Victoria's Water Shortages and/or Drought

Clickbait on 13/05/2025 - 09:56
Last edited 13/05/2025 - 09:57

Since the vistorian drought ended in 2009 population has increased from 4.1 million to 5.3 million. Call it 25%.
During that drought state governments built the North South Pipeline at around $750 Million, which was never used, and has not been used since.

They also built the desalination Plant for about $4 BILLION, and produced about 0.45 Megalitres vs Thompson Dam at 1,068,000 Megalitre capacity.

And that not going to do a whit to add to Melbourne's water future.
So when they start tslking about essential unfrastructure, like tunnels, ask them why they have ignored protecting and building our future.

No worries, 3 minute showers will do it again. and thank god we have our drought proof gardens.
Or maybe the government could introduce a solar type scheme, where they would subsidise installation of solar connected pumps to push tank water into the grid, and pay us a FIT.

Home & Garden Water Supply

Comments

  • Gdsamp on 13/05/2025 - 09:58
    +30

    Ok

  • jv on 13/05/2025 - 09:59
    +3

    Victoria's water shortages and/or drought

    Didn't Labor pay billions for a desaliation plant that can provide unlimited amounts of fresh water????????????????????

    • oscargamer on 13/05/2025 - 10:06

      To metro … where the labour voters reside

      • jv on 13/05/2025 - 10:16
        +6

        They can transport the water using their $200 billion rail loop…

      • ThithLord on 13/05/2025 - 11:27
        +18

        Someone stop the press, the water is going to where the people?! live? STOP THE COUNT

        • oscargamer on 13/05/2025 - 11:34
          -3

          Hmmmm. Typical city centric thinking. Where does most of our milk/beef/other meat/grain/veges etc come from? Massive amounts of water are needed to produce food.

          • ThithLord on 13/05/2025 - 11:39
            +1

            @oscargamer: Still salty about Emperor Albo's return to Office?

            • oscargamer on 13/05/2025 - 13:39

              @ThithLord: Both sides are as bad as each other

              • ThithLord on 13/05/2025 - 14:26
                +3

                @oscargamer: Embarrassing statement. One Nation voter, huh?

                • oscargamer on 13/05/2025 - 16:36

                  @ThithLord: No . I voted liberal, but they are as bad as each other. Labor have put us in massive debt. Libs are too scared to actually do anything

                  • try2bhelpful on 13/05/2025 - 17:57
                    +11

                    @oscargamer: Libs are too busy listening to shock jocks and Sky After Dark. Even after the hiding the electorate gave them Ley was banging on about flags today. Actually the LNP put us in massive debt and gave us 6% inflation as a FU before handing over to the ALP at the last election.

                    What on earth do you think the LNP were too scared to give us? The complete insanity that is Trump?

                  • buckster on 13/05/2025 - 22:14
                    +17

                    @oscargamer: Of the ~970billion debt, the liberals were behind about 700-750billion of it.

                  • smartazz104 on 15/05/2025 - 07:15

                    @oscargamer:

                    Libs are too scared to actually do anything

                    That's the conservative's MO; do nothing.

                    • Randolph Duke on 15/05/2025 - 12:19
                      +1

                      @smartazz104:

                      That's the conservative's MO; do nothing.

                      Now now, that's a bit unfair. There's culture wars and dog whistling to do!

                • brendanm on 13/05/2025 - 17:03
                  -1

                  @ThithLord: They are, in the way that neither of them have policies to do anything that I care about. Voting for either is pissing in the wind.

                  • ThithLord on 14/05/2025 - 08:24
                    +1

                    @brendanm: You don't want manufacturing in Australia? Yikes

                    • brendanm on 14/05/2025 - 09:52

                      @ThithLord: Where did I say that?

                      It just looks ridiculous to make random statements when there are so many policies to choose from.

              • Protractor on 13/05/2025 - 18:43
                +1

                @oscargamer: aagh the old LNP mating call

                • Muppet Detector on 13/05/2025 - 23:43

                  @Protractor: None of them have managed to recover from Julia Gillard's "contributions".

                  She dropped us so far in the poop, I'm not sure that anybody will ever be able to.

