Tourists on a whale watching expedition in Norwegian waters were not impressed when some eager whalers, taking advantage of the nice weather, harpooned one of the whales they were watching.
Read the story in the Aftenposten, click here.
—————
Thanks to Ann for sending us the link.
A year ago I criticised the Queensland Government for not telling us how much water would be delivered by the then newly released infrastructure plan and the proposed $2.3 billion budget allocation [click here for that bog post].
A lot has happened over the last year. Government has changed its plan and yesterday the Premier provided estimates in terms of how much water the new options will deliver at the same time announcing that two new dams will definately be built, the Traveston and Wyalarong Dams.
Here are some extracts from one of the media releases:
“The new water projects for the Logan/Albert River and Mary River will be essential to fill the future gap of water supply need in south east Queensland, Premier Peter Beattie said today.
Mr Beattie said the current estimated water supply capacity in south east Queensland was 450,000 megalitres a year.
“Our goal is to reduce demand through water efficiency measures such as fixing leaky council pipes, reducing water pressure, and encouraging changes in consumption by homes, business and industry,” Mr Beattie said.
“However, even if we meet these water saving targets we expect our water use to grow to 750,000 megalitres a year by 2050.
“Therefore we need to fill the gap of approximately 300,000 megalitres.
“We expect investigations on desalination and our work on industrial recycling will deliver 110,000 megalitres per annum
“However these projects alone will not be enough.
“We need to build new water storages to meet the capacity needs of another 190,000 megalitres per annum.”
Mr Beattie said the four new water initiatives on the Logan/Albert River were expected to deliver an extra 42,000 megalitres into the system by the end of 2011.
He said the three stage process for the Traveston Dam would deliver up to an extra 150,000 megalitres per annum. The first stage of Traveston will deliver up to 70,000 megalitres per annum, the raising of Borumba Dam an extra 40,000 megalitres per annum and the completion of Traveston, if required, an extra 40,000 megalitres per annum.
“Dams are able to provide relatively large volumes of reliable water supplies in an economical way,” Mr Beattie said
“It is true that climate change has affected the reliability of rainfall to supply dams, however, that is why we are developing a water grid to connect our water storages throughout south east Queensland.”
“We can share supply between the dams and other water storages through an inter-connected set of pipelines and transfer mechanisms.
“That way if it rains in one part of the region but not in another we can move water around the region to meet demand in the highest areas of need.”
Now that’s interesting. Is the Premier suggesting that climate change is not now anticipated to affect the overall amount of water falling in south eastern Queensland, just how its distributed?
It is now proposed that the dam for the Logan/Albert River be built at Wyalarong. Following is a rainfall record for parts of this catchment put together about a year ago by Warwick Hughes.
Not so many years ago a dam was to be built in central Queensland on the Fitzroy River. It was to be called the Nathan Dam. Construction was blocked when an action was taken by conservation groups in the federal court under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. It will be interesting to see whether or not the same fate befalls the proposed new dams for south eastern Queensland?
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.
Read more