Potable water needs to be transported in concrete lined pipes or fiber glass pipe. My calculations on delivering steel pipe needed to handle volume involved was it was 5 times the cost of a canal.

Losses from canal are not high, in the Arizona desert they lose 3% in summer and 1% in winter for every 600km transit It is best to reduce this if you can but when you work out delivered water cost over 50 yrs canals come out in front.

I pretty much concur with you on your comments on optical fiber usage and am having my route identified in terms of broadband customers it will service. It is a difficult evaluation when Telstra won’t disclose much of their existing network.

Terry

potable water needs to be transported in condrete lined pipe. or fiber glass pipe. My calcualtions on delivering steel pipe needed to handle volume involved was it was 5 times the cost of a canal . Losses from canal are not high , in the Arizona desert they lose 3% in summer and 1% in winter for every 600km transit . It is best to reduce this if you can but when you work out delivered water cost over 50 yrs canals come out in front .
I pretty much concur with you on your comments on optical fiber usage and am having my route identified in terms of brodband customers it will service. It is a difficult evaluation when Telstra wont disclose much of their existing network

At times where steel is at is lowest price in a long while and the industry is struggling, the government is in an ideal position to put forward an oportunity to provide enclosed steel ducted above ground pipe lines from rivers such as the Burdiken river right through to Brisbane and inland areas of QLD and NSW. 2 x 2400mm runs, with drops at all needed areas would be a good starting point and would do wonders for thousands of people and many companies.

Use Australian steel, use australian workers, restrict tenders to Australian based companies, this would be money much better spent than on things like $900 payments to individuals.

Such a solution would provide long term viability for areas where water is not reaching. It would also extremely reduce the pressures on creating “solutions” that will not be environmentally friendly in the long term.

Run the pipelines inland, include a 96 SMOF, with OADM sites in every populated area, and AMP sites where there is no population. This would allow for the pipeline network to be remotely controlled and monitored, as well as provide high bandwidth solutions to regional areas from NQ through to NSW, and VIC if the line were to extend that far.

Set up a wholesale telco arm to the network that is NOT owned by any existing carriers and really stimulate broadband growth in regional australia.

Whats important is that the fibre network be classified primarilly as a management network for O&M on the pipeline, then treat the Broadband offshoot as a Secondary network (carrier grade) which is not trying to make enormous profits, but simply cover the O&M +20% margin on the network itself. This will entice carriers to deploy their own competitive infrastructure.

Saving water via reducing channel losses, introducing more efficient trickle or centre pivot irrigation is all well known technology that has been around for yonks. Unless growers are supported financially to introduce these efficiencies they may not take them on as they see reduced rainfall, higher summer temperatures, causing low availability of bulk water as their main future problem, not losses into farms.

You cant save what you don’t have!

The Murray Irrigation Authority is selling 42 GL of water rights for $70 million, who will be the main buyer? probably the Federal government. This is water the growers have not had decent allocations of for many years, and are unlikely to have in years to come. I don’t blame desperate growers selling assets to keep going, but the taxpayer seems to be paying for water that is a diminishing resource as southern rainfall reduces. Climate change experts are now talking about rates of sea level rise (from melting Glaciers etc) that indicate global warming is a concern and reduced rainfall in the south is likely This is all happening when export markets are developing for huge future volumes of agri produce. Countries such as China and India are growing a lot of their crops from reducing ground water resources, when this water drops to unsustainable levels who knows how they will feed themselves, and what moves they may make.. In the meantime each year we have huge volumes of northern monsoonal river water going to sea. We have the potential to economically tap into a portion of that resource, the same as the US Bureau of Reclamation did years back when they built lined canals to recover seasonal river water, to irrigate idle farm land. Suprisingly, evaporation losses of fast moving canal water is not high. The western states of USA are the food bowl of America, few know it, but the huge growth of states such as California came initially from canal water.

Terry Bowring

Thought you might be interested to see what is being done at the Dept of Electrical Engineering at Melbourne Uni. It is a very interesting project that has been going for sometime http://www.ee.unimelb.edu.au/research/cssip/res_projects/hybrid_sys/index.html

Use of the routes for fibre runs is also practical! What is not practical is the politics! A Federation suffers from state and territory rivalries; claims and counter claims for water based on where it falls, flows, or, is dammed depending on how it suits the local “pollie” or interest group.

Witness the North South pipeline in Victoria where it should be a win for rural and a win for metro. And that is within the one state. The mind boggles with the problems an interstate project proposal would bring about.

-Jeff

Seems better that handouts to be spend.

Who wants spending without rewards.

V

Last financial year agricultural exports helped pull our balance of payments into slightly positive territory as mining revenues plummeted. We need more than one major export industry to keep “Ship Australia” afloat. Un-subsidized agriculture exports has served us well for many years , it will continue to do so if commodities such as bulk water for agriculture and other industries can be strategically made available. Desalinated water is too expensive, water from the north is not.

Terry

Interesting,
This could support an inland fibre route picking up regional Qld Towns and leading to a connection with Darwin?
Regards,
Alan Taylor