                  • Protractor on 14/05/2025 - 10:22
                    -1

                    @Muppet Detector: Not long now to endure the pain. Just under 3 more years. By then you'll be robust enough to handle the next 3 years of the ALP, as gifted by the LNP circus.. And by then the Libs with have had 5 more leaders, and be so far to the right Matt Spannerhands & Barnacle Joyce will be considered radical lefties.

                    • smartazz104 on 15/05/2025 - 07:16

                      @Protractor:

                      And by then the Libs with have had 5 more leaders

                      It's the 1980's all over again. I wonder who will be leader twice before becoming PM this time…

          • Parentheses on 14/05/2025 - 20:01
            +2

            @oscargamer: Lol… Look at the water requirements for irrigation, and the water requirements for urban populations. A desal plant can supply enough to keep people in a city alive. It won't do squat for agriculture, might as well try filling up a new swimming pool by spitting in it.

            • oscargamer on 14/05/2025 - 21:51
              -1

              @Parentheses: Yes agreed. Where did I say otherwise?

              • Parentheses on 14/05/2025 - 22:18
                +2

                @oscargamer: Option one is you did not know. Option two is you did know, but didn't realise how that being reality makes your statement pointless.

                We had the money to build a desal plant so that the humans don't die from lack of water in a drought. We never had the money to irrigate enough agricultural land in a drought to make any difference at all. So the fact cows need water means jack. In a drought, the cows will die, the people will live (on desal water and stored food if we somehow can't import), and anyone who thinks it should be the other way around is batshit.

                • tenpercent on 15/05/2025 - 08:00
                  -1

                  @Parentheses: Now add non-agricultural animals and plants into the mix and give us your ranking. Humans then agriculture then natural ecosystems? Or Humans then natural ecosystems then agriculture? Or natural ecosystems then humans then agriculture?

                  • Parentheses on 15/05/2025 - 12:55
                    -1

                    @tenpercent: Eh, the native Australian ecosystem is better at being drought resistant than anything we might do to help it. Though sucking the rivers dry for cotton is a dumb idea. Humans then natural then ag sounds solid to me.

    • Herbs on 14/05/2025 - 19:47

      Not enough question marks.

  • pinchies on 13/05/2025 - 10:07
    +16

    I don't understand. You've indicated two pieces of major infrastructure the state gov has invested in to prepare for future water needs / potential droughts — that have (thankfully) not been needed so far. So what is the issue?

    And that not going to do a whit to add to Melbourne's water future.

    And how do you come to that conclusion? What are you calculating is the maximum supply capacity of those pieces of infrastructure?

      • Muppet Detector on 13/05/2025 - 23:48

        But Julia Gillard did fix up the schools.

        She gave them all $3million dollar sheds (that too many couldn't even use) and BYOD to every student, even to schools and communities who didn't have the infrastructure or skills to support those devices and didn't do anything to stop them selling the devices when they took them home.

        • jv on 14/05/2025 - 00:12
          -2

          and BYOD to every student

          my kids didn't get one.

          • Muppet Detector on 14/05/2025 - 00:17

            @jv: Neither did some of mine. Private school. Realised they didn't have the infrastructure to support them so the school used the money to upgrade their infrastructure and then put the onus on the students/parents to provide their own.

            Maybe your school did that?

            A lot of regional schools didn't. Some didn't even have internet at home so the kids couldn't use their devices at school or at home.

            To make matters worse, lots of reports from teachers telling students to "take out your devices" only to be told "mum hocked it when I took it home". Some cynics suggested this was to fund dope, cigarettes and alcohol.

  • djones145 on 13/05/2025 - 10:15
    +5

    cool bananas

    man yells at cloud?

  • SBOB on 13/05/2025 - 10:16
    +15

    They also built the desalination Plant for about $4 BILLION, and produced about 0.45 Megalitres

    I'm impressed that you didn't even attempt to sanity check your numbers, and just stick with showing you don't know how to do maths.

    (Go work out where you got this daily figure from, and then go work out how many decimal places you're out by.)

    It's about 450ML daily capacity, not 450kL as you've posted.

    (Meanwhile comparing with a dams static maximum volume is just idiotic)

    • Clickbait on 13/05/2025 - 10:53
      -8

      We can only pray for that.
      No evidence of actual working functionality anywhere unless you can help

      • SBOB on 13/05/2025 - 12:44
        +5

        No evidence of actual working functionality anywhere unless you can help

        the ENTIRE point of a desal plant is that it operates when required based on the weighing up of availability of other water sources vs running costs of desalination.

