Goulburn River for Melbourne Water Supply and North South Pipeline

September 5 2010: "Water in the Yarra that has now exceeded the 1,200 ML/day pump capacity at Yering Gorge in the last five weeks is around 51 billion litres. This is becoming an extraordinary statistic when you start looking at the magnitude of this 51 billion litre volume. To get a handle on this I have just done a quick calculation on MW’s daily flow figures downstream of the Yering pumps since 1st August to work out how much of that 51 billion litres could have been harvested for Melbourne’s water supply had another set of 1,200 ML/day capacity pumps been available at Yering Gorge.

Guess what, MW’s figures show that in just five weeks 34.5 GL or more than 2/3 of that 51 GL of water could have been harvested for Melbourne with another set of 1,200 ML/day pumps. This is approaching half the 75 GL of Goulburn water that we paid $1 billion for to deliver in a whole year. Imagine the saving of the alternative option of installing another set of pumps and maybe 2-3 km more pipeline into Sugarloaf compared with the $1 billion cost of constructing 70 km of pipeline and all the pumps and additional infrastructure required to pump that lousy 300 ML/day up and over the Great Divide from the Goulburn. And do you know how much of that expensive N-S pipeline water MW has pumped into Sugarloaf since 1st August......................around 6 GL!

While this is all going on, as you discovered at the Yea Community Flood Information Meeting yesterday, the SES and Council are powerless to stop MW continuing to release 300 million litres of pre-ordered water from Lake Eildon into the swollen Goulburn River brimming over from inflows from the Rubicon River, Home Creek and the Acheron River before the pumps kick in at Killingworth and suck the water back up into Sugarloaf. To add insult to injury MW has dramatically cut back the pump rate at Yering Gorge since the flood flows from Yarra Glen started arriving yesterday with a massive 4 billion litres/day now coursing its way down the Yarra contributing to the nuisance flooding occurring at the moment in the Lower Yarra River where the flows at Dights Falls are currently around 9,300 ML/day due to all that 2,000 sq km of additional catchment runoff I was telling you about that the Yarra has downstream of Yering Gorge. If they revert to pumping water from the Yarra at the rate they have for the last couple of weeks (prior to today) then the 14.2 GL of remaining “air space” at Sugarloaf Res will be taken up by Grand Final Day and they will have no other option but to cut the Yarra pumps back to the pathetic 180 ML/day or so they are pumping at the moment". Anonymous Water Expert

December 8 2009: Water Coaltion Water Block Doomed

January 22 2009, Toolangi State Forest. Corporate 'Man of Mystery' adding people opposing North South Pipeline, into corporate database. The corporations already were carrying out protester surveillance, now the Government is doing it for them for free! Where does such information end up? Is it in turn sold on to other interested 'parties'?

Letters to the Editor Age Newspaper 7/12/09

Letter 1: Abuse of citizens plumbs dark new depths in Victoria December 7, 2009

"I THOUGHT that I lived in Victoria in 2009, not East Germany in 1984. Now I realise that I was sadly mistaken. The passing of intelligence from the Victorian Government to a private company (''Secret police files given to desal firms'', The Age, 5/12) is a gross breach of my human rights, and a disgusting abuse of power. The desalination planning process has been dodgy, to say the least, and this latest bombshell shows just how desperate John Brumby and Tim Holding have become. For more than two years, we have been peacefully seeking answers about this project - its impact on our community and the marine environment - but all we get is propaganda and political spin. If this gigantic plant is going to be so innocuous, then why all the secrecy and paranoia? I hope that the big banks will consider this latest abuse of honest, law-abiding citizens before they continue to support an energy-guzzling, ecosystem-destroying blot on our environment. They have, after all, signed the Equator Principles."

Letter 2: Fate is sealed

"THE Brumby Government's jackboot regime of governance has been exposed. If you dare to oppose the Victorian Government's ''fast-tracked'' major infrastructure projects, be prepared to have a secret dossier filed on you and given to some overseas company whose intent it is to make exorbitant profits from Australia. The north-south pipeline protesters are people who are the backbone of our communities. They are teachers, CFA volunteers, captains and group officers, Rotary club presidents and members, company executives, Red Cross members, nurses, CWA members, retired police officers, shire councillors, food producers and exporters, and former water engineers. These people are angry at the erosion of our democratic right to have full and proper consultation and the right to have access to a transparent business case on these projects. This disgraceful action by the Labor Government has sealed its fate at the next election."

