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The Forum > Article Comments > What is a bone-dry city worth? > Comments

What is a bone-dry city worth? : Comments

By Peter Ravenscroft, published 16/3/2007

Water management in South East Queensland? It's enough to make a cane toad weep.

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Forrest Gumpp:

The nine months figure was wrong, I did it when the graph was diving and before there were any restrictions. Maybe that gross error helped bring on the restrictions sooner, so wait before you organise a lynching party. I published a retraction, probably on Indymedia Brisbane (now history). The SEQWater data did not make it clear the evaporation had already been taken out, so I took it out twice. Go get a more competent stirrer.

Check for yourself. One percent is dead water. Divide the percentage left in the dams, by the average daily percentage drop. The monthly releases don't cover the evaporation. The drop is currently 0.04 percent per day. Today's figure is now 16.22 months because the drop is escalating as we run low on the flanking groundwater. Also we keep building in SEQ.

The estimates Anna Bligh quotes assume substantial flows into the dams, based on long-term past records. I am assuming no flow, based on the past three years, which is not quite right either, but may be. We may get heavy rain, game over, three cheers, wrong again. But if it trickles in as per the last three years, the accelerating evaporation, not factored in, is going to cancel the trickle. The ground is now very dry. We will need about 100 mm in a downpour, to get anything useful into the dams. The recent rains have each bought about one day's grace.

Hence our only option is now the pipeline to the Burdekin. We will not make it on roof rainwater tanks. This last three days I talked to maybe a dozen interested older folk, some very informed, some just bothered. Consensus is, can't think what else to do, let's do it, fast, and hang the cost. The desal plant can come later.

I do not accept there was a Machiavellian plot to foist recycled water on anyone. They just got it wrong. This is not an easy guessing game.

psraven@bigpond.net.au anyone, to get in touch. 07 3289 4470. PO Box 108, Samford, 4520, Qld.

Cheers all,

Peter.
Posted by Peter Ravenscroft, Thursday, 29 March 2007 9:11:05 PM
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Peter,

Thanks for the clarification of the estimate of time until run-out. As you can see, I suspected the correct figure had to be the then eighteen month one, and rest assured, if your projections had anything to do with bringing on the level 4 restrictions, I certainly wont be trying to organise any lynching party over that!

And yes, I completely agree with you (as probably does Peter Beattie) that securing 'baseload' supplies becomes more of a guessing game the shorter the time available for planning, construction, and accumulation of stored supply. The problem is that it is a guessing game with very high stakes, both for the immediate and more distant future for all Queenslanders (and probably all Australians, if calls are made for Federal financial assistance). What the community has to spend now, or permanently surrender to overseas interests, in order to solve this particular problem will profoundly affect what can be done in other areas in future.

I completely agree with you that there is no alternative to urgently obtaining a reliable water supply for SEQ, if only to avoid disaster. I simply suggest that that reliable supply is a lot closer than the Burdekin dam, and that much of the pipeline infrastructure to get hold of it either exists or is already under construction. And no, although they have their place, I am not talking about rainwater tanks or stormwater collection, for it might not rain, either. Have a look at the proposal in this link: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=495#9790

The science of waste heat utilisation is well understood. The scheme does not even depend upon the reduced pressure proposal of Dr Alan Williams (link above), although parts of his proposal will magnify its effectiveness. Several birds can be killed with one stone.

There is a significant engineering and organisational challenge involved. However, if that challenge is successfully met, the impending disaster will not only be avoided but water and energy supply security will be dramatically enhanced for SEQ for the foreseeable future, global, or gullible, warming notwithstanding.
Posted by Forrest Gumpp, Friday, 30 March 2007 9:31:23 AM
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Forrest Gummp:

You're not just a pretty faceless one. Knew it all along. That low pressure desalination stuff is impressive and completely new to me.

As the stakes, as you say, are very high, what do you suggest? Should we trust to luck and new technology, or should we first put in the tried and tested old-fashioned solution, a pipeline to a full dam?

I have spoken with about twenty people in these last 3 days. They will all wear extra costs for what they trust. The consensus is, the cost is now irrelevant. I don't think they will bet all they have on a horse that they've yet to see run. The plants you propose, if they work, can go on every thermal power station in the world. We should certainly build the first one, but after we build the Burdekin pipeline, I think.

We need to start the national water grid with the areas in crisis - Brisbane, Goulburn, Ballarat, Toowoomba, Melbourne, Adelaide, etc.

The best and cheapest way to do that may be a dedicated water tax. I suggest that it not be based on water usage, but on power usage. That will allow sone irrigators to survive. Power is already a metered commodity. Most power generation now takes water. That tax will boost alternatives - use wind or solar and you avoid the water tax. The alternative is borrow the money, i.e. sell our water rights to foreigners. Why do that? This is one of the richest societies on the planet. We should retain ownership of our own water infrastructure and to do that we best raise a tax.

I am heartily tired of the governments selling everything ordinary people worked for, over generations, to their rich mates. I've told Malcolm Turnbull I think I'm not the only one, and that this philosophy of theft, if applied to water, may cost his party dearly. I think most of us are now fed up to the back teeth with privatisation. We should not let it grab our scarce water, in its death throes.

