Must be an election coming up. Look for some big dollars to be spent on environmental, global warming abatement and water related projects after todays water summit, one of the early positionings for next years election. King John has squillions of dollars to spend on feel good projects to dent the dastardly Beazers attempts to focus on the not so cute parts of the Coal itions environmental agenda.Two articles from The Age tell the story of Australias well thought out water planning.
Vast quantities of Victoria's most precious resource — pure drinking water — will be siphoned off by a bottled water manufacturer with links to soft drink giant Coca-Cola Amatil, which will pay a paltry $2.40 per million litres for the privilege.
The charge is well below the $960 paid by Melburnians for a megalitre of tap water, or the $45 paid by farmers for the same quantity of irrigation water.
Melbourne bottling company, Sunkoshi Limited, holds a permit to extract 150 megalitres annually from an underground aquifer on private land 85 kilometres east of Melbourne.
The owners of Sunkoshi provide water from a Ballarat spring to Coca-Cola Amatil for bottling. Sunkoshi plans to build a 250-metre road on the Powelltown property that would allow six trucks (more carbon emissions?) to remove 150,000 litres of water each day.
Meanwhile
Phillip Island could be without drinking water by February, according to the local authority, which has placed residents on stage four restrictions and is desperately searching for alternative sources.
Westernport Water chief David Mawer has warned Bass Coast Council that Phillip Island could run dry if residents failed to curb consumption. "That would be the extreme case, but we have a reservoir that is not that big, so if it doesn't rain, then yes, we will run out," he said.
Well we know where Phillip Island could get their drinking water for cheap.
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