Australia's Fastest-Growing Region On Track To Run Out Of Water 12/06

[hatrack]

THE Beattie Government is to consider radical measures including desalination plants after being warned Australia's fastest-growing region could run out of water by December next year.

Premier Peter Beattie announced yesterday his Government would also bring forward new dam and weir infrastructure projects on the Logan, Albert and Mary rivers and amend the law to give it the power to override council decisions on water restrictions for southeast Queensland. The region is experiencing one of its worst recorded droughts, with water restrictions in place and dam levels at record lows.

Drought, climate change and population growth have meant that southeast Queensland's three dams, Wivenhoe, Somerset and North Pine, have a combined water level of 37.2per cent. Other state capitals are also facing water shortages and restrictions. The NSW Government is considering building a desalination plant as water storage levels languish at 41 per cent.

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Mr Beattie said that modelling by South-East Queensland Water showed that under the worst-case scenario, all three dams would strike "dead" storage levels of 5per cent in December next year without water restrictions; restrictions would push the date to February 2007. A $2million feasibility study into desalination treatments and water reuse, to be done jointly with Gold Coast City Council, is due to begin soon. The Queensland Government will spend $380million to subsidise council capital works over the next five years - more than three times the subsidies of the past five years.

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http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16362500%255E30417,00.html

[blm]

1. Water wars will dwarf the oil wars.

.

[phantom power]

2. Meanwhile, the head of their equivalent of the EPA...

is on record that CO2 regulations will be bad for the economy.