        We dont 'value' treated water as highly as we should, so there's no point running a desal plant (apart from its required maintenance running) during times when there are cheaper/available water sources.
        But when those become less available or restricted, the desal plant can run to produce treated water (though at a higher cost compared to a WTP operating from other water sources, along with potentially higher distribution costs depending on its location within the reticulation network)

        But you cant build a desal plant in a day, so you need future planning, with the knowledge that water resources are becoming more scarce (plus higher population water requirements) so building these for future use seems like a 'good' idea as the desal cost vs water availability ratio wont always be what it is during non-drought times.

      • Protractor on 13/05/2025 - 18:44
        +2

        Baseload water supply

    • mskeggs on 13/05/2025 - 11:35
      +1

      Also seems to be conflating total storage of a dam with daily production of the desal.
      A better measure would be what daily consumption is, to understand what percentage the desal can contribute.

      • pjetson on 13/05/2025 - 16:11
        +5

        to understand what percentage the desal can contribute

        According to Melbourne Water, the Victorian Desalination Plant can deliver up to 150 billion litres of high-quality drinking water a year. That’s one-third of Melbourne’s needs.

    • JIMB0 on 13/05/2025 - 12:10

      Maybe they should have spent more on education.

      • Protractor on 13/05/2025 - 18:45

        You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them understand the hydro-logical cycle

    • brendanm on 13/05/2025 - 17:04
      +1

      You are talking to the guy who doesn't understand tax basics.

  • wannagrababargain on 13/05/2025 - 10:18
    +7

    Username checks out

  • GordonD on 13/05/2025 - 10:48
    +9

    SA had a drought.

    So they built a big desalination plant, then to be sure to be sure they made it even bigger.

    By which time the drought was over, so they never turned it on. Well, they did, but just in minimum output maintenance mode.

    Now a decade later we've got the next drought, they've been able to just turn it on because it is there ready this time.

    Probably the only criticism of it would be that by building it on Adelaide's outskirts it has been able to contribute nothing to what is becoming a permanent and increasing water shortage in other parts of the state. Interesting isn't it. The southern half of the continent, where most of the population is can't get enough water, while the northern half doesn't know what to do with the floodwater.

    Could be worse though, this isn't WA. But, hey, just keep increasing the population with a bigger immigration program than any other country in the world to make it look like the economy is healthy because the GDP is growing. Desalination plants just fool people into thinking the country can support an ever bigger population. But they do it by consuming huge amounts of energy. Sure, they say its renewable energy, but it uses up that. meaning less is available for other things, and more non-renewable energy has to be produced for them.

    • Clickbait on 13/05/2025 - 11:08
      -2

      As I understand it, WA has a serious problem because most of their water is underground. no dams to speak of. And They probably need a nation building program like piping water down from the north.
      Why wouldn't they do it?

      • GordonD on 13/05/2025 - 11:16

        You mean "why didn't they do it".

        It was planned. Then when they looked at the cost, they decided on desalination in the south was cheaper than a thousands of kilometres long pipeline. With pumps along it to keep the water flowing. Which is a curious decision given that that's exactly how Kalgoorlie gets its water.

        And, another correction, most of WA's water used to be underground. But, at least in the south, they are pumping too much of it out too fast. Underground water that was there from millions of years of rain isn't a sustainable basis for a growing city that's using it far faster than the aquifer is being refilled.

      • Protractor on 13/05/2025 - 11:38

        Because they are not idiots. And stealing from one part of the country because the overpopulated area has run out of options is transferring stupidity.

      • jackspratt on 14/05/2025 - 14:24

        Is that you, Ernie Bridge?

        • Clickbait on 14/05/2025 - 14:30

          My bad. I don't get it

    • ozb1ozb2ozb3 on 14/05/2025 - 15:00
      +1

      A desalination plant is like an insurance policy - hoped to never be used. We've been lucky that it's seen little use. I would much rather it sit idle and rust than ever have to rely on it at full capacity.

  • Xetrok on 13/05/2025 - 10:51
    +3

    What's your thoughts on aliens and 5G?

