Bradfield scheme

[Bruce]

This was floated in the 1930's to divert water from the eastern side of the great divide to the west and eventually into the Darling.

 

It would have ( and still would ) cost a fraction of our military spending.

 

Would it not have been great to have this year, with the floods in the east and drought in the west?

 

 

[storchy neil]

sorry bruce but to many frogs black beaked parrots in the road greens could be buried

 

bruce sorry mate but our defence spending should be doubled cut the spending the drug xxxx idiots dole bluggers publc servants

 

when you have union interference in them schemes they don't work out neil

 

 

[facthunter]

Looks like the medication is not working neil, mate. Nev

 

 

[old man emu]

The trouble with the plan to divert part of the flow of the eastern coastal rivers to the western flowing rivers is that it makes sense. Therefore, no politician would contemplate initiating such a plan.

 

As I see it, here are some of the pros and cons of the Snowy Scheme:

 

Advantages

 

The Snowy Mountains Hydro scheme was built in order to meet water supply and irrigation needs for the population when European settlement was introduced in Australia. The scheme was also built to create hydro-electric power. The use of the scheme was also a good way of increasing agricultural production in the Murray and Murrumbidgee valleys.

 

Disadvantages

 

• Many environmental concerns
   
  
• When it was first built, the Hydro Scheme was originally meant to divert 99% of the natural water flow. When it was built, however, this put the area in an environmental crisis, because the engineers did not take into account how this would affect the natural life. Afterward, they increased the natural water flow to 15% instead of 1%
   
  
• The Scheme was expensive, using a budget of $820 million
   
  
• 121 lives were lost during the construction.
   
  

 

My opinion

 

An immediate benefit would be to maintain water levels in the western rivers so that algal blooms do not occur to kill the aquatic life. That should please the Environmentalists. As the water moved from east to west, it could be used to generate electricity as in the Snowy. As a reusable energy source, that should please the Environmentalists. We are much better at identifying environmental concerns now than we were when the Snowy was being planned. Dealing sensibly with them should please the Environmentalists.

 

In the long term, the regulated supply of fresh water into the western areas would encourage the establishment of population centres taking the population stressers off the coastal areas. The "arid" nature of the inner western parts of the eastern States has been the factor inhibiting population movement in those areas. The level landscape of the western areas make the creation of surface transport infrastructure much easier than it is in the East. Therefore, if we ever return to manufacturing goods here, then transportation of raw materials and finished products would be easy.

 

It will indeed cost a few billion dollars, but since the NSW State Government is Hell bent on spending similar amounts in Sydney on the premise that a dollar now buys more than a dollar in twenty years, what does it matter what it costs now.

 

Work, Health and Safety standards are much higher now than they were in the 1950's, and a lot of the work would be done by machinery. Deaths can be expected, but I doubt if the number would differ from the number of deaths per worker on-site than on any other current infrastructure construction.

 

 

[spacesailor]

"An immediate benefit would be to maintain water levels in the western rivers so that algal blooms do not occur to kill the aquatic life"

 

If the water is stagnate It will produce algae, It's when that algae dies off that the problem of Un-oxygenated water begins.

 

Locks can keep the water at any level (DAM'D) But they need flow to keep 02 high enough for good fish stock.

 

Lot's of CHEAP labour at the Dole office, CHEAP tents on Manus island.. to dig a tunnel through the Ranges. ( and don't forget the DRUG USERS) should find something/ anything, for them to Whinge about.

 

Much better than "PUT them in the ARMY" (conscription)

 

spacesailor

 

 

[facthunter]

The snowy plateau is elevated. The water in the East of the dividing range would have to be pumped up intermittently and quickly or it will run away.. The amount of elevated catchment is not large nor is there any melting snow That would never be cheap.

 

. People who think we can catch water up north are not taking account of the fact there's NO deep lakes possible and evaporation will be excessive with large surface area/volume ratio stored water. Also pumping level for 400 KMs brings it to the same cost as Desal, if you are on the Coast. Inland like Kalgoorlie you don't have much option.. but to pump. Nev

 

 

[Bruce]

Yep the pumping cost would be a bugger huh. But what a good use for excess natural energy on windy days I reckon. Or a big nuclear power station

 

There is a costed plan for 9 billion dollars which seems a lot but when you compare it with 8 billion for water buy-backs or 36 billion for our military every year, it is actually cheap and would earn money by selling water which is presently running out to sea.

 

In South Australia, we are used to pumped Murray water, at exorbitant cost I admit.

 

 

[pmccarthy]

If they fixed the river then West End beer would taste good.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

The trouble with the plan to divert part of the flow of the eastern coastal rivers to the western flowing rivers is that it makes sense. Therefore, no politician would contemplate initiating such a plan....Work, Health and Safety standards are much higher now than they were in the 1950's,

...and so is our understanding of how things actually work. Much as I admire the impressive work of engineers, most of them have no flaming idea about the impact of the changes they are making to natural systems.

 

.. it is actually cheap and would earn money by selling water which is presently running out to sea.

That's the crux of this whole "divert rivers inland" fairytale. Water running out to sea is not wasted. Floodwaters feed mangrove estuaries that nurture the fish we catch at sea.

 

Some of the biggest stuff-ups by humankind have involved damming and diverting rivers. Why can't we learn from our mistakes? Some industries in Australia are learning how to use water more efficiently; the rest of us had better catch up.

 

 

[Marty_d]

If they fixed the river then West End beer would taste good.

NOTHING would make West End taste good.