Letter 3: Shades of Stalin

"I WAS astonished to see that the Brumby Government has used our police and public resources to gather private information that it hands to private foreign corporations. I was even more surprised to see some private apologist justifying this on television on the basis that such clauses are standard in public-private partnership agreements. What else do these agreements contain? Perhaps a clause that our justice system will do as these foreign corporations tell them to? Are we living in a state where freedom and democracy is modelled on Hitler's, Stalin's or McCarthy's standards - or all of the above? Once again Victorians have been sold out by a Government that seems to revel in removing our rights, and seems now to have stooped to selling off our privacy to the highest bidder."

"Dear Editor, Peaceful protestors from Watershed and Plug the Pipe have ended up in a similar spot to Blue Wedges who, somehow, in 2005 joined Somali pirates, Peruvian raiders and Gulf terrorists on the US Office of Naval Intelligence's international threat list as a “credible threat to international shipping” (Age 28/1/08). We wondered how we got there, given the worst we have ever done is shake our fists at a dredge. Now we know. Mr. Brumby has been at it for years, turning normal people into terrorists. It’s time for the unelected, unrepresentative rabble calling itself the Brumby government to be listed as a credible threat to our civil liberties and the environment." Jenny Warfe Blue Wedges

December 5 2009: Secret Files on Protesters Given to Desal Consortium: December 5 2009

October 22 2009: Wong Witholds $1b Water Funds

Storages empty (Letter Published in Age Newspaper Aug 29 2009)

NO MATTER how often the minister tries to spin the pipeline as a saviour of Melbourne's water shortages the numbers don't add up. In a media release on August 26 the minister claimed with the laying of the last of 5500 pipes that water could now flow to Melbourne. But there is no water to flow to Melbourne. Not because opposition parties voted against changes to the bulk entitlement but because savings do not currently exist. Members of an upper house committee were told by Goulburn Murray Water at a hearing in Shepparton last Friday that the volume of water saved by the modernisation project could not be determined until after the audit process. The audit was due to be completed by the end of August but is not expected for another month. Mr Holding claims ''water savings are being made right now in irrigation channels in northern Victoria''. This is impossible as northern Victorian irrigators do not have an allocation for this season. The system is therefore not operating. The minister neglects to mention that Goulburn storages are at just 22 per cent and irrigators face another season in which they won't receive their full allocations. It is ridiculous that the minister believes he can prevent Melbourne running out of water by connecting it to a storage that has already run out. Neil Pankhurst, Plug the Pipe, Tongala

October 11 2009: Water Crisis As Bad As A War ALP

October 5 2009: Economic Rationalists Have Hijacked Water Policy At Our Peril

September 24 2009: Victoria's Water Future Not Assured

September 16 2009: City to Get River Flows

September 16 2009: Come Clean on Water Facts

September 15 2009: Water Pipeline Transfer Disputed

September 9 2009: Wimmera Mallee Water for City

September 8 2009: Eco Group Backs Brumby on Pipeline Water Rights

August 28 2009: Water Claims Are Blackmail

August 28 2009: Northsouth Pipe Laid But Nothing to Flow For It

August 27 2009: North-South Water Pipeline Laid

August 26 2009: North South Pipeline Works Completed - There Still Isn't Any Water

kayak4earth (journey up the Goulburn River)

North South Pipeline

Aug 14 2009: ABC Stateline. Stuck in the Pipeline. North-South Project Doesn't Hold Water

Aug 13 2009: Government High and Dry After Victorian Pipeline Vote

Aug 5 2009: Water Fight to Spill Over in Parliament

Aug 5 2009: Coalition Aims to Thwart Northsouth Pipe Rules

Aug 4 2009: Water Shortage Threatens Pipe Plan

July 29 2009: Water Anti-Pipeliners Booted Out

June 25 2009: Water Policy Delivers Scary Possibilities

June 24 2009: Ecological Impacts of Pipeline ( New Friends of the Earth Report)

June 21 2009: Northsouth Pipeline Figures All At Sea

June 8 2009: Northsouth Pipeline Promises Undermined

May 27 2009: "This is about the stupidest idea I've come across in a long, long time..."