    • Clickbait on 13/05/2025 - 11:02
      +1

      They are inextricable. The aliens are running the climate change industry by remote, so they can rid the atmosphere of Carbon dioxide, before they expose themselves and take over.
      When it comes, remember "Klaatu barada nikto"
      It could save your life
      No need to thank me

      • BoltThrower on 13/05/2025 - 11:18

        Klaatu Barada N… necktie… nectar… nickel… noodle.

        • Porker on 13/05/2025 - 12:31
          +2

          Shop Smart… Shop S-Mart…

      • Protractor on 13/05/2025 - 11:40

        What no potatoes?

    • jv on 14/05/2025 - 00:13

      What's your thoughts on aliens and 5G?

      Aliens have already moved onto 6G technology.

  • Protractor on 13/05/2025 - 10:56

    What's the agenda this time? Trump will fix it?Drill baby drill? Dress in black at a war memorial and do a rain dance, while booing the sky?

    Give you credit, you've rightfully highlighted the greatest threat to us and the planet.The overpopulation of 'us' and massive wanton wastage of finite water in the driest continent on earth.(It's ok though, our mining customers products are all squeaky clean, on arrival)

    Should we follow Herr Musk the saluting wig rack's, lead and breed like rabbits? See how that ends up
    .Aaagh yes dams on dying rivers. The perfect solution for a AGW induced drought.And to think, the right want to go nuclear and there's SFA water to run 1 successfully,let alone 7.Unless of course us plebs give up water entirely.Now there's a thought….

    • tenpercent on 15/05/2025 - 07:57

      AGW induced drought.

      Source?

      Australia, of which Victoria is a part of, has been a land of drought and flooding rains for millenia.

  • freefall101 on 13/05/2025 - 11:15
    +7

    The main problem is that every few years we have a change in government, and they decide to handle the murray-darling basin differently. And it's back and forth, changing policy and rorts in terms of who is getting paid what (like a company Angus Taylor was a director for getting paid $80m, signed off by Barnaby Joyce). There hasn't been any kind of consistent policy. It's made worse by needing to get the federal government and a few states to agree on anything at any given time.

    Any time there's talk of cutting allocations, it's "think of the farmers!", so we buy it off them and subsidise them to use less water as a short term solution, with no long term solution in sight. Because this isn't one you can blame on immigrants, OP, this is purely that agriculture used to have near unlimited rights to use water from the basin and it wasn't ever sustainable.

    The desal plant and north-south pipelines are good ideas. They're there to be used when necessary, not on a whim to win political points. It's one of the few times the state government thought through a problem and planned for the worst.

    • Clickbait on 13/05/2025 - 12:01

      You are right about Barnaby. He should have been drawn and quartered for what he did to northern NSW farmers.
      And I am not having a go about immigrants. I am having a go at governments wasting billions on road and rail projects, and turning a blind eye, to the population growth they were targetting.
      I also make a previous comment about piping water in WA. The same applies here. We could turn our entire country into a giant world farm. Thet would be nation building

      • Protractor on 13/05/2025 - 12:11

        We could turn our entire country into a giant world farm. Thet would be nation building

        What utter garbage.Computer (and almost all levels on non cooker(actual) science says no.We need to breed less humans, not more gardens. Save simplistic fantasies like yours for Elons Mars mission. In the mean time let the Yanks do this sort of CF and watch how it goes.

      • freefall101 on 13/05/2025 - 12:15
        +1

        Australia is mostly desert, where exactly is all this water coming from to turn it into a farm?

        And I think you missed the difference between city use and agricultural use. 3/4 of water used in Australia is agriculture, industry uses a bunch of it too, domestic home use is pretty tiny. These incredibly expensive plans to supply cities are because if people run out of water then they start dying quickly, and we like our lifestyles.

        You can't use the same plan to supply people with water to supply agriculture with water. The demand is significantly higher and the cost will quickly mean it's not worth it.

