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Last updated on July 16th, 2017 at 09:12 am
“The Canberra Times has buried the lead,” emails Dave M. “Canberra may never see rain again!” So it seems:
This could be the dam that saves Canberra …
The old Cotter Dam is small and was built almost a century ago. Soon it will have a soaring 80m wall and will hold 20 times as much water: 78 gigalitres if it rains, of course.
Canberra receives rain an average of 108 days per year. Despite the Crimes’ casual fear-mongering, this should continue. In fact, rain is due by mid-week …
UPDATE. Canberra’s Alex Robson emails: “We already had a good amount of rain this week.” You know, this innovative “dam” concept might have a future.
I’m confused. Hasn’t Alexander Downer been proclaiming that the great dryening can only be dealt with by genuine fiscal conservatives?
Isn’t this pro-wettening talk defeatist?
Posted by Hero Schema on 2007 10 27 at 06:49 AM • permalink
‘Shoot first’ laws make it tough for burglars
Today 19 out of 50 US states, mostly in the south and the central regions of the country, have this kind of laws, and similar legislation is pending in about a dozen others.
“This law will bring common-sense self-defense protections to law-abiding citizens,” said Rachel Parsons, a spokesperson for the NRA.
“If someone is breaking into your home, it’s obvious that they are not there to have dinner with you,” she continued.
“You do have a right to protect your belongings, your family and yourself.
“The law needs to be put on the side of the victim, and not on the side of the criminal, who is attacking the victim.”
Yes, that’s a fairly obvious conclusion. But not to these people:
But for the Freedom States Alliance that fights against the proliferation of firearms in the United States, these new laws attach more value to threatened belongings than to the life of the thief…
“It’s that whole Wild West mentality that is leading the country down a very dangerous path,” said Sally Slovenski, executive director of the alliance.
“In any other country, something like the castle doctrine or stand-your-ground laws look like just absolute lunacy,” she continued.
One might venture that it looks slightly less like lunacy to those that have actually been burgled.
- …a better way of boosting water supplies than recycling sewage, which was still on the table.
Backwards we may be, here in Queensland, but at least we keep our sewage in waste water treatment facilitiesPosted by eeniemeenie on 2007 10 27 at 06:54 AM • permalink
The ACT Government releases more water from its dams for “environmental flows” than it allows the population of Canberra to use. The idea that the ACT could actually increase its dam storage capacity leaves me lost for words. I guess Canberrans have finally realised that there is a limit to the number of times you can recycle your own sewerage back into your drinking water.
I’m disappointed: I thought the stupidity of the ACT Government and the shiny bums that elect it was limitless.
- #11
Hey, me bum is not shiny!Oh… doesn’t count. I did not vote for those drongoes.Dunno about the enviro flows now, last time I was up the Cotter it was barely a trickle from the dam. I was also a bit socially confused and when I fell in the thing there was a definite ‘thud’, not a ‘splash’. I remember that bit.
But I might have missed, I suppose ….
MarkL
Canberra
- Isn’t a stanhope one of those useless antique thingummies incorporating a microscopic black and white view?
OT I don’t know about art, but I know what i like.Weeping Gillard [portrait of Julia Gillard], 2006 by Raymond MILESPosted by eeniemeenie on 2007 10 27 at 07:37 AM • permalink
- Work is due to begin on raising the Gold Coast’s Hinze dam in early 2008.
This third stage has long been planned but resisted by the rain doomsters.
But then it overflowed in the middle of the drought, and saved the city from its worst flood ever in the same year (2006 IIRC).
#16- maybe she heard the story of the little Dutch boy and was grieving for all she had to give up in her pursuit of power
Posted by eeniemeenie on 2007 10 27 at 08:07 AM • permalink
- #18
Was that when the dam filled up in two days? My brother was up and he and SIL were looking at houses, she was already up working on the coast. He took us to the dam a couple of days after the floods and told us how low the water was when he was there a few days before. He was just amazed at the amount of water that it would have taken to fill the dam that far. Sprinbrook is a great catchment.He also took us up to The Panorama. WOW. What a view!
Springbrook is a great catchment.
Yeah kae, one of the wettest spots in the country.
A cousin had just bought a house on one of the klongs in Mermaid Waters. He was a bit shocked when the muddy water came up over his new swimming pool and threatened his ground floor. All of that flooding came from downstream of the Hinze dam, which was not quite full when the rains started, and was just about to overflow when they stopped.
The raising of the dam is for both more water storage and flood mitigation.
That was the same area that the Wolfdene dam was to be built in the early 90’s. The Water Resources Commission had figured out that the SE corner would need additional storage capacity to cater for the population influx.
The Goss Government in its infinite wisdom with one K Rudd as the director of the Premiers Office decided that it was not necessary and canned it.
Level 5 water restrictions so concentrate the mind!!
This is the guy who wants us all to think that he cares about the future. His record in Queensland planning for the future is appalling.
You guys are forgetting that among global warming’s various weapons, one is to make it rain too hard in places that mankind doesn’t want it to rain, and create droughts in places where we want the water.
Global warming is cunning and sneaky! If everyone doesn’t plant a tree today, it will never rain in Australia again!