May 22 2009: Unpopular View Brumby's Pipeline (Interesting You Tube Video)

April 29 2009: Pipe Down To A Trickle (Weekly Times)

Melbourne's supply of water from the controversial north-south pipeline will slump to about 40,000 megalitres in its second year of operation. The estimate is based on the cost of pumping water down the pipeline outlined in an Essential Services Commission report on Melbourne Water's expenditure over the next five years. The report shows Melbourne Water originally assumed it would spend $4.7 million a year on electricity, pumping 75,000 megalitres a year down the pipeline. The Department of Sustainability and Environment has advised Melbourne Water it is still on track to deliver 75,000 megalitres down the pipeline in its first year of operation - 2010-11. However, drought has forced DSE to advise Melbourne Water the volume available from the pipeline will slump to much lower levels in subsequent years.

While Melbourne Water has refused to reveal DSE's revised estimates, it did supply the ESC with its revised pumping costs. These estimates show the electricity bill from pumping would slump to $2.5m in 2011-12 and $3.2m in 2012-13. Assuming the cost of electricity remains the same at $62.67 a megalitre, the revised volumes would be 40,000 megalitres in 2011-12 and 51,000 in 2012-13. In its first year of operation (2010-11) the pipeline relies on tapping into 20,000 megalitres of Lake Eildon's water quality reserves and accumulated water savings from modernising the Goulburn-Murray irrigation district. However, the Victorian Government has promised that from 2011-12 onwards, all water savings would be shared equally between Melbourne Water, irrigators and the environment. Most irrigators understand the water allocated against these savings is almost impossible to predict in two or three seasons time.

The ESC report also shows Melbourne Water had hoped to pump 30,000 megalitres down the pipeline next irrigation season, months ahead of schedule. The authors of the ESC report, consultants Deloitte and Halcrow, state: "In its (original) water plan, Melbourne Water had assumed for modelling purposes the pipeline would transfer an average volume of 75,000 megalitres annually from 2010-11, following 30,000 megalitres in 2009-10 (February to June 2010)". But Melbourne Water's revised estimate of pumping costs shows it expects to pump 10,000 megalitres down the pipeline in 2009-10. Just last week, Victorian Water Minister Tim Holding said construction of the 70km Sugarloaf pipeline was running ahead of schedule, meaning much needed water could flow to Melbourne several months earlier than the original start date of July 2010. Mr Holding said originally 75,000 megalitres was to come to Melbourne in 2010-11, however 10,000 megalitres "could be available in the first half of 2010" if the construction of the pipeline can be completed early. DSE declined to comment.

April 23 2009: Pipes Predated Environmental Study Decision

April 22 2009: Brumby's Lowflow Water Pipe

April 12 2009: Benefits of Water Project Inflated

April 5 2009: Case for $2b Water Plan Kept Secret

March 29 2009: Water Projects Not Needed

March 20 2009: Pipe dream: water flows doubt as forecasts dry up.

Meanwhile works continue at Killingworth Reserve for the Melbourne Water pump facility on the Goulburn.

November 14 2008: 8 Arrested at Pipeline Rally

October 26 2008: Yea Rally

October 5 2008: Outcome of EildonSugarloaf Pipeline Will Be Anything But Sweet

September 24 2008: Pipe Protester Arrested on Own Property

August 27 2008: Brumby and Ministers Come Under Fire at Water Protests

July 23 2008: Brumbys Plead for Privacy

June 19 2008: Goulburn River Health Check Very Poor

June 15 2008: Farmers to Get Less Water as Brumby Pipe Plan Starts Up

June 4 2008: John Brumby: North-South Pipeline Protest Claims Lies

May 25 2008: Grants Drafted for Pipeline Areas

May 17 2008: Leaky Figures May Dent Pipe Dream

March 18 2008: Key Water Pollution Details Withheld From Public

March 11 2008: Protesters Attack Water Pipeline

Feb 8 2008: Top Advisers Warned against Desal Plant North South Pipe

December 21 2007: NorthSouth Pipe Contractor Announced

January 22 2009, 5 arrested in Toolangi State Forest. Trees fall in background as people try and work out strategy top stop work. More images here.

For more information on pipeline see here

More information on Melbourne Water here

See here for options of piping water from the Goulburn River into Sugarloaf Reservoir

See here for Goulburn Murray Water page

Catchment Maps

Closer image of preceeding map

January 22 2009 Protest Photos - Toolangi State Forest

January 22 2009, Toolangi State Forest destroyed for pipeline

January 22 2009, Coppers and security protecting the destroyers of Toolangi Forest Special Protection Zone

January 22, 2009. Corporate Security adding citizens to corporate data base - held where and used for what?

