Water Recycling

Actually Carl I usually cop a bucketload for being a free market Liberal. That is Liberal in the school of thought of greats such as Menzies. John Hyde was likewise a great Liberal thinker. One of his memorable essays could have been titled, "Who Pays?" which sums it up pretty well. To ask that of people who are baying that money must be spent normally stops them in their tracks. Generally they want public largess to give them either cosy high paid jobs or direct benefits to themselves in other ways at the larger community's expense.

It annoys me a lot that soft and snivelling left wingers are at present stealing the name Liberal.

You will struggle to find someone who hates the ALP more than me. Due to my desire for real solutions that worked in the real world I moved away from my family's rusted on adulation of the ALP and ended up being ostracised for it. Family means so much more than something as pathetic as politics but not in my family or ex family if you like.

The scorn and great spite I feel for people such as Mike Rann who scuttled Howard's attempts at water reform only because he did not want Howard to enjoy any good headlines at all is immense. NSW takes such a huge proportion on the water coming out and was prepared to allow Federal management of it's water use. SA would have been the major beneficiary but guess who scuppered that one. The SA Premier or should I say the ALP's representative in South Australia.

At every step down the river system people take water based on their own needs desires and so on. South Australia gets whatever is left over. At present that is basically nothing.

Points well made about Orchardists and their watering techniques. I having lived there as a teenager had seen how they did it there. Flood irrigation seems such a dumb dumb idea. Open Irrigation Channels are not good either. Getting some heavy mulch down on the red sand they have there would do the world of good for water retention and soil quality but I don't know that anyone does it. However this type of poor use of water is endemic right throughout Australia. In Hay they use vast sprinkler systems to irrigate RICE! Rice which needs so much water and such a huge amount of their water is evaporating before it hits the ground.

Which only makes my argument for a single water market all the stronger. If farmers had to pay the real price of water they would be much more efficient with it. They would be much more innovative in finding ways to maximise the utility they got from it. The single water market would lead to better outcomes all round.

Studley

I haven't looked at Alex S's sheet but I do remember earlier when Media Mike declared this a one in 1000 year drought thinking that he couldn't remember the drought of the early 1980's which was pretty savage. I learned also of the Federation Drought. There was also another really big one I think in the 1930's which I noticed in a very casual glance at previous droughts.

What I did notice is that each one was different in it's own way and had different effects and so it was not really possible to compare any one of them.

But no this one is not a once ever drought it is largely the result of Politicians mismanagement. Actually it has been some months now since you could argue that it is still a drought more a situation of extreme water crisis.

Studley

Without getting deep into political idealogies, Cubbie has always struck me as strange for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, we are a dry country, always have been. Why we allow people to use that water in the most wasteful methods to grow Rice and Cotton is beyond me. It doesn't matter that we might have the most efficient cotton or rice growing methods, it's still a wasteful exercise when compared to traditional Australia dry land farming. The current drought brings that waste into sharp focus.

Secondly, whatever happened to Riparian Rights? The river system is dying dammit, and flood is a natural behaviour of river systems, not an excuse to remove all the water from the system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riparian_water_rights

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Riparian rights also depend upon "reasonable use" as it relates to other riparian owners to ensure that the rights of one riparian owner are weighed fairly and equitably with the rights of adjacent riparian owners.

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woodbe.

G'day,

I'm not looking for an arguement over Cubbie either, I think I posted earlier what similar to what I did a few posts up, I just wanted to make some facts known.

Any attack on Cubbie isn't taken against the memory of my Dad, just to make that clear. Times change and the climate has changed, so there are bond to be a whole raft of issues which may/may not need to be addressed in water allocations.

One thing that peeves me is governments jumping in or not as the case may be. An example Qld and Vic. I didn't like Beatie, but he had the guts to do what was best for the population, in this case water restrictions. Now Qld, in this case greater Brisbane, has more dams and can collect more water. On the otherhand, Brax/Brumby in Vic has fewer dams/reservoirs, yet is on Stage 3A while Brisbane in on Stage 6. Now what the heck? One politican had the guts to do what was best in the interest of the public/industry and Brax, who wouldn't make the call for fear of public backlash, with more rain than S.E Qld has had over the period only went so far as Stage 3A, don't call it 4, some people mighn't like it, so we'll call it 3A. ::

S.E. Qld with a lot of rain over the past few months, is still on Stage 6 (last I knew) even though the catchments have received very good rain.

My point is, the public realise that water conservation is paramount, some politicians do and act accordingly. What gets my fire up is politicans who play politics with water, opposite to the greater good.

Haven't looked at the numbers for Victoria, but last time I checked for SA, Domestic use of water is in a minority. By Far. They could eliminate domestic use, and there would still be a problem.

One thing for sure is domestic users are going to cop it in the hip pocket regardless of the restrictions and rights they may enjoy. Largely because of the lack of adequate planning by our elected governments of both major parties. Perth was the only state that had been adequately planning for the future last I heard, and the rest are struggling to get up to last year.

