Category Archives: News and Views

Sky high Canberra water bills compared to Riverina and central NSW

Last week some work took me out to West Wyalong region and I also looked around Temora – town gardens look fine (I know there has been rain), the water supply at motels (we used two) seemed excellent – no needle sharp shower roses out there – and the motel prop seemed unconcerned about water charges despite being a large user with his laundry.

I find that Goldenfields Water County Council – is the supplier at West Wyalong. Riverina Water County Council handles the larger centres to the south.

You can easily find their fees and charges and other information on their websites.

Canberra water bills compared regional NSW

Unless I have made some mistakes – we in ACT pay almost twice our MIA cousins for most levels of plain domestic supply. Amazing that the small population of Cobar spread over a large dry region – pays less than the ACT for water.

I got ACTEW’s Canberra charges from their webpage.

I would have thought that ACTEW with Canberra’s much larger population, compactly located and dam system put in place a few decades ago, would have had cost advantages over the small populations flung over thousands of square kms, connected by expensive pipelines in central NSW.

The large cost differentials leave me puzzled.

It is not just the money but we all know how we are constantly browbeaten about the need to leave more river flows for downstream users.

I think it is time the ACT Govt stood up to the Feds and NSW by saying along lines – do not bother nagging us about your mad proposals to reduce our consumption more, which has been reducing for years anyway. We will listen more to you when NSW people pay what we do for water.
It just so happened that the Canberra Times ran an article critical of our Govt utility ACTEW on 2 January.

More expensive and paranormal spin from Canberra water utility ACTEW

Starting sometime in 2009 the Canberra water utility ACTEW ran a TV advertisement showing a large crowd of people carrying 10 litre buckets of water and tipping the water into Googong Dam – which was less than 50% full in 2009. I thought at the time, “..what a waste of our money pushing this propaganda on us”.

For some factual background here is a graph showing annual water consumption for the ACT – ACTEW reports by financial year which in Australia ends on 30 June.

Canberrans have responded well to Govt water restrictions as this graphic shows – from pre-restriction levels of about 63GL per year, consumption dropped to an average 52 for 2004-2007, then from 2008-2010 has averaged 44.5.

Canberra water consumption and rain

We have had a wet 2010 in eastern Australia (particularly late in the year) and many dams are overflowing, including ACT dams.

Airport rainfall for calendar 2010 is 840mm with two weeks to run. Mercifully we have been spared the 2009 “bucket” TV advert for months now.

However in recent weeks a new ACTEW TV advertisement has burst forth. I have tried to record the audio and I am pretty sure this is the gist – but may not be exact wording. Please correct me if I get a point wrong.

If anybody could possibly ask a six year old to record a video clip for YouTube – please send me a copy.

Here is my best recording of the words spoken.

Continue reading More expensive and paranormal spin from Canberra water utility ACTEW

Canberra water utility praises ineffective “Seasonal Streamflow Forecasts”

I 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.

Continue reading Canberra water utility praises ineffective “Seasonal Streamflow Forecasts”

Washington Times says; “Scams die hard, but eventually they die…You can get all the hotel rooms you want this week in Cancun.”

I liked this at the end of this excellent article which reports how many warmist Washington politicians have stayed away from Cancun.

“When the thrill is gone, the thrill is gone, as star-crossed lovers have learned through the ages, and when a scam collapses, it stays collapsed. The thought is enough to warm hearts all across the globe.”

Thanks to the Washington Times.

Continue reading Washington Times says; “Scams die hard, but eventually they die…You can get all the hotel rooms you want this week in Cancun.”

Joke of the day

Over at ABC Online we have an article bemoaning the drop in public support for “climate change” as an important issue for Australians.

At the end of the piece there are eight bold headings – the fifth is “Sceptics given a platform”. They claim that “Most media outlets, including the ABC..” were even handed giving time/space equally whether scientists were pro-“climate change” or whether they were sceptics – who the article terms “..a tiny rump of gold-diggers..”.