January 22 2009,Toolangi State Forest. One of the five people arrested at site under the Water Act..

January 22 2009, Toolangi State Forest. One of the five people arrested at site.

January 22 2009, Toolangi State Forest. Another of the five people arrested at site.

January 22 2009, Toolangi State Forest. Man of mystery adding people into corporate data file.

January 22 2009, Toolangi State Forest. Just before walk on and 5 arrests.

January 22, 2009: Toolangi State Forest. Hacking into Toolangi State Forest SPZ.

January 2009 Updates

January 09: Contractors busy taking out Toolangi State Forest

ditto

Trees some distance from the pipeline route have also been chainsawed - for what reason?

Drainage line of tributary of Yea River. Note high sediment potential.

Jan 19 2009: Clearing going full scale ahead

Entry point in north side of Toolango State Forest, through a Special Protection Zone for Old Growth Heathy Dry Forest

SPZ gutted for pipeline

Forest logs in Toolangi State Forest. Sacrificed for the pipeline

What protesters are facing if they enter pipeline construction zone

Lame barriers to stop entry into work area.

This State forest is doomed as it will be logged for the pipeline

Building of the Melbourne Water pumping station just of Killingworth Reserve on the Goulburn River.

Site of new pump station just off Killingworth Reserve.

Pipeline construction camp near Glenburn. This is a massive operation!

Killingworth Reserve February 7 2009

December 2008 Updates

Dec 14 2008: 70 people turn up from Melbourne and surrounds to protest against the pipeline. Melbourne residents will get hit with higher water bills as Melbourne Water look for ratepayer scapegoats to pay for the works associated with this pipeline. How much will Melbourne Water earn from water trading Goulburn River water?

December 2008: Pipeline enters Special Protection Zone (SPZ) 297/03 Old Growth Heathy Dry Forest. Even Vicforests agreed not to log these forests. Not so Melbourne Water. More information SPZ's here.

December 14 2008: Southern portal

Large work camp to faciltate massive works

Corporate surveillance highlighting specific protesters for Corporate 'activist watch' database.

November 2008 Pipeline Updates.

Pipeline construction near Glenburn

Route of pipeline will follow east side of Melba Highway (right side of Melba Hwy on the above map), cutting through a swathe of native forest (Toolangi State Forest) and private land native forest about 30 metres wide. The green shading is State forest, the pink is National Park (which the pipeline will avoid), the orange is classed as Special Protection Zones (SPZ's). Under the 1998 Central Highlands Forest Management Plan (p7), the definition of SPZ reads: "will be managed for conservation, and timber harvesting will be excluded. This zone forms a network designed to link and complement established conservation reserves;"

Special Protection Zones

297/03: (Yea River Forest Block: 330ha Two locations: old growth (Heathy Dry Forest))

297/02: (Yea River Forest Block: 255ha. Linear Reserve, Leadbeater's Possum Zone 1a; old growth (Heathy Dry Forest)

297/08: (Yea River Forest Block: 35ha Old Growth (Heathy Dry Forest)

340/02: ( Toolangi Forest Block: 125ha Two locations: linear reserve)

340/01: (Toolangi Forest Block: 30ha Two locations: landscape (Melba Highway).

Special Management Zone:

297/01 (Yea River Forest Block: 30ha Two locations: Landscape Melba Hwy)

Heathy Dry Forest (EVC no.20): There are three foci for Heathy Dry Forest in the Central Highlands: the Kinglake area, upper Goulburn Valley and upper Thomson Valley. Generally this EVC is dominated by a low canopy of Broad-leaved Peppermint. In the Kinglake area, Messmate, Long-leaved Box and Mealy Strinybark (E.cephalocarpa) may also be present.

The area shaded light green on the above map is the approximate location of a tunnel that will be drilled through hillside. Also note the numerous creek crossings required for the Yea River and Dixons Creek. (Source of map, SPZ details and Heathy Dry Forest Definition: Central Highlands Forest Management Plan DNRE 1998).

Approximate location of SPZ's overlayed on 1:25000 topographical map

Forest clearing off Melba Highway, opposite Kinglake National Park. SPZ 297/08. Melbourne Water logging Heathy Dry Forest including Old Growth at this location.