteering. But the impact of increased water rates has suddenly loomed as a serious issue for the local government elections next year.

The Gold Coast Bulletin flagged the possibility of quarterly, electricitystyle bills in June last year, pointing out that all it would require was a Joh-style takeover of Queensland dams.

The Gold Coast City Council operates Hinze Dam. Somerset and Wivenhoe dams are operated by SEQWater in which the State Government has a 20 per cent stake behind Brisbane and other councils.

With the Beattie Government committed to $7 billion plus for desalinators, pipelines and water recycling, ratepayers are going to take a hell of a whack in the hip pocket.

Untreated water comes in at about 16c a kilolitre. But the suggestion is that the cost to ratepayers will leap to $4 plus to accommodate the infrastructure wish list. As price increases go, this slug would swamp most.

All the water shoals could have been avoided if the 1980s proposal to build Wolffdene Dam behind Beenleigh had gone ahead. In size it would have been closer to the huge Wivenhoe Dam in the Brisbane Valley than the Hinze Dam on the Gold Coast.

Opposing the dam was a crucial 1989 election plank for the Wayne Goss team. Goss was egged on at protest meetings by Midnight Oil singer turned MP Peter Garrett. The great drought of the early 21st century was not foreseen. The ‘sunbelt’ population growth potential in southeast Queensland was ignored.

It was estimated that only 30-odd properties were remaining for resumption by election time but when Goss was swept to power the Wolffdene plan went down the gurgler.

Houses dot the proposed Wolffdene Dam area these days and the closest the Logan River will come to its own reservoir is when the Wyaralong project is completed further upstream near Rathdowney. Preliminary contracts are expected to be finalised next month.

But Wolffdene would have boosted water stocks dramatically and almost certainly would have blocked the need for the Level Five water restrictions planned for next month.

Ratepayers also may been spared some of the costs of pipelines and recycling and the need for desalinators.

Premier Peter Beattie can see the not-so-submerged political dangers lurking ahead. He even allowed wife Heather to be falsely touted as a lord mayoral candidate in Brisbane last weekend to distract examination of the water proposals.

Water Commissioner Elizabeth Nosworthy was forced to wade into the controversy with explanations to protect the Premier. Back at the pipelines, salad bowl farmers and the landscaping industries may be facing oblivion if there is not ongoing, soaking rain in the next two months.

The carrot growers and croppers from the Fassifern Valley, who for years have watched reservoir supplies from Maroon and Moogerah dams feed Swanbank power stations, live in hope of access to recycled water.

What price their campaign ends up down another dry gully?

If only they had worked along the Murray-Darling streams where an election year federal government is touting a $10 billion rejuvenation plan.

The wet season in Queensland in good years invariably peters out in June. Level Six and Seven water restrictions will be next if a dry winter is followed by a dry spring.

Government planning failures dating back to the 1960s will be realised.

If only Wayne Goss and Peter Garrett had watched Chinatown instead of running the Labor party line. Then ratepayers in SEQ would not finish up like poor, wrung-out Hollis Mulwray.