11m litres of water down the drain
stevem
in "Don't you worry about that", Dam Alternatives, Water Wasteage
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Kathy Sundstrom
14th October 2009
THE Sunshine Coast loses about 11 million litres of water a day, mainly through theft and leaky pipes.
What the Sunshine Coast Regional Council calls “non-revenue” water makes up 18% of the total amount of water used in the region.
Figures from the Gold Coast council showed its non-revenue water was at 7.5% or 11.6 million litres a day for their much larger population.
A council spokesperson said the Sunshine Coast’s water loss was caused from “many minor leaks throughout the reticulated water system”.
Theft was also a “key problem the community can help overcome”.
“Recent estimates indicate that non-revenue water is at approximately 18%,” he said.
“Apart from physical losses, this figure also includes use from draining of mains for repairs or (occasional) flushing of mains , use from un-metered standpipes, fireflows, theft and property meter inaccuracies.”
The news came as Pacific Paradise residents complained about “another” burst pipe in their area last week.
A concerned reader said water poured into Yango street, the fifth such incident of a “busted water main in two years”.
“There has been a burst main water pipe five times in the same spot,” the person, who wished to remain anonymous, said.
This conflicted with council information which said last week’s incident was the first since 2004.
“Our system shows that there were two breaks in 2004, and then the one the other day,” the spokesperson said.
A neighbouring resident said they had noticed burst pipes in Yango Street “often, about once a year”.
Golden Beach residents have also complained about burst pipes in their area.
The council said it has embarked on several programs to help alleviate water loss and information supplied by the Queensland Water Commission showed it was meetings its targets.
In addition to new inline network flowmeters and water main relining and replacements last year, the council has budgeted nearly $9 million for new initiatives this year.
stevem
Save enough water and scrap dam plan
Bill Hoffman
14th October 2009
A BIT of thought was all it took for medium residential property developer Ron Grabbe to provide his latest project with the capacity to harvest and store 90,000 litres of water.
The in-house sustainability solution will provide Ocean Reach residents with a free and renewable source of water for use in landscape irrigation and wash-down areas.
By running a 900mm pipe around the slab of the main structure, connected to down pipes from the roofs during construction, the RGD Property Group has proven that improving a building’s sustainability does not have to come at the cost of its bottom line.
Mr Grabbe wants his company to be on the front foot as new sustainability measures are inevitably required by all levels of government.
To do this he intends to explore and implement new best practice in stages to his projects and learn how to control their cost in the process.
It makes you wonder how much less water would need to be delivered by big water infrastructure like the proposed Traveston Crossing Dam and the water grid if all buildings had a similar capacity to harvest and store water.
A huge amount of water could be collected by such an approach without the risks implicit in the 1200 conditions imposed by the coordinator general on the dam’s construction.
And the cost and risk involved would be less than the money already expended on a project whose fate now – in part, at least – rests on the ability to design a device that will not only allow endangered species to move through the river system, but one that those endangered species would be prepared to use.
While the Traveston focus is now on federal environment minister Peter Garrett and his evaluation of the dam’s impacts under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, it might yet be the coordinator general’s fishway condition that is the project’s undoing.
One of the vulnerable species that would need to use such a structure is the Australian lungfish, described as a living fossil.
It predates dinosaurs and can surface to breathe using its single lung when water is scarce or of quality poor. Under normal conditions it breathes through gills like other fish.
If Mr Garrett were to approve the project the spotlight would fall heavily on the fishway design and proving process.
Ultimately it is not the amount of money that is spent on such a device, the rigor of the design process or the ingenuity of the engineering that matters.
What matters is whether various species are prepared to incorporate its use into their natural cycle, and thus ensure their survival.
That’s a big ask.
If the exercise is about the provision of water, perhaps it is time for the state government to step back from its bull-headed insistence that Traveston is the only solution.
Re-examination of plans for a new Borumba Dam wall at Imbil appears one option, given that the coordinator general has ruled out a second stage for the Traveston dam, which would have increased its capacity.
Revisiting the South East Queensland Council of Mayors’ commissioned Institute of Sustainable Futures-Cardno report, which showed a range of more cost-effective measures linked to the potential construction of a desalination plant in the future, would also make sense.
Equally, making mandatory simple design adaptations, like that now in place on Ron Grabbe’s development, might reduce demand enough to eliminate the need for such massive projects anyway.
Surely there is a better solution than one that depends on 1200 conditions being monitored and met.
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Reader Comments (1)
The Landeshute to Morayfield (from Baroon Pocket dam) pipe built by Labor. Has an official theft capacity of 65 million a day designed leakage rate (9% IE. 5.8million litres a day), but actual leakage is 25% or 16.25 million litres a day Cost 100 reds of millions. LABOR FAILURE!
Another crystal ball for Traveston and Coordinator General Engineering 'skills triumph' ?? Nothing will change - there will still be unreasonable loss of water through continuing LABOR FAILURE! to manage and deliver sound, cost effective water infrastructure projects.
Pipes and infrastructure have a designed service life and require a renewal program. SCRC has such a program, but cost blow outs from sub standard pipes in development burden all rate payers. Regrettably some losses do occur with age and of course theft.
LABOR FAILURE! to adopt a renewal program in cooperation with all councils.
Brisbane residents did more to conserve water than the Beattie /Blight govt 25 billon dollar water grid. Individuals, families and industry responded. In fact they got down to a record 92 litres per person per day. This was down from 330 litres per person per day, just by asking.
Demand management involves the commitment of individuals, families and industry, not the wholesale destruction at any price of an eco-system, endangered species and a viable community. To ultimately provide little of anything except, burgeoning costs, spin and heartache to all Qld tax payers
The answer is clearly demand management (in part with cost effective, climate resilient and energy offset alternatives) and NO DAM at Traveston Crossing as Bob has said.