Canberra water utility praises ineffective “Seasonal Streamflow Forecasts”
December 16th, 2010 by Warwick HughesI noticed this article reporting on a BoM – CSIRO initiative to forecast river flows a few months in advance. I just hope they use better models than they employ for the hopeless BoM rainfall and temperature Outlooks.
What caught my eye was the gushing praise from ACTEW our Canberra water utility – whose business model seems to be to charge households increasingly rapacious water bills, and pay increasing money to Govt, while keeping water restrictions permanent as dams overflow and during the dryer times tipping large amounts of water away as “environmental flows”.
The catch for ACTEW is that their praise is exposed as unfounded puff because the BoM – CSIRO “Seasonal Streamflow Forecasts” web pages publish a check on the results of their forecasts in the form of a Table “Summary of skill scores”. Unfortunately for ACTEW forecasts for the two catchments relevant to ACT water supply, Cotter and Queanbeyan both rate pretty poorly. ACTEW comments at the end.
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