Day six of Steve Posselt's Journey up the Goulburn River
Steve encounters many logs
Report by Giovanni Ebono
Steve left behind the politicians talking to their rural constituents and
headed up the river, leaving us to pick up some documentary footage of the
Shepparton fruit cannery and do an interview with his old mate, Allen
Gale.
For ten years Allen Gale has worked for Goulburn Valley Water. He retired
yesterday as general manager of technical services. Before he left he was
interviewed for Cry Me a River the documentary about Australia’s water
crisis being produced by Steve Posselt’s Kayak 4 Earth.
In the interview he said that he disagrees with Posselt’s claim that to pump water out of a river basin for use in another valley is a loss to the river system as a whole. “That assumes that there is one hundred percent efficiency in the basin itself,” he said in the interview.
I discussed Steve's response that any use of water in a basin ultimately results in that water remaining in the basin in some form or another, whether it is stored in trees, ground water, wetlands or the river itself. Ultimately, I put it to Allen, Steve would say that except for the water that evaporates into the atmosphere water cannot be lost from the basin.
“That assumes that activity in the basin is one hundred percent efficient,” he said, "but in reality there are inefficiencies and the water is lost."
We tossed around that concept for a while, because the notion that water is lost assumes that it needs to be kept in the irrigation system, or in the river for it not to be lost.
Allen understands the issue. He is not proposing, like one of the dairy farmers we spoke to yesterday that any water that goes to sea or into a wetland is lost. He understands that groundwater and rivers are interconnected so he is not saying that water which soaks into the land is lost."
In the end, I dropped the line of questioning because there is a disconnect between the water engineer's notion that the water can be "lost" by escaping from the system somehow and the acknowledgement that the river system is an interconnected whole.
I think it is better for Steve and Allen, as old mates, to sort that out themselves.
Monsieur Hulot
One thing I found interesting talking to Allen was his crisp, engineers' view of efficiency. New water meters, lined channels, remote controlled gates all make it possible to have greater control over the water by knowing where it is at any time. The old style of irrigation has a lot of random, uncontrolled elements that lead to water simply lying around in the environment doing whatever it wants.
I evoked the imagery of the French film Mon Oncle, where the old France of corner cafe's sleepy villages and rustic peace collides with the modern industrial France of plastic factories and gadgetry.
"Exactly," said Allen, "and the sad thing is that many of the older farmers will be pushed aside by the advance of progress. There is always a cost of change and that uproots people and causes hardship. At the end of the day, though, it is better to know exactly what resources we have so that we can control them precisely."
I guess that is as good a point as any to rest this particular part of the case.
Read more at http://www.kayak4earth.com/
