Fickle Pickle

It is not true that the natural monopoly issues with communications and power have been overcome.

Power generation is not a natural monoply, and that part of the system has been privatised to a considerable extent.

Power distribution is a natural monopoly, and although some power distributors have been privatised, they operate as regulated monopolies, where the regulator essentially dictates prices to allow a reasonable return on investment, but prevents the monopolistic pricing that would otherwise occur.

Communications is a natural monopoly only in the 'last mile' consisting of the wire to you house. To some extent this natural monopoly has been eroded by mobile phones, and as a by product of the installation of pay-tv cables that can also carry phone services. However, access to the last mile is still regulated because of its natural monopoly characteristic.

Nor is it true that cheap water is being sold at excessive prices. The main component of the price of water in your tap is the cost of delivering it to you. The infrastructure used to do that wears out and has to be replaced, and the price you pay has to reflect that. If there's a problem with government control, it's that governments can be tempted to dip their hands into the til so that insufficient is spent, or saved, for infrastructure replacement when it's required.

In Sydney, the regulator has expressed concerns that Sydney Water's [*] revenue is insufficient to cover its long term infrastructure costs.

[*]Sydney Water is owned by the Government, but operates as if it were a privatised regulated monopoly.

The resolution for this problem, as is the case for many problems,
is for the Commonwealth to assume rsponsibility.
We then get past all this dopey states rights nonsense.
Either it will be cheaper to build piplines or it will be cheaper to
build desalination plants.

Which ever is cheaper; do it.

The electricity to run the pumps can be generated by dedicated wind
generators.
They can feed the grid and the credit built up can run the pumps.
Each water supply system along the pipes can be connected to the water grid.

If pipes are too dear then the desal plants could be built for each
water supply system.
Of course it will cost money, but will be cheaper than moving the
Gold Coast, Brisbane and Sydney to Townsville.

BTW, I have a pool and I seldom put water into it, I take more water
out than I put in. If I had a tank I could top it up from the pool.
Even in this time of lack of rainfall, we get enough to keep it full.
At present it is just 5 cm from the top which is too full for the
skimmer box to work, but I have left it too full in case we do not
get rain for a while.
So you see you should not consider swimming pools to be an unfriendly
enviromental waste, but in fact an asset.

Thanks for the comments, everyone.

Bazz, it's about speed.

Coothdrup, this is a technically complex society. The rain on the roof of Swanbank will run it for about two seconds.

Sylvia, switching automtically to risk management may hugely advance the Westminster system. How did we appointed Cromwell, I forget? Agreed, water management should stay public. Otherwise, some innovative board will let a few die of thirst occasionally as a marketing strategy. It can rain fairly heavily and nothing at all can get to the dams.

Perseus, re northern Ned Kelly's. We already have arsonists and other nutters, do we really need pipeline saboteurs? Loved your phrase, "metrocentric drivel." You are right, I am a very urban man. Across the creek I can see one house. I live in a caravan and have a small spring, a pump, dams and rainwater tanks - the limit of urban decadence. I learned my metrocentic views in the Namib Desert,up dry gullies on Queensland goldfields and watering food trees for 20 years. I hope "real Queenslanders" will make allowances.

Reynard, wow, someone agreed, and "Godchecker" is superb.

Forrest Gump. I believe Mr Beattie exists, as I have seen pictures of him on TV. But replies to my letters, though polite, have always come from others, and so do not really confirm his existence. Point is, no, I do not front for him. I tried to have the ICC lock up Howard for war crimes. He was not technically guilty, which I accept but which still infuriates. So I am not his man either. You may have to trust me that I'm not frontng for some pipe manufacturer.

I simply have friends in Brisbane, some of them old and infirm. My mail, my power and all the caviar comes through that town, so I have a soft spot for it. I've seen societies in chaos in Africa and prefer early action.

As I have admitted all, can we now play the ball? I hoped for comments on rapidly building a pipeline to the Burdekin. Could that perhaps be addressed first?
Hooroo,
Peter.

