Self induced water shortage

If there ever was a good reason to hand control of the nations waterways to the federal government it is the this news from the ACT;

A report from the Canberra branch of Engineers Australia said environmental flows last year from two key reservoirs to maintain the Cotter and Queanbeyan rivers had “seriously reduced the total quantity of water held in reservoirs”.

“As a result, it has been necessary to impose severe restrictions on water used by ACT and region consumers,” the report said.

A 2004 ACT Government report found that the ACT was allocating more than half of its total water resources to environmental flows, providing an average of 272 gigalitres to the environment out of the average 494 gigalitres available. I smell a greenie somewhere.

A spokeswoman for Chief Minister Jon Stanhope said yesterday: “A lot has changed since then.” Since the report was written, the ACT has come out of the drought, the Government has reduced its environmental flows, making more water available to the community, and water has been sent from the Cotter River to the Googong River.

I bet we never hear who authorised more than 50% of Canberra’s water reserved being released as ‘environmental flow’ at a time when the community were under water restrictions.