Big ideas for our rural lifeblood

THERE'S interest in projects that won't put anyone off the land.

The 'coffin' slides from a plank and into the river during a protest near Midway against the Murray-Darling authority's plan to return water to the environment. Picture: Gregory Williams

THERE'S interest in projects that won't put anyone off the land.

IT'S shearing time for Chris Hewitt, who runs a 5000 ha mixed grazing and wheat property at Warracknabeal in the dry country of western Victoria, about 60km north of Horsham near the South Australian border.

Hewitt keeps his eye on the contractors pulling in the wool, and the wheat and barley takes care of itself in the surrounding landscape. Hewitt's water future is secure. His area is untouched by the Murray-Darling Basin plan to return water to the environment because the work has already been done with the $700 million Wimmera Mallee project covering 10 per cent of Victoria. The project involved laying more than 8000km of piping to secure the region's water and give some back to the environment.

It has been so successful that the Murray-Darling Basin Authority's draft plan has not recommended any further water allocation reduction in the region's river system.

The Wimmera Mallee project provides a case study in how large-scale infrastructure projects can transform the water equation without putting anyone off the land.

But it also highlights many of the pitfalls that must be faced if similarly ambitious projects are considered in future, and the cost. With rural protests forcing the first signs of a backdown by the federal government over the amount of water it can expect from buybacks from farmers to restore environmental flows in the Murray-Darling, large-scale infrastructure projects are back on the agenda.

A $5.8 billion fund has been set aside in the forward estimates, of which only $420m has been spent to date.

As it travels the country holding local meetings with farmers, the MDBA is collecting submissions on alternatives to water buybacks.

All sorts of schemes have been put forward. Some are old, others revolutionary, and many attempt to capture the spirit of the Snowy Mountains hydro-electric scheme in ambition.

But engineering feasibility is not the only constraint they face.

A Productivity Commission report into market mechanisms for recovering water in the Murray-Darling Basin found "subsidising infrastructure is rarely cost-effective in obtaining water for the environment, nor is it likely to be the best way of sustaining irrigation communities".

Rather than having a $5.8bn program focused predominantly on infrastructure upgrades, the Productivity Commission says it would have been more effective and efficient to use the buyback program as the sole means of easing the transition to the set water limits from each region.

It says infrastructure projects should only be approved where a properly conducted cost-benefit analysis shows there are net

benefits.

Crane Group managing director Greg Sedgwick says the Productivity Commission report conflates different levels of water infrastructure including projects with improvements in on-farm irrigation systems.

Cane Group supplied the piping for the Wimmera Mallee project and Sedgwick makes no secret of his commercial self-interest. But independent research by ACIL Tasman, funded by industry, argues there are additional benefits to infrastructure spending over buy-backs.

"While funds acquired through buy-backs are likely to be substantially reinvested within regions, a substantial portion of funds are likely to move outside regions," the ACIL report says.

"Water efficiency investments in large infrastructure projects tend to lock the incidence of these investments into the regions and to take advantage of existing farm and post-farm facilities." The report finds that while water infrastructure spending is more expensive than water buy-backs on a per-mega-litre basis, if the economic effect of the loss of water to the regional community is taken into account, these

projects generate significant

economic benefit and maintain the social fabric of rural Australia.

Based on the Wimmera Mallee project, on a straight per-mega-litre cost, infrastructure spending is roughly double the cost of water buybacks.

Unlike buybacks, however, it is possible to quantify the actual water saved and those annual savings continue for centuries.

Sedgwick has no doubt closing in irrigation channels is the best way to spend money to save water and retain rural jobs.

"I can't go past the fact that the most successful project, the Wimmera Mallee pipeline, is the one area that does not have cuts to water allocations under the Murray-Darling Basin plan" Sedgwick says.

"It is the clear option that saves water and leaves jobs in place. It is a pretty good economic argument.

"Under Malcolm Turnbull and John Howard we were pushing ahead and doing things.