      • tenpercent on 13/05/2025 - 14:38

        I am skeptical the entire country, but there is plenty of desert that could be re-greened. https://www.goodstartpackaging.com/blog/greening-the-desert-…

        • Protractor on 13/05/2025 - 16:45

          Using finite water in a drying climate . What could possibly go wrong?

          https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-29/calls-to-investigate-…

          • Clickbait on 13/05/2025 - 17:07

            @Protractor: That's draining aquifers.
            Did they think water invented itself underground?
            Australia has the distance and terrain to drain water from Lake Argyle to Perth and beyond. installing inline hydro as they go, feeding every town along its path and eliminating all the "pipedream" ambitions of solar and wind.
            Expensive, but governments love spending other peoples money, and this has a hundred year life

            • Protractor on 13/05/2025 - 17:29

              @Clickbait: Dream on white boy, dream on black girl and wake up to a brand new dream
              To find your dreams have washed away
              Why did the WA govt just set up an expensive new bore-field around Kununnurra if there is mega surface water water to spare?
              Do you think a local hort industry who invested in this water source for generations wants Perth golf courses and mines along the way to steal it all?
              Show me any feasibility study(there have been dozens) where this stacks up. It's as loony tunes as tidal energy at Derby or going nuclear.
              Solar & wind is here to stay. Harnessing the abundance of hot air from the dream network is next.

          • tenpercent on 13/05/2025 - 17:45

            @Protractor: I'm not suggesting using any water apart from what falls out of the sky onto the ground and then mostly evaporates. Let it go through a tree or a bush or some grass first before the evaporation step. No water is created nor destroyed in permaculture.

            • Protractor on 13/05/2025 - 18:49

              @tenpercent: You do know that what you take from the sky,doesn't run off into creeks,rivers and dams?
              Evaporation becomes rain. Without the trees and bushes the transpiration component of creating moisture and rain is missing. Meaning even less rain.You know why they call rain forests rain forests?
              I have never seen a single permaculture setup outside of the tropics that doesn't use more water than it should to produce food.Most of permaculture practitioners don't monitor(measure) the water they use.They are hippies .

  • pjetson on 13/05/2025 - 11:19
    +3

    Melbourne water says that the desalination plant has produced 455 GL of water since 2017.

  • ifyareckon on 13/05/2025 - 12:23
    +5

    50Gl of water has been ordered by he government from the desalination plant for the 2025/26 financial year. Looks like you can continue the long showers!

  • CodeXD on 13/05/2025 - 13:39
    +4

    This is like "bought a fire blanket and never used it"

    Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

    • Clickbait on 13/05/2025 - 16:32

      Agreed. Like the Melbourne Star, AKA ferris wheel.

      • does it matter on 14/05/2025 - 12:13
        +1

        One could argue we never needed that!

  • tenpercent on 13/05/2025 - 14:33

    Maybe Victoria can take a sheet of toiler paper out of NSW's efforts?… Get the plebs to drink sh*t and p!ss water!

    But whatever you do, don't call it Recycled Sewer Water because then that's too obvious what you're doing. You have to call it Purified Recycled Water… ahhhh now that has friendly fresh clean cool zen vibes to it. But don't let the name fool you, it's actually just sewer water diverted into the water treatment plants, alongside water from pristine world heritage listed national parks.

    It's almost like it's absolutely pointless having designated special protected areas "to protect water quality" if they're going to allow people to literally sh*t and p!ss into the public's water source at the same time.

    But if using remnant human excrement water to rinse the soap from your face in the shower doesn't bother you, it'll also be chock full of industrial chemicals too. PFOA, PFAS, BPA, pthalates, lead and other nasty chemicals that residential homes and industrial facilities wash down their drains. You can bet 'acceptable' limits wil be redefined.

    • Gdsamp on 13/05/2025 - 19:46
      -1

      Please bro the level of estrogen in the water is safe bro just drink the fluoridated water

    • does it matter on 14/05/2025 - 12:16

      Yeah, I distill my water, then add the nutrients I need myself. When you see how much crap is in the water you drink, omg its insane. I also can harvest water from the atmosphere using a dehumidifier which I run 24/7 then distill it so its clean and safe to drink. So as long as I have power I have water.

      • Protractor on 14/05/2025 - 13:16
        +1

        and you eat lab made food,& never eat commercial meat or veges?
        Water is what % of your actual daily nutritional intake?

        • does it matter on 14/05/2025 - 13:45
          +1

          No, buy organic where possible, drink fermented grape juice and drink 4-5 litres of water a day. Look in to the diseases and symptoms of metals in water supplies, along with all the other crap. You dont realise how sick you were until you are well.

