"Don't Dam the Donnelly" provides a forum for opponents of the Southern Forests Irrigation Scheme to
01/08/2023
Herewith the link to the Premier's press release arising from the Reference Group report.
The Cook Government will invest up to $15.3 million in key initiatives to improve water security for horticultural growers in the Manjimup-Pemberton region.
06/07/2023
From the Manjimup-Bridgetown Times last week. Rick Wilson whingeing that the Federal Government won't quarantine funds for an unspecified project after the abject failure of his last pet project, the Southern Forest Irrigation Scheme. He refuses to accept the CSIRO findings that the SFIS was based on fundamentally flawed science and yet expects people to take him seriously.
17/05/2023
Federal funding cancelled.
It's taken a while, but under the cover of Budget darkness the rash promise of millions of Federal taxpayers dollars for this scheme has finally been formally withdrawn with the simple statement, "The Australian Government’s $39.7 million commitment to this project has been cancelled." https://www.nationalwatergrid.gov.au/projects/southern-forests-irrigation-scheme
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The Southern Forests Irrigation Scheme is a proposal to:
- construct 15 gigalitre (that’s 15,000,000,000 litres) storage dam on Record Brook, the construction of which will require the destruction of 160 hectares of forest, with associated flora and fauna.
- draw 9.3 gigalitres of water per year from the Donnelly River and pump it to this storage dam. (The original plan was to build a concrete weir across the Donnelly River to facilitate that extraction. This plan has now been modified, such that a dam on the Donnelly will no longer be required, although details remain unclear.)
- install power supply towers, pumping stations and 253 km of pipeline to redistribute 9 gigalitres of water per year to between 60 and 70 users in East Manjimup
- do all of this with a massive tax-payer subsidy of $60,000,000. (That’s 6 taxpayer dollars for every $1 contributed by the proposed users of this water.)
- deprive agricultural and horticultural producers in West Manjimup of access to water for the same kind of activities which this scheme would support in West Manjimup. These self-supply producers use water with minimal environmental impact, and at no cost to the taxpayer.
