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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 11 Hansard (21 October) . . Page.. 3863 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

control centre, raising the wall of the Cotter Dam and building a new dam-options include another dam on the Cotter River or a dam on the Naas River or the Gudgenby River.

Dams have long been marvelled at as a symbol of the human mastery of nature and as a way for us to meet the growing needs and demands of our consumer lifestyle. They have also been responsible for widespread degradation, loss of fish and plant species, erosion of riverbanks and the salinity problems of Australia's river systems. Dams exert enormous control over river flow, and they interfere with natural flooding patterns, thus contributing to the loss of beneficial flooding.

All this has a serious effect on the regeneration of native ecosystems, such as the red river gums on the Murray River in Victoria and fish populations. Also, the costs of a new dam and other engineering solutions are extremely high. A new dam would cost many millions of dollars. A lot can be done to reduce consumption of water resources before we consider investing that money in engineering solutions. Many measures can be taken to address both supply side and demand side issues before we even think about a new dam.

If we invest this large amount of money in a dam, the amount of money available for other programs to reduce water demand would be severely limited. If we are serious about planning for the long term-the real long term-we cannot just build another dam every time our population and water use patterns threaten to stretch capacity.

At some point, albeit a distant point, we will run out of rivers to dam. We will have breached our water security by destroying the ecosystems. Then we will be asking many of the questions we are asking now; we will just have further damaged the rivers and ecosystems in coming full circle. Considering a dam as an option now is a knee-jerk, short-sighted and irresponsible answer to the water issue.

There are many ways we can reduce demand for water. They include:

  • increasing the number of rainwater tanks in existing houses;

  • having a water pricing structure that incorporates the full cost of provision, with appropriate discounts for low-income consumers;

  • extending Actew's Southwell Park grey water recycling system to new sites;

  • controlling irrigation systems to reduce unnecessary watering;

  • installing in new houses grey water reusing and rainwater retention systems;

  • making mandatory the installation of water efficient appliances in new houses, a good initiative being Queanbeyan's Waterwise program, where the council has covered the costs of new toilets and water efficient showerheads, reducing the amount of water going through sewerage treatment by 8 million litres a week-a simple but effective example of how to reduce use of water;

  • investigating all the environmental costs of water catchment management and factoring these into water charges;

  • allowing safe and reliable composting toilets in urban areas;

  • establishing a financial incentive scheme for the purchase by consumers of water efficient products, such as rainwater tanks and composting toilets; and

  • running effective education and regulation programs.

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