          • Protractor on 14/05/2025 - 13:56
            +1

            @does it matter: I'm hoping beer kills the water greeblies.Will step it up to 4-5litres a day, give the old girl a proper flushing.
            Make sure your organic sources walk the talk. Check them out. Why pay for half the benefit?

  • McMaferMur on 13/05/2025 - 15:00
    +2

    and dont forget debt level of victoria is the biggest in australia's state

  • Protractor on 13/05/2025 - 16:42
    +1

    vistorian drought

  • brad1-8tsi on 13/05/2025 - 19:52

    I worked for NSW's buk water supplier for 13 years. We built lots of infrastructure preparing for the next drought and growing cities. Most of it isn't advertised or has a press release about it as it's too boring and doesn't make good press.

    I imagine the Victorian water supply is equally boring.

    • JIMB0 on 14/05/2025 - 08:42
      +2

      There were a lot of water saving projects undertaken in Victoria. Most of it was boring stuff such as covering open reservoirs and channels to prevent evaporation. Or diverting water from sample lines and PRVs back into the system instead of the drain.

  • Protractor on 14/05/2025 - 09:32

    The stupidity in this country knows no bounds>
    Wilful Waste On Inedible Crops

  • TrumpisKing on 14/05/2025 - 11:06

    Ok

  • does it matter on 14/05/2025 - 12:12
    +2

    Why has no one discussed the Rain Making Act of the Victorian Parliament yet? You do realise there is no need for droughts yeah?

    • does it matter on 14/05/2025 - 13:47
      +2

      To the neg voter - maybe look at it for yourself.

      https://www.legislation.vic.gov.au/in-force/acts/rain-making…

      He who controls the weather controls the world. This drought is an avoidable event.

      • LFO on 15/05/2025 - 12:56
        +1

        This drought is an avoidable event

        Agree but doing something about, planning ahead, is beyond the current vision.

        The Dutch needed usable land so they build dikes. Lots of them.
        The Aussies suffer flood after flood after flood after flood, so they build … nothing!!!!!!!

        Note: very revealing the rain making legislation is actual and factual. Thank you.

        • does it matter on 15/05/2025 - 15:40
          -1

          Not just a conspiracy. Its why any time someone talks about climate change they don't question whether we have been creating this chaos or not. Or why they sit on their hands now. Personally, once you see the skies, know what a truly clear and natural day looks like then you can tell every other day isnt right. Victoria was the state that had "thunderstorm asthma" which killed many people, at the same time huge weather event and as an asthmatic I can feel the air so sensitively. Humidity, dry, dust, pollution… that day was not normal air… lives were lost and the government never gets asked if they were doing any weather modification at that time.

          Also, tassie flooded because the owners of the Hyrdo seeded clouds during a storm. Channel 7 reported it. No one cares and they keep getting away with this destruction.

  • borrisz0r on 14/05/2025 - 12:58

    Username checks out

  • LFO on 14/05/2025 - 13:14
    +1

    Victorians (and, just recently, most Australians) voted for Labor. Again. That is the reason.

    The self fulfilling prophecy is near, prepare for shortages of everything (water, electricity, gas …)

    • Protractor on 14/05/2025 - 13:19

      Of course,you are 100% correct. If you completely ignore conspiracy,physics,and supply and demand

      • tenpercent on 14/05/2025 - 13:52
        +1

        and demand

        It's good that you mention the elephant in the room that almost always gets left out of the conversations… demand.

        +38 net migrants per month, most ending up in Victoria followed by NSW.

        I just don't know how we could possibly slow down the growing demand for every bloody thing. /s

        • Protractor on 14/05/2025 - 14:01

          Easy. Breed less humans and turn off the elephant in your room. Doing 1 without the other is a bandaid on a brain tumour.
          We must be a land of cretins to have accepted that big Australia is in any way shape or form, beneficial or sustainable. But hey,it makes the exporters and miners rich by milking the sacred cow quicker.And they pay the bribes. All the punters need to do is breed for $$, work themselves to death and vote like zombies.

          • LFO on 15/05/2025 - 13:03

            @Protractor:

            Breed less humans

            More practical but far less acceptable alternative: terminate mentally ill, all terminally ill, vegetating elders, perennially ill, the_nonproductive too …

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