"When Penny Wong arrived it just got lost in bureaucracy. I just get so disillusioned by this. As soon as you get both state and federal governments involved it is a recipe for slowing things down."

At its July 2008 meeting, the Council of Australian Governments announced the commonwealth had agreed in-principle to provide close to $3.7bn for significant water projects in South Australia, NSW, Victoria, Queensland and the ACT, subject to a due diligence assessment of the social, economic, environmental, financial and technical aspects of the projects. Only a fraction of that money has so far been committed. A COAG reform council progress report published this month finds that only five of 17 priority projects made substantial progress by the end of last year.

The report concedes the fact that most projects remain in the development and pre-approval stages, which appears contrary to the need for urgent action as recognised by all parties to the agreement on Murray-Darling Basin reform.

Reform council chairman Paul McClintock says projects have taken longer to start than COAG had anticipated.

The Wimmera Mallee project was funded one-third by the commonwealth government, one-third by the state government, one-sixth by local farmers through investment in their own water efficiencies, and one-sixth by the local water authority.

A key motivator for the project was the fact that the drought had seen the area literally run out of water.

Unlike most of the bureaucratic deliberations in the area of water infrastructure, construction of the project was finished two years ahead of schedule.

Piping the open channels, which supplied stock and domestic water to about 9000 customers and 34 townships, saved 103,000 mega-litres of water a year.

According to Hewitt, if there is a downside it is that everyone wants a piece of the water savings and "the cake is not that big".

"There will always be a debate about how those savings are used," Hewitt says.

"We went through a huge community consultation process to establish the project and in our case there were benefits for everybody. It is much more difficult for the Murray-Darling Basin Authority because there will be a cost on the community."

Hewitt says the key was to ensure that any environmental gains were clearly defined and easily measured.

Big water savings potential through piping projects have been identified along the Murrumbidgee, Dubbo and Parkes.

But Sydney entrepreneur Peter Raffaele believes he has a proposal that will not only return water to the environment but also improve the water resources available to farmers.

Raffaele describes his "zero-height roof" technology as a "river in a can".

"We believe it is the only technology available that can bring genuinely new water into the Murray-Darling Basin," he says.

The ZHR technology centres on building man-made catchments that are like giant corrugated iron roofs supported by cables that catch all rainfall and feed it into storage dams.

For maximum benefit, the catchment facilities can be built in high-altitude locations where typical rainfall is between 1200mm and 2500mm.

"We think there are a good dozen opportunities along the spine of the Great Dividing Range where facilities could be built to supply water for human activity," Raffaele says. "The key to rebuilding the water table and basic health of the catchment areas is to rebuild the upper reaches.

"We can take the pressure off the river system and support the river system in times of acute dryness. The beauty of this new type of high-altitude dam is it can be constructed in a minor valley, so minor it may not even possess a recognised water course.

"These are green dams that don't swamp valley floors and can pressure feed by gravity alone everything connectable by pipe which lies below, saving huge costs in electricity for pumping."

The ZHR is formed using a series of cables that are pulled into a tension across arched or sloped ground between stays.

The tensioned cables form the trusses on which are fixed batons, and roof sheeting is overlaid and fastened. Construction cost is estimated at $50 per square metre.

Former concrete-tank builder Joe Taranto is pushing a proposal to pipe waste water from Sydney's North Head ocean outfall up north to Newcastle to replace the clean water now being used to generate electricity at Lake Liddell between the towns of Muswellbrook and Singleton.

The potable water saved from power generation would be sent via another pipeline through a 14km tunnel at Murrurundi to enter the Namoi.

Taranto says the project could help kick-start a new industry in Newcastle to manufacture continuous cast piping.

"All I am asking is for a feasibility study to be done," Taranto says. He claims the pipe could be manufactured for about $1m a kilometre. The cost of the tunnel to Murrurundi is estimated at $200m. A single pipeline could take 200 mega-litres a day, equal to half of North Head's ocean outfall. Taranto believes it is morally wrong for the coal and electricity industries to use clean, potable water when grey water in large volumes is available.