This claim of media evenhandedness is simply hilarious. I would estimate the ABC and most other Oz media would be at least 10 to 1 biased against climate sceptics.

I hear pro-IPCC people complaining that “The Australian” is pro climate sceptics – however I seldom read that paper – but maybe they are more even handed.

Australian media lies about rainfall

Just lately after our 8 days of the Great 2010 East Coast Monsoon – I am getting a bit weary of TV news interviews of people from flooded towns making variants of this standard “knee jerk” claim; “..ten years of worst ever drought and now we get flooded out..”.

A woman from Dubbo has been all over TV news on the weekend with this sort of statement. It puzzles me that TV news journalists or editors can not be bothered to make basic checks on the net that take seconds using Google.

Facts are that Dubbo flooded just before Christmas 2009 – not quite a year ago – so peoples memories can be amazingly short.

Now going back to November 2008 – there were floods at Tamworth and I posted on strange comments from the NSW Premier – then Nathan Rees.

That post included drought maps for NSW and you can see there was no drought for the northern half of NSW from 1st Nov 2005 – to 30 Oct 2008.

Making drought maps now at this BoM site and you can see there is no drought over the vast areas of most of Australia for 36 months, 1st Dec 2007 to 30 Nov 2010.

So I think people claiming “ten years of drought” or a “decade of drought”, should be careful to check facts about exactly what it is they are claiming.

I notice this Sydney Morning Herald article from yesterday with another classic media lie.

“But the soaking has done little for Sydney’s dams, with only one millimetre falling over Warragamba in the seven days to yesterday morning.”

I take their yesterday morning to mean the 4th. Taking a quick look at daily rain data for 28th November – 4th December for stations in the huge Warragamba catchment, I find, Lithgow recorded 129.2, Bowral 112 and Taralga 85.

All useful rain that falls free from the sky and will run down creeks to Warragamba Dam. Simply stunning misinformation from a huge media company.

They could have also checked the Sydney Catchment Authority website to find this, 100mm rain for the week ended 2nd Dec.

Added on 7th – just saw this incorrect reference to “..a decade of drought..” in another Sydney Morning Herald article. “Farmers say goodbye drought, hello flood”. They talk about the Warren Shire which is in the northern half of NSW where long periods of the last decade have been drought free.

Japan rolls hand grenade into Cancun Climate Cabal

Not the most auspicious start for this much ballyhooed but hopefully doomed talkfest.
As would be expected green interests are trying to put the best spin on the disaster. Australia’s Crikey has this – a variant on the “she’ll be right” theme.

Fascinating to watch what our standard GreenLabor MSM can make out of examining the entrails.

Australian wheat crop history does not shout “worst drought ever”

Of all the knee jerk green-media beatups – that of “worst drought ever” or variations on that theme to cover the years 2001 and later – would one of the most predictable storylines of recent years.

My experience is that when rainfall data for an area in question are examined – the claims usually do not stand up. But lets take a broadbrush approach –

Downunder wheat production

The graphic of Australian wheat production history (2010 number is an estimate from Abare) indicates a few dry years in the last decade but there must have been much useful rain.

Agreed ? – or wheat does not grow.

BoM data package 30 years out of date

Fascinating press story from The Australian. — “Energy-efficiency weather data 30 years old”

I would guess the BoM are in such a tangle with their adjustments – they are paralysed as to how to update this package.

There is no doubt the BoM understands the impact of the urban heat island (UHI) on urban climates. But I note the press article below never mentions the UHI. That gives me less confidence in those spokespeople.

In 1997 – before climate issues became as political as they are now – the BoM published a little primer on urban climates – which shock-horror – actually mentioned the UHI.

Continue reading BoM data package 30 years out of date

“Many people hear very confusing claims about the science”

I have to pinch myself.

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What did I say in July ?

I have to think back to the Whitlam years to come up with a comparable state of shambles in our Federal Government.
The fascinating question arising now is – “..what madness will replace the citizen’s assembly ?”