Pipe row hots up

By Kath Gannaway
”IT’S NOT over yet” was the message behind a blockade of the Sugarloaf Dam by the Plug The Pipe protest group and others opposed to the north-south Pipeline.
Hundreds of people got behind the blockade organised by the group over the weekend.
The mood was determined and angry as speakers, including McEwen MP Fran Bailey and Plug The Pipe spokeswoman Jan Beer, accused the Brumby Government of refusing to listen to the voice of rural Victoria.
Protesters met on Sunday morning on the Melba Highway at Kinglake and proceeded in a convoy to the Sugarloaf Reservoir which will, if the pipeline goes ahead, hold the water from the Goulburn River as it awaits distribution to Melbourne businesses and households.
With many wearing blue and white shirts as a sign of solidarity, and carrying placards voicing their frustration and anger the consolidating theme was a wide-spread disbelief at what they say is the government’s arrogant determination to proceed with a pipeline they believe will not deliver results.
“The government’s ill-conceived hope is that the pipeline will help prevent a water supply crisis developing in Melbourne,” said Mrs Beer, who described the project as a pipeline of panic. “That hope is false because the water is not there,” she said.
Ms Beer said Lake Eildon, the reservoir for the Goulburn River had not been full since 1996.
“The Murray Darling Basin is in crisis. The arrogant Brumby Government is treating the already stressed Murry-Goulburn system as a magic pudding. Government plans and promises will have the Goulburn supplying Melbourne, Geelong, Bendigo, Ballarat, Daylesford, Castlemaine, as well as irrigators and environmental water,” she said.
Stating that Goulburn River flow in the irrigation off season was 150megalitres a day, she warned when Melbourne needed water in very dry years more than twice the average flow of the river would be pumped.
“Melbourne Water intend to take 10gigalitres of the 30gigalitres environmental reserve kept in Eildon Weir to flush the river in case of blue-green algae bloom. There will be no savings till 2010 so they will pinch this crucial environmental water,” she said.
“Everyone needs to know there is no spare water to take the Goulburn system irrigators had only 29 per cent allocation last year and 49 per cent this year.”
Mrs Beer called on the government to look to other sustainable solutions for Melbourne.
“The government must implement measures such as increasing storages in wetter areas, recycling water, installing water tanks and collecting stormwater,” she said.
Accusing the government of “environmental vandalism”, she said the pipeline would cut through national parks and state forest without the protection of an environmental impact assessment.
“The pipeline is a billion dollar folly which will try to deceive Victorians into thinking that the water crisis is being addressed. This government just refused to listen and acknowledge that the storage facility which has to supply all these towns is drying up.”
Ms Beer said the protestors were all decent, hardworking country folk who had been denied a fair go and driven to civil disobedience. She said the project had now been referred to the Federal Minister under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, the first time they had had an opportunity for any input into the project.
The hope for many of the people who had travelled from as far away as Mildura, and just up the road from Dixons Creek, Steels Creek and Yarra Glen, where the route of the pipeline from Toolangi is yet to be announced, was that the people of Melbourne will rally with them to provide a more equitable water supply for the city dwellers.
With coverage by the four television stations highlighting the desperation of the rural along the proposed pipeline route are experiencing, the blockade may have served at least that purpose.