Makes you want to put in a decent water tank.

woodbe.

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Flood irrigation seems such a dumb dumb idea.

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I seem to remember that cotton farmers in Qld were getting 70% efficiency through flood irrigation (I was doing research at the time and came across a Co-op Research mob's papers)... which meant that it competed on underground drip irrigation very, very well... at the time.
At the time, sub-surface drip systems were achieving 98% efficiency, surface drippers 90% and overhead irrigation was @ 70 - 80%.

The trouble was that underground systems require very significant 'per Ha' installation investment, and at the time were delivering up to 15% per Ha yield loss!

A 15% yield loss for some of the most competitive farmers in the world, in a totally unsubsidised production market, meant that you'd install sub-surface drippers and then go broke in 2 years. :oo:
Of course you could just by cotton produced eleswhere... heavily subsidised and which isn't really competitive and is very 'environmentally unfriendly'.
Hell, some Latin/South American cotton producers pay so little the workers have to garden, after hours, to be able to eat!

Now the complexities of underground drip systems are being slowly worked out and it seems to be out competing furrow flood in most cases... both in amount applied per hectare (the easy bit) and in yields per hectare (the difficult part).

Simply put, the new technology had to be integrated into the farming system and had to be studied carefully to work out how to actually make it cost effective and produce better yields.

Funnily enough, continued research into flood irrigation has meant that 'best practice' gets flood irrigation to 98% (and higher) efficiency. :rolleyes:
Next step is to conquer the issue of 'on farm storage evaporation' in a cost effective way.

So, my mate banana farmer near Tully (like all farmers) will be scratching his head and doing the sums to reduce the bore pump running time and if that means he converts to buried trickle tape over the existing combination "on ground micro sprinklers and drippers" then he will.
However the information for this will come from the CRC (Co-op Research Centre) that he funds through a levy 'per carton' of bananas and which is also funded through DPI and CSIRO funding.

When he installs sub-surface irrigation, it is going to cost him $1600 - $5000 per hectare, depending on the model used and how much of his existing infrastructure needs to be changed.
He runs 76 Ha of bananas, so that is a minimum of $121, 600.00 investment... and at a $2 per carton average profit, 60,800 cartons or 45 semi trailers leaving the farm to pay for it. That is a very significant investment for a life span of only 6 years.

He pulls about 625 bunches of bananas off each Hectare per 9 months... the paddock goes for 8 cycles of 9 months (6 years) before needing to be replanted. In replanting the sub-surface tape will be ripped out and ruined.
About 2 cartons per bunch = the full production of 48 hectares over 9 months to pay for 6 years of @5% water saving and 5% less pump running time. Its difficult to have that happen cost effectivly.
Easily paid for... if the farmers can levy the cost onto the consumer, which hasn't happened yet and I can't see consumers being willing for it to happen.

Farm irrigation is a complex issue... well beyond the understanding of me, and dare I say it... beyond the understanding of non-farmers, simply because we are not involved and are not aware of the issues.

Suffice to say, the forces to effect change are in place... but change comes at a cost and with time.
In a heavily regulated and unsubsidised market such as the Aust argiculture market, change comes as it can be afforded.

Change will occur within its own time, and my old mate in Tully is reading things like this, this and this and making changes as and when he can.
He's no-ones fool, and no amount of whinging or 'bright ideas' from enviros and greenies (like me) do him any good... he's the one paying the levy to get the research done to make the change.

The flood irrigation used in the 70's and 80's in the Riverland was just trenches with water running down to the bottom. Hard to know how much water got into the soil, it is all sandy stuff there, and it just seemed to be running past everything.

Studley

I never water my garden, thus trees have deep roots and even european trees are fine

I never wash the car

only wash the boy twice per week:D

have front loader washing machine

my last water bill was over the limit?:?

meanwhile my neighbours have pools, and dont try to tell me there filling with a bucket.

until the gov has the guts to really restrict water use and deny pool permits etc.
then I'll do what I'm doing and no more.

Astrid

Clinton,

Flood irrigation 70% efficient? Compared to what?

I think the measure might be for getting water to the roots of the plant or something, not efficient use of water. Efficient use of water doesn't include pouring it on the ground and allowing it to evaporate. I've heard similar stuff quoted about how efficient our rice and cotton farmers are, and I'm sure we lead the world, but the point is that these are hugely water intensive crops and with all due respect to the farmers who work hard at growing it, Australia has better things to do with the water.

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Total Australian rice exports totalled 268000 tonnes, valued at $171 million over the past 12 months. This figure is considerably lower than the usual $400...

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http://www.nff.org.au/commodities-rice.html

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n terms of the value and volume of Australian cotton exports, in 2004-05 raw cotton brought in $770 million (420 kilo tonnes) and cottonseed $55 million ...

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http://www.nff.org.au/commodities-cotton.html

Still, I could be wrong, but it sure looks like we as a nation are exporting our precious water overseas by making cotton and rice with it. And yes, there are lots of other problems with water, this is just one of them IMHO.

woodbe