Peter.
Posted by Peter Ravenscroft, Friday, 30 March 2007 9:55:49 PM
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What do I suggest?

Trust to luck? Successive governments have done that for 18 years, punting for their (and foreign utilities corporations) own advantage with public assets out of sight of the general public. Look where it has landed them, and all of us! There is no luck involved with this desalination proposal.

The sea will remain full, and where it is, no matter how long the drought.

Much of the pipeline required to get a start-up scale (say 15% of total Brisbane usage) seawater supply to thermal powerstations in SEQ already exists. That which does not is already in the process of construction. Irrespective of how much duplicated or additional pipeline requires to be completed for any scaled-up seawater reduced-pressure desalination program, it will be far less than any otherwise required for a Burdekin pipeline. The start-up scale of operations simply substitutes seawater for coolant freshwater.

[Exuent stage right - operators running in all directions, tearing hair and shrieking "Salt water! In my pipeline/pumping station/condenser/river system! We'll all be rooned!]

Salt water - steel ships float in it all the time.

Concentrated brine, from the outset, will accumulate from power station cooling. Let it. Just make sure it does so in proper progressively constructed solar ponds. There is plenty of time to bring solar pondage on line later. Let's look after our water supply crisis first.

There is nothing new about condenser technology, and that is what is involved in the next level of seawater desalination at thermal power stations. If all the cooling water was reclaimed as fresh water in simple condensers, then around 28% of Brisbane freshwater demand is satisfied. Granted, there are doubtless engineering challenges in retro-fitting condensers, but engineers are ingenious, and Australian industry has a reputation for rising to unusual challenges.

Behold! The word limit approaches, and we haven't even got to multi-effect reduced-pressure distillation, so-called 'new' technology! And if it rains in the next 18 months, we wont have committed to a huge investment, just pumps, condensers, and some solar pondage.
Posted by Forrest Gumpp, Saturday, 31 March 2007 2:55:35 PM
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But will supplying 28% of Brisbane demand be enough?

I think we have to assume that it will not be enough. If we require only simple condensation from the retro-fitted condenser design, full advantage of the waste heat of the thermal power stations is not obtained. The design requirement should be for a system CERTAINLY capable of simple single-effect atmospheric pressure condensation with segregation of condensate, but ALSO designed to operate in conjunction with, or alternatively as, a multi-effect reduced-pressure condenser.

At this point the investment risk is confined to that as to the actual performance of the reduced-pressure multi-effect condenser component only. There would seem to be little risk that it will not work at all. If you only recovered enough heat to distil as much seawater again as the single effect condensation produced, then the combination of cooling water substitution and poor-yield reduced-pressure distillation would leave you meeting 41% of total Brisbane demand.

The extra pipeline capacity that would simultaneously need to be constructed to deliver the extra seawater to Tarong would not be a risk investment. This capacity would be needed long-term to take advantage of the energy collected in the ever-expanding solar pond farm that is accumulating the concentrated brine resulting from the 28% of demand base load output. (Even should reduced-pressure distillation yield be absolutely lousy, by the end of 7 years at most, the solar ponds would be collecting as much energy as the thermal power station output! One use for this energy is production of more desalinated seawater.)

I should point out that this proposal does not require Dr Williams' geodetic dome, which is perhaps what you identify as new or unproven technology. The reduced pressure environment construction requires standard engineering and steel pressure vessel fabrication skills. Should the gained output ratio be only half of the 10 that Dr Williams states is commonplace for fossil fuel powered desalination, the scheme would supply 75% of demand on coal alone, maybe 150% with solar.

Only two years ago Burdekin dam was nearly empty.
Posted by Forrest Gumpp, Saturday, 31 March 2007 9:49:06 PM
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We have so far only looked at investing in this thermal power station waste heat desalination in a worst case desperation scenario of averting a short-term prospect of running out of reticulated water. There is also a potentially enormous upside that has barely been explored, an upside that just does not exist with a simple plan to raid a distant rain-dependent storage via a pipeline.

The Australian community only has a finite amount of resources that can be invested in large scale projects of either type: it is critically important that it choose the right one first up. We face other enormous calls upon resources nationally, not the least of which may be the wide-scale implementation of engineered wetland basins. Another regular OLO contributor, KAEP, has indicated such as being pivotal in rectifying the climatic distortions caused by our coastal conurbations and their associated waste water disposal practices. This link is a good starting point for understanding why: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4053#28946

Given that water, and, specifically by definition waste water, is required to implement these engineered wetland basins, it is important that this erstwhile disposal problem, which has now become a resource, is not over-treated and misapplied, which is what is presently in prospect. The requirement for these engineered wetlands provides the overriding reason why the prospective 100% plus of present and projected demand that a combination of waste heat and solar pond powered desalination promises must not be foregone. We urgently need the extra water on an ongoing basis, and lowering our sights by drinking recyclate cheats us of a future.

This is the scale of the challenge to leadership, at both the State and Commonwealth levels. It requires leadership that is not only 'up with the game', but that is capable of taking on board at the broadest community level, far-reaching matters for judgement. Leadership that has displayed throughout a distinguished career prior to, and at State and Federal level, an absolutely intimate grasp of the concept that who dares, wins. Leadership that is above politics.
Posted by Forrest Gumpp, Monday, 2 April 2007 10:10:17 AM
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