 

 

[storchy neil]

Looks like the medication is not working neil, mate. Nev

 

sorry to hear that mate but according to some increase the dosage or you could borrow the pocket edition spectrometer from octave to check the contents of your pill hope you get better soon neil

 

 

[storchy neil]

od kor that is the most il informed piece off garbage that you could have written the two that agree had better go back to school

 

just goes to show that some live within there own shadow neil

 

 

[old man emu]

Nobody said anything about diverting 100% of the water to the west. I'd say that less than 50% could be diverted without adversely impacting the lower reaches of the eastern rivers. And it is not as though such a scheme would involve only one eastern river system. If a number of diversionary systems were built from the Tweed to the Hunter, each adding some water to western flows, then the total amount entering the Darling system might be sufficient to keep man and beast alive.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Pehaps true, OME, but then every time we'd get an inland drought you'd inevitably get demands for increased diversion of water from the coast. We still haven't learned much from the Old People: as Dorothea Mackellar said, this is a country of droughts and flooding rains. All our ecosystems have evolved to survive the variable nature of rainfall. We just have to adapt our land use. Kidman did, and that was a century ago.

 

 

[facthunter]

Till another unregulated mob sucked it dry again. Nev

 

 

[Yenn]

If the rain event in Townsville moves South a bit, it will start filling the Murray darling basin. It only has to get to Central Qld and it is in the headwaters.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Yenn I've been watching that rain depression and hoping it moves south.

 

Last week my brother drove a tractor into the dry creek bed to dig for water. He says it's as bad as the 65 drought when we dried the cows and he left home to cut sleepers. Each day we fed hay to keep the cattle alive. My dad had laid down years' supply of hay in a huge shed, all by hand. One day I got to the bottom of that pile. None left. I remember much-loved dairy cows laying down and dying. The only time I saw my mum cry.

 

 

[storchy neil]

so the broken hill pipe line does not exist ?

 

so the north south pipeline does not exist here in vic?

 

half a billion dollars wasted never used when then the union (in other words labour party )does it its ok now that pipe line was constructed to take water out off the murray darling basin catchment area

 

did you care about the ecosystem when the union does this no you don't

 

kal pipeline don't exist pipeline into Adelaide don't exist

 

without water how in the hell are you going to feed 25 million people so the quicker that the so called green movement moved to another country (if they can tollarate there stupidity ) and we build the dams required

 

yes bruce Bradfield was right it can be done will it be done not if the tree huggers have there way neil

 

 

[old man emu]

Pehaps true, OME, but then every time we'd get an inland drought you'd inevitably get demands for increased diversion of water from the coast. All our ecosystems have evolved to survive the variable nature of rainfall. We just have to adapt our land use. Kidman did, and that was a century ago.

I'm not advocating high transfers of water from the east to the west. I am suggesting that there is a constant base level transfer so that the western rivers are kept flowing all the time. Come the flooding rains, the inland rivers can still be permitted to flood (which is an environmental requirement of those ecosystems). But in times of drought, sufficient water would continue to flow because of the base level flow rates that would have been set to maintain constant river levels.

 

How about the coastal dwellers do the adaption? As I said, more, reliable water supply west of the Ranges would enable the population to move off the coast where it has been stuck for over two hundred years.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

...How about the coastal dwellers do the adaption? As I said, more, reliable water supply west of the Ranges would enable the population to move off the coast where it has been stuck for over two hundred years.

Good luck with that idea, OME. The coast is where the votes are and no government dares shift them too far from their comfort zones. Several coastal dam projects have been stopped by community protest. Those same protestors love koalas, but nothing can stop the destruction of koala habitat by the inexorable spread of coastal suburbia.

 

Inland is another story. We've had whole communities devastated by government decisions, such as turning sustainable yield forests into National Parks, which has hammered lots of little communities like my home town. One of the most stupid was when Bob Carr tried to woo my greenie mates and turned the Pilliga Scrub (a man-made disaster area, whose only real value was the cypress timber it produced) into a National Park. Small towns lost their timber mills and all the local employment that goes with it. Meanwhile, nearby a huge area of endangered ecosystem and koala habitat was cleared for mining coal.

 

 

[storchy neil]

bruce in USA they have a dam that has a overflow valve that redirects water to another river system via a tunnel when the dam reaches a certain height some where I have the specs on it very interesting same as what Bradfield said in the 30s neil

 

 

[old man emu]

Bradfield was a great engineer.

 

Biography - John Job Crew Bradfield - Australian Dictionary of Biography

 

 

[spacesailor]

Not all are so great.

 

Parramatta river, flood's because the Lennox bridge is not big enough.

 

They Brainy sods spent $millions to Pipe the excess water around the bridge.

 

Why didn't they just make it Deeper, after all it's the volume that has to pass through the Lennox bridge.

 

Three times the hight should be plenty.

 

spacesailor

 

 

[Bruce]

How much was the water worth that flooded out of qld? I bet it was billions worth, and it would have flushed the Darling. I sure would like to spend most of our military money on things like the Bradfield scheme.

 

AND I'm hoping that the Diamantina puts enough into the Warburton to get to Lake Eyre. I'll fly up in the Jabiru to see it if that happens.

 

 

[storchy neil]

bruce better start that flight plane its should be past Birdsville now

 

the trouble with the experts they tell me that I aint qualified to suggest that a railway line needs to have a bridge length 200mtrs every five ks so as when the water does fall can escape on some parts of that line

 

the experts failed once again on the line to mt isa some have no idea off the volume off water up the top end

 

have seen water over the road 2 feet deep for close on thirty ks in many places neil