Deceitful politicians close down Victorian dam

Irrigators in the Broken River valley of northern Victoria “feel gutted” following the Victorian Minister for Water's announcement that total decommissioning of Lake Mokoan will proceed, local MP Bill Sykes said recently.

“The Minister's decision to fully decommission Lake Mokoan, based on incorrect information fed to him by deceitful senior Department of Sustainability and the Environment bureaucrats, has ripped the heart out of the local community which has waged a six-year battle to retain Lake Mokoan in some form.

“What galls me is that the DSE has deceived the Minister, leading him to believe that it has had continuous consultation with irrigators in recent months, and that irrigator's input was sought by the independent experts appointed to assess the irrigators' alternative proposal.”

Now the same thing is happening with a controversial 70km by 1.7m diameter North-South pipeline, aimed at siphoning irrigation water from the north of the state, to water Melbourne's growing population, soon to exceed Sydney's, Sykes said.

When irrigators last spoke with DSE, it agreed that water savings for a `mini' Lake Mokoan were very close to those achieved by total decommissioning, that is 33,500ML versus 34,000ML.

“But the Minister's press release states there is a 12,000ML difference. All of this 12,000ML is in fact water purchased from irrigators, which is unrelated to savings from reduced evaporation, and can be part of a range of proposals including the irrigators' proposal.

“Similarly, claims that the cost of the irrigator's proposal ( Earthmover , May 2007) is $35 to $50m more than the total decommissioning, disregards actual costs for a similar project at award winning Barren Box Swamp, near Griffith, NSW, with the DSE preferring to grossly inflate the costs of dam wall construction to $6m/km versus actual costs of around $1.75m/km.”

Barren Box, like Lake Mokoan, was previously “a carp-infested, shallow [3200ha] lake of dead trees,” as one observer put it. But with considerable foresight by Murrumbidgee Irrigation Ltd, it was transformed by deepening a small part and turning the rest into wetland.

If the DSE had seen sense, earthmoving contractors would have built two earth walls 11.8km in total length and up to 6.5m high, enclosing an area from the centre of the lake towards the existing wall, that would be about 5m deep and hold 89,600ML.

“Now it will likely be a dust bowl. Clearly the Labor Government is planning to continue to rape and pillage country Victorians rather than implement alternative, sound, locally-based water savings projects, to meet Melbourne's burgeoning water needs,” Sykes said.