Dalby is situated one-hour from Toowoomba, two-and-a-half hours west of Brisbane and three hours from the Gold and Sunshine Coasts. The town faces a severe water shortage and the worst drought in history.
The Mayor Ray Brown says the town's in real danger of running out of water and restrictions may be increased to their highest level if the situation doesn't improve.
Cr Brown says the weir is empty and the town's been drawing its water supply from bores.
The construction of a reverse osmosis plant will provide an additional 1.7 million litres per day or about 25% of Dalby's water supply needs on an annual basis. Will allow the conversion of previously unsuitable water into water suitable for town supply purposes of a very high quality, which will improve the overall quality of our town supply. The reverse osmosis produces water at a cost comparable to the treatment of river water but is much more reliable in dry times.
Dalby's economy
Dalby and the surrounding Wambo Shire is is at the centre of rich coal and natural gas reserves which underpin the power generation industry for SE Qld. The region is renowned as a rich agricultural area, growing crops such as cotton, sorghum, wheat, barley, sunflowers, chickpeas, mung beans and corn, as well as the production of lamb, beef and pork.
Dalby's economic forecast looks “bright” as infrastructure developments, a growing resource sector and population increases combine to promote continued business growth.
Over the period to 2031, the population of Dalby is expected to increase by 3,723 persons – or an average annual rate of 0.9% – to a population of approximately 19,734 persons.
El Nino:
El Niño - the extensive warming of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean that leads to a major shift in weather patterns across the Pacific - is often experienced as drought affecting large parts of eastern and northern Australia. The 1982/83 Ash Wednesday bushfires were largely due to drought conditions caused by the El Niño effect. The most recent strong El Niño event was 1997/98.
The El Niño phenomenon affects runoff in catchments serving all major water supply systems in eastern Australia.
IPCC have indicated that El Niño events have become more frequent and drying in the last 30 years compared to the previous 100 hundred years.
Additionally, IPCC make the point that many world climate models indicate that mean conditions that are ‘El Niño-like’ may well prevail in the future.
Fastest-growing region:
Peter Garrett’s decision earlier this month to kill off Queensland Premier Anna Bligh’s $1.8 billion project to dam the Mary River at the Traveston Crossing, near Gympie, has got the Premier in a spin about how the Government’s going to manage future population growth without running out of water.
Ms Bligh described the veto as a blow to the residents of Australia’s fastest-growing region. With figures showing 70 per-cent of new arrivals to Queensland settled in the south-east, it’s now critical the government find ways to move people on to regional areas.
Dam levels in Toowoomba, Queensland's biggest inland city, are down to 8.5 per cent.
A pipeline has been built connecting Toowoomba to Brisbane's major water source, the Wivenhoe Dam.
It is due to begin pumping in January. In the meantime, Mayor Peter Taylor says several emergency bores have been sunk to keep the city going.
Obi Obi Creek:
, the town's only source of water of the Sunshine Coast hinterland town of Maleny, received just 39.2mm of rain in November, almost 100mm short of the 140mm November average.
Maleny resident, zoologist and conservationist Dr Les Hall has been in the limelight again lately. And it's all because of his survey of platypus burrows in the banks of the Obi Obi Creek, adjacent to Cornerstone's proposed construction site for a Woolworths supermarket. Les told the company that the creek bank adjacent to the site has the highest platypus population density compared with any other part of the creek. He said that in his survey he counted an average of one burrow every three metres; some of these were old, some collapsed, but many others along the bank were fresh and in use and some were obviously occupied by mothers and their young.
"No matter what happens, whatever the developers' protections, they will still destroy the platypus burrowing area along the creek bank," Les warned.
The wetlands will also provide habitat and feeding areas for the two bird species, rainbow bee-eater and cattle egret, listed in an international agreement (RAMSAR) that Australia has signed. The two sites will provide habitat for a number of wetland-dependent threatened species.
Obi Obi Creek is the main contributor of water for the Baroon Pocket Dam. This dam will soon be linked to the southeast Queensland pipeline network.
Water crisis:
‘Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink;’ Thus spoke the in the 18th century.
warns that without global action, demand for water in 2030 will outstrip supply by 40 per cent.
Desalination technology comes with drawbacks as they require significant energy, and pollute the marine environment with hot, hyper-saline and chemical-rich outflow that is discharged back into the ocean. There are already dead areas in our oceans.
There is a limit to the number of dams that can be constructed, the amount of water that households water restrictions, and the number of rivers that can be manipulated and strangled.
A 2% growth rate means a double of population every 35 years, even if it doesn't sound much. Growth should be "managed" at a time of climate change and global water and food threats.
"Recent pronouncements have left us exposed to a repeat of History. (...with the prospect of dam failure evident since 1992 in the dam levels chart and as yet unexplained).
Large scale rainfall events occur, on average, every 3.7 years, The panic caused by a 6 year gap will be repeated in the future with the possibility of even larger gaps as wide as 14 years.”
Limitless Growth?
There is no such thing as limitless growth on finite ecosystems, or finite natural resources.
An action plan has been developed in consultation with the body responsible for regional water security, the Queensland Water Commission. There will be four or five tanker loads of water this week (up to 11,000 litres in each tanker) trucked to Maleny.
Despite the massive problems with water in southeast Queensland, it still has an unfettered high rate of population growth. No effort whatsoever has been put into slowing this growth rate. Apparently not even a thought of it from anyone in the state government except for Gold Coast Mayor Ron Clarke.
Bligh acknowledged recently that south-east Queenslanders are beginning to think the lifestyle costs of population growth outweigh the economic benefits. "But population growth is a fact of life in Queensland. We cannot put up the barbed wire fence at the border, we can't stop people having babies, so we have to find a way of coping," she said. She could cap the population and ask our Federal government to stop economic immigration!
The southeast corner of the state is becoming more populated, with an estimated 15,000 people a year moving there from all over Australia in search of a “better life”. Premier Anna Bligh is considering a $3000 boost to the first-home owners' grant for people buying property outside the southeast.
South-east Queensland already resembles one giant building site, as the State Government spends billions this year alone on bridges, rail extensions and new bus and motorways to help move all these extra people around.
Premier Anna Bligh is not interested in a sustainable water supply for Queensland, but in water to sustain population growth, something that is not fait accompli but socially engineered by immigration and baby bonuses.
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh says she has assurances that the town of Dalby won't run out of water. 'If we need to help them truck in water, we'll do that'. She will probably have to!
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