Curse Less and Dam More
Water conservation peaked in Australia in 1972 – our last big dam was Wivenhoe in Queensland (pictured) built 35 years ago.
Elsewhere in Australia, water conservation virtually stopped when Don Dunstan halted the building of Chowilla Dam on the Murray in 1970 and Bob Brown’s Greens halted the Franklin Dam in 1983 (and almost every other dam proposal since then).
The Darling River water management disaster shows that we now risk desperate water shortages because our population and water needs have more than doubled, and much of our stored water has been sold off or released to “the environment”.
However, we regularly see floods of water being shed by the Great Dividing Range, most of it ending up in the Pacific Ocean, while somewhere to the west of that watershed is in severe drought. Then, under what should be called “The Flannery Plan for Water Conservation”, after letting flood waters run into the sea, they build squillion-dollar desalination plants to get water back from the sea.
Our ancestors had the prudence and the will to build great assets like the Tasmanian and Snowy hydro schemes, Lake Argyle, Fairbairn Dam and the Perth to Kalgoorlie water pipeline? What are we building for our children.
Our engineers know how to lay large pipelines over hundreds of km to export natural gas, and bore road and rail tunnels through mountains and under cities and harbours.
But we cannot find the funds or the courage to build a couple of dams on the rainy side of the Great Divide somewhere between the Ross River at Townsville and the Clarence River at Grafton and some pumps, tunnels and pipes to use and release it into the thirsty Darling River basin.
Someone is always cursing either droughts or floods.
We need to curse less and dam more.
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Judy
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Good one Viv. Ironically, the Wivenhoe Dam was built to catch the overflow, from dams upriver, if there was heavy rain. So, they were meant to keep the water level lowish in Wivenhoe. But the Q;l;d government conveniently believed Flannery’s predictions of meagre rainfall etc etc. So what that corrupt government did was sell the land that had previously been deemed floodplain to the people to build their houses. They they failed in their duty to keep the water level low. They didn’t listen to the words in our National Anthem, i think, that Australia is a land of droughts and flooding rains. Four people died in the floods that resulted from that mismanagement while the Australian BoM couldn’t even have the guts to admit it was raining
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Joseph Olson
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I am a Civil Engineer in the Houston area and in the last forty years I have witnessed a half dozen 100 year floods, the 500 year taxday flood of 2016 and the 1000 year Hurricane Harvey Flood in 2017. FEMA and the Army Corp of Engineers are a joke.
“Rising Tide” by John M Barry on the 1927 Mississippi flood
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Robert Beatty
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Building dams has merit, but they need to be maintained and deslimed. This is a technology that has been sadly missing in Australia’s reservoir history. Many of our water storages include dead tree stump indicating that the base was never prepared properly, even from new. This is very unfortunate because our dry land has a very high rate of evaporation, so deep storage is the most efficient part of the dam. High evaporation in shallow storages leads to higher salt buildup. We need new equipment designed to work on our water storages.
See http://www.bosmin.com/Reservoirs.pdf
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jerry krause
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Hi Robert,
Could one first drill down in the reservoir to find porous soil, rock, that would readily accept water and then make a shaft (or several to drain the shallow reservoir’s not from the bottom but from a surface layer so the drain would not become quickly clogged by silt? This to reduce the surface area by more rapidly putting the water where you consider it should go.
Almost did not read your proposals until now. So, I now know you have ignored the possibility of putting water into aquifers. So I have to ask: Are there aquifers in Australia? And I found the information which pretty much answers this question except there seems little discussion relative to reservoirs. Some discussion about surface or stream water percolating down through the soil and about water salinity. Which, the latter, could be a problem doing to evaporation and percolating down through the soil to to the aquifer below. They did mention pumping water down to replenish an aquifer which my suggestion for the shafts to give a larger capacity to drain the majority quickly do into the aquifer where it will not evaporate. And if a deep pool about the shaft could be dug, the surrounding dry bottom maybe could be planted to some grass to reduce the potential silt problem when there significant rainfall events which might produce signinficant erosion of the former reservoir bottoms which remains dry most of the time. I clearly know nothing about such important details.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Robert Beatty
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hagd Jerry,
You are proposing very innovative ideas. Main points are:
We have huge aquifers including the Great Artesian Basin which is the deepest and largest artesian basin in the world. Water from aquifers is often quite salty and not as useful as rain water efficiently stored on the surface.
Water flowing across our sandy soils often finds its way into an aquifer without any other assistance. Evaporation losses are also huge. Delivering water into natural river systems is problematic due to flow losses. It is also restricted under some State regulations.
That leaves piping as the most viable option. This way it also finishes up where it is most needed. My “wind into wine” paper (https://principia-scientific.com/wind-into-wine/) addresses this point.
Storing water on the surface requires good basement sealing, and design to minimise evaporation. Clay basement is common. Some applications use surface floats to limit evaporation loss. However, evaporation is typically 2m per year which results in deeper storages with smaller surface areas being longer lasting, and less vulnerable to salt buildup.
Also digging off stream storage can include constructing surrounding hills from the excavated dirt. But new design of long range excavation equipment is required to efficiently excavate such structures. Off stream storage can reduce wind losses and also provide a useful high refuge site during times of ‘flooding rains’ for fauna and other assets. Incidentially, it also provides a good site for a windmill to pump air into the water storage to maintain oxygen levels. Off stream storage also minimises environmental impacts on the main river system.