UPDATE: Or you can buy Al Gore’s book if planting a tree is inconvenient. Both actions stop global warming equally well, or so I’m told.
Ash_—but what about the brain-sucking amoeba! How can we endanger the habitat of the brainp-sucking amoeba! WON’T SOMEBODY THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN!
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 10 27 at 11:26 AM • permalink
UPDATE: Or you can buy Al Gore’s book if planting a tree is inconvenient. Both actions stop global warming equally well, or so I’m told.
That’d be like the “new” male contraceptive I heard about years ago. It was larger than your average pill and all spiky. The male would put it in his shoe. It worked by making him limp.
- Before the dam is built we will have to run it by a committee. Then we will hold a series of meetings so anyone in the southern hemisphere can raise any objections. We will then form subcommittees to investigate each of those objections raised in detail.
When the last subcommittee reports back in we will then take it to the enviros for its ritual denunciation, sending it back to pre-feasibility study.
Then we will hold a series of meetings with contractors invited to bid for tenders. We will then meet with each of the contractors……. That concludes step 1 of 45 steps involved before a sod of earth is turned.
I think Canberra will be joining Mrs Blanchett in drinking poo water before this ever gets off the ground.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 10 27 at 05:45 PM • permalink
- #25 amortiser. Your are dead right about the Wolfdene dam. It was planned by the Nats for completion in 2005, and a lot of money had been spent.
Friends had a farm in the area ploanned to be inundated. Before Goss got in, my friends had been bought out by the Water authority at a very satisfactory price.
The same Kruddy Goss administration canned the eastern freeway from Brisbane to Gold Coast to save some koalas in the Daisy Hill area.
Again, much money had been spent by the Nats and construction had started on the Eastern Freeway. Expensive hangovers from that abandoned construction can stil be seen at the Smith Street-M1 intersection.
A few months ago, the M1 backed up from Beenleigh to Tugun after a blockage on the one and only arterial route between the two biggest cities in the state.
Hospitals, highways, water, schools, electricity — everything Labor has touched has turned to shit.
- #33
Looks like channel 9 is going to have an expose of the Traveston Dam…“Do we really need it?” Showing pics of a peaceful creekside setting, thistles blooming, birds singing, insects buzzing.Well, of course we don’t need it. We will eventually evolve to not need water at all, that’s what’s going to happen with climate change, evolution will happen faster – will be sped up. Unless, of course, you believe in creationism, in which case we will have intervention to adapt to a waterless world.
Its time to ban trees, look at this lovely non-alarmist headline from your ABC, as usual using the dreaded “as much as X cars in a year” measurement.
Much like the Muja power station here in WA that is promoted as at least partially “green”. Why? Because they burn timber waste. I found that out when trying to find sawdust for work, you just cant get bulk amounts because its all incinerated.
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 10 27 at 07:05 PM • permalink
The board urged residents in five counties to stay indoors due to elevated pollution levels that are three times higher than the federal norms, raising particular danger for the elderly, children and those with asthma or breathing ailments.
Well, on the bright side, they won’t be driving their cars. D’ya reckon they can advise 440,000 car drivers not to drive for a year to offset the fires?
It’s interesting about the warning to stay indoors because of pollution. In Sydney one year during the bushfires burning over the Christmas and new year period it was really, unpleasantly smoky. People with respiratory problems were advised to stay indoors. Not everyone.
Perhaps it’d be easier if we all stopped breathing.
What next? Oxygen canisters for us and a system of exhaling into another canister to sequester our CO2?
We’re getting a little drizzle in North Hollywood right now. Here’s hoping for more…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 10 27 at 08:03 PM • permalink
#27 – Back of the envelope calculations:
Water consumption would be at least 100 litres per person per day, when rationed. Even in a spacecraft or submarine, 10 litres/day would be needed.
Canberra has 300,000 people. So 30 megalitres would be enough for 1 day at level 5 water restriction rates. 1 gigalitre is about enough for 30 days.
A gigalitre is a million tons of water, by the way.
More detailed: each Australian household consumes about 280 kl/year.
280,000 litres, say 3 people per household, 100,000 litres each, 300 litres/day or near enough. That’s in accordance with the “at least 100 on stage 5 restrictions” of the rough guess.The additional storage is therefore good for about 18 months of grace period between droughts breaking. Maybe twice that on rationing.
For those metrically challenged, a metre is a yard, a litre is a quart, and kilogram 2 lbs. Or close enough, the metric measures are about 10% more than that.
- Posted by dean martin on 2007 10 27 at 09:55 PM • permalink
#32 a gigalitre = lots
This isn’t my area but I think in the US the standard unit of measurement for a dam’s reservoir is a “foot-acre”
Personally, I love it because a foot-acre sounds so absurd. Bartender! Bring me a foot-acre of beer!
(foot acre = the amount of water needed to cover 1 acre to a depth of 1 foot = 325851.427 US gallons = 0.00123348184 gigaliter = 1233481.84 liter)
Posted by Col. Milquetoast on 2007 10 27 at 10:47 PM • permalink
You’re kidding: someone is actually building (extending) a dam, and in the People’s Republic of Canberra? Surely there’s some kind of low-flying parrot whose flightpath would be fatally intersected by a higher dam wall?