Bligh heading for Marcoola mutiny | Coolum News | Local News in Coolum

Coast mobilises for a Traveston-style battle with the state government over desalination.

It might be a matter of when, not if, a desalination plant will be built at Marcoola, but residents are gearing up for a Traveston-style battle with the Bligh government to stop the project.

And, surprisingly, it seems ALP identity and councillor Debbie Blumel is leading the charge.

More than 200 people attended a meeting organised by Communities Against Desalination at Marcoola Surf Club on Monday night to hear Queensland Water Commission executive director Dan Spiller, environmental scientist Justin Holbrook, Maroochydore MP Fiona Simpson and Ms Blumel.

Without mentioning the premier by name, Ms Blumel urged the audience to “seriously question the decision makers” and to “challenge the population policies inflicted upon us”.

“It is time to stand up for your region and demand planning that respects the regional landscape, rather than planning that is driven by the development industry,” she said.

“Let’s talk about how we can have more population growth when there is insufficient water for the population we already have.”

Ms Blumel suggested a new definition of carrying capacity: “We have reached the carrying capacity of this land when we have to manufacture water to support further population growth.”

Under the draft SEQ Water Strategy’s population growth projections, by 2056, 30% of the region’s water would be manufactured through desalination.

“Let me be absolutely clear about this. South-east Queensland is unable to provide water for the future population unless we manufacture it using desalination,” she said.

“What kind of world are we creating here?”

She called for public support for a “paradigm shift” towards decentralised water technologies, such as Justin Holbrook’s water harvesting scheme at Coolum Ridges, and away from big desalination plants, big pipelines and grids.

“There is something scandalously wrong-headed about a water strategy that promotes desalination when 1400mm of pure, clean rain gushes down our pipes and gutters and washes into the sea while we plan to manufacture water via energy intensive, carbon-producing desalination,” she said.

The unfortunately named Mr Spiller took the audience through a power-point presentation of the draft SEQ Water Strategy and then took questions from the floor.

He said the two priority sites of Marcoola and Lytton, near the Brisbane River mouth, would undergo “several years” of detailed investigation in case either site had a “fatal flaw”.

“Each of these sites is not ideal. Each of them has issues that we need to understand fully, and to work out the extent to which they can be mitigated … or whether they can’t be mitigated. In which case we’ve got to move on,” Mr Spiller said.

According to Water Strategy projections, a desalination plant will be needed by 2017. This date is based on a water usage of 230 litres per person per day, a high population growth and climate change reducing the yield of dams and weirs by 10%.

The need for a plant could be deferred until 2022 if usage was reduced to 200 litres or less per person per day.

Mr Holbrook, who described himself as a “simple scientist”, said his water harvesting and wastewater reuse scheme planned for Coolum Ridges was a very simple solution to the region’s water needs.

“If you use it on all new developments, we mightn’t need desalination or anything else,” he said.

“You simply catch the water on your roof, you clean it up to a drinkable standard and you drink it.”