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jerry krause
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Hi Robert,
hagd–have a good day??
I had just read about the Great Artesian Basin but I had not read that its water is salty. The aquifers of North America with which i am familiar are not generally salty.
I now have a really wild innovative idea. I believe, no I know, there are some plants which grow in brackish water. But this is not exactly true as I am aware of isolated cases where the well water is brackish. How brackish and how brackish is the water of the Great Artesian Basin I do not know. But as I imagined (pondered) these plants are not immediately important.
But I know that Giles, Western Australia has a maned weather station at which the rate of evaporation is directly measured for each 24hr period. Atmospheric weather balloons are also launched there and I know that often during the hottest days of its summer that the atmosphere often contains over 4cm of precipitable water [mm] for an entire sounding. But this water vapor does not precipitate there.
The weather observers also observe the actual hours of ‘bright sunshine each day and the cloud cover at 9am and 3pm of each day. So Giles is a great natural laboratory whose data I doubt is being studied by many meteorologists and climatologists. But I do not know what I doubt is true. Almost forgot that wind speeds and directions are also observed and reported at 9am and 3pm.
But I claim to know what would immediately happen if the brackish water were pumped from a well, using solar and wind energy, to an irrigation sprinkler system. The natural climate of that localized area would be drastically changed as only pure water molecules evaporated from the brackish water. As the temperature of the earth’s surface and an shallow atmospheric layer would be dramatically cooled by this evaporation.
While I could reason (ponder) what might happen as the result of this cooling, but I know the only way to know what might happen is to do this experiment and observe.what happens as the brackish water is naturally purified by the energy of the solar radiation.
Which energy is not presently being utilized in any productive way.
The cost of a system to irrigate a square kilometer or even a square mile should not be prohibitive.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Robert Beatty
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Thanks Jerry. Evaporating brackish water leaves a problematic salt pan behind as well as providing no tangible benefit of needed precipitation elsewhere. The evaporated water simply blows away – several examples of tropical sea inlets which prove this point.
Studies have been conducted on flooding Lake Eyre with sea water. LE is 15 m below sea level and is usually a dry salt pan, because the ephemeral inflows disappear quickly. A resident bird population quickly builds up, but that is about it for tangible benefits. Even considered constructing a ridge down wind of the lake, forcing the air higher to drop its load. Mountain needs to be very high to have any impact at all. I am afraid to say rain is pretty much the only solution. Thereafter, it needs to be transported to where it is needed.
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jerry krause
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Hi Robert,
See what I learn when I make comments.
I read: “So what would it mean for magnesium — and the price of all the products it goes into — if the [USA’s] Great Salt Lake’s water levels keep dropping, and like other saline lakes in the world, ultimately disappears? https://www.standard.net/news/environment/mineral-extraction-on-great-salt-lake-has-local-national-and/article_875d73e9-9100-54a5-a0e9-371e012c3945.html
I hope you will not consider this an argument; I consider it an exchange of information of which one cannot ever have too much.
I was not aware of Lake Erie, Australia. so I went to see what the nearest atmospheric soundings might and I discovered it appeared to be a tie between Giles and Adelaide and I could never consider either as being close as I define close. For Australia appears to have only 7 locations where the balloons are launched and 6 of the 7 are coastal locations. Only the Gile’s location observes what the atmosphere is doing in the midst of its very large interior.
Next I began to review the soundings of the first eight days of January at these two nearest soundings to Lake Erie. And I began to question what I had previously written about the precipitable water [cm] for an entire sounding. For I found no evidence to support what I had written. Finally I switched to the first eight days of February and breathed a sigh of relief.
Now I have just reviewed the sounding data for the first eight days of Feb. 2019 at Giles and find none of the extreme values of precipitable water [cm] for an entire sounding I had found for 2017 and 2018.
What does this mean? I have no idea but until we study data such as this, we should not expect to understand much about weather and climate.
I began this comment compare the differences between the Lake Erie location and the Giles location and found I could not expect for their differences of elevation (Giles 600m and Erie below sea level). How this fact might affect atmospheric circulation I do not speculate but I do consider it might be a factor.
Again, if you and readers have not already seen, we must have conversations if we are to learn.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Robert Beatty
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Jerry, you will be interested in my study to develop the Lake Eyre Basin at
http://www.bosmin.com/LEDP.pdf
This proposal is unlikely to ever see the light of day because ‘the deep state’ has determined that this huge area of Australia is never to be developed for the benefit of humans. AMEN.
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jerry krause
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Hi Robert,
I do understand the last comment.
But did you listen to President Trump’s state of the union speech. Of course, I do not know what will happen but we (the free world) have a warrior fighting for us who is clearly trying to do what he promised to do. And he has a credibility because in two years he has accomplished what others had promised by many administrations, senators, and representative over and over and which were not done. His speech was much like Churchill’s when he declared he would not negotiate for peace with the Nazis during England’s darkest hour.
You have many accomplishments and clearly make great efforts to help others to see. You clearly have more credibility than those who do not even consider what you have proposed.
However, I keep referring to the mass of data which did not exist 25 years ago but the some of the data at Giles is much older than 25 years. But I doubt, but do not know, if any one has studied it to better understand weather and climatology. Why those random floods to which you referred maybe have an observed cause if the historical data is actually studied.
So I fight on making mistake after mistake.
Have a good day, Jerry
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