Always good to get a bit of feedback from an author.

I admire your frankness in the article with respect to the unsuccessful groundwater prospecting in the Nambour area.

I note your view that the issue, as you define it, the rapid building of a pipeline to the Burdekin, has been left largely unaddressed so far. As I frequently do after a thread acquires more than a few postings, I re-read the article. From it I get essentially two propositions: the first being to exploit a different catchment (the Burdekin), and the second to exploit a different catchment rapidly via a pipeline.

I accept that part of your definition of the problem that requires a different catchment to be exploited. I simply suggest, as do others, that it be the rooftops of Brisbane, upon which, as a number of contributors advise us, rainfall has not been too drastically reduced, and runoff, immediately it does rain, is virtually 100%.

I accept the requirement for rapidity. I simply suggest that the most rapid response possible within the foreseeable time available to be the large-scale production and installation of rainwater tanks in and around Brisbane. These, both collectively and individually, require very much shorter and cheaper pipelines. As to how this is best facilitated and implemented is a challenge to governmental leadership and government responsiveness to community inventiveness, a whole topic in itself. I do not suggest rainwater tanks are a complete solution. I do suggest that a Burdekin pipeline is a completely wrong solution, whether or not it could be built in time.

As Sylvia Else has so succinctly pointed out, the temptation is ever-present for governments to run down infrastructure and spend the water rates on other things in the meantime. Don't give them a fresh excuse to do so with a big expensive cash cow in the form of a Burdekin pipeline.

It's important the public learn the role appropriate waste water DISPOSAL should have played in the avoidance of this problem. See KAEP's posts http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5551

Forrest, I agree with the large-scale implementation of tanks. But I fear it won’t be enough to guarantee supply.

The public system needs to be up to the task of providing water to just the same extent it as would if there were no tanks, in order to get us by in really dry times when the tanks are empty. Besides, urban water consumption makes up only a relatively small fraction of total consumption. Even the most widespread implementation of tanks would only go so far.

Even with tanks, the best water conservation and efficiency strategies that can be quickly implemented and the best attempts to stop the overall number of consumers from constantly increasing, SEQ would still need a Burdekin pipeline or desalination plants.

I would like to see SEQ utilize NQ water, but on one big condition: along with the water, it absorbs the growth potential. In other words, any significant population growth that Qld has to have should stay in the southeast corner!

Any potential growth, especially in the area potentially serviced by the Burdekin Dam: Townsville and the lower Burdekin area - should be foregone, if massive quantities of Burdekin Dam water are going to be diverted.

The thing I fear most is a rapid escalation in the growth rate in north Queensland cities and indeed in towns all the way up the coast (and all the same old problems that would go with it that we have seen in SEQ), as people lose confidence that the quality of life will remain good in SEQ.

Sylvia I should have said water is no more a natural monopoly than is communications or electricity and we are gradually finding ways around those problems. Once the communications laws in Australia if interpreted literally made it unlawful for me to talk with my neighbour across my back fence.

The water regulations and legislation give a monopoly in the supply and delivery of cheap water. The difficulty is that more expensive supplies of water via recycling, desalination, rain water tanks cannot compete with this supply of cheap water. In Melbourne and Canberra the government today takes up to 50% of the money being paid for water as "dividends" or "abstraction charges" and it has not spent anywhere near this amount on water infrastructure. The fact is that the cost of supply from rainwater and dams when it rains is a lot lot less than recycling. Increasing the cost of water has not guaranteed those cities supply of water as the economists would have us believe would happen if the "price was right".

We have to overcome this problem in the cost of rain versus the cost of recycling. One way of doing it is to put a surcharge on rain water to fund recycling etc. Leaving it with the monopoly supplier does not work. We can however, give some or all back to the consumers but require it be spent on infrastructure such as recycling, or desalination, or water saving devices or community projects. This will allow a market in infrastructure to arise and will help prevent the government spending the money on other things. It turns out this is very simple and cheap to do and is likely to work.