Beware the free meter installers

[Goldfreak]

There are private contractors doing the rounds at the moment offering to put free meters on your bores so you can " monitor your water use". Don't let them do this, they have no right to access your property and it is definately not for your benefit.

 

[robmoto]

All water should be monited as there are greedy people out there .

 

[Goldfreak]

Are you from the government ?

 

[Guest]

All water should be monited as there are greedy people out there .

Spies and snitch's are the worst kind of people when used for the wrong reasons. oop: :bomb:

 

[savage bitter]

All water should be monited as there are greedy people out there .

Spies and snitch's are the worst kind of people when used for the wrong reasons. oop: :bomb:

very true I agree

 

[RM Outback]

What State are you in Gf out of curiosity. Our boar is metered but the water is too high in iron. The boar has been in many years before we purchased I had it disconnected to save wasting money.

I did put in a new pump 2.5k or there abouts anyway I ran it for 10 days to pull in fresh water and then switched the outfall into the dam. Next day there was a Redfin floating belly up so we had test's done. Turns out it's so high in iron the recommendations say it's not to be used for any purpose other than watering stock only after settling in a dam/tank for a period of 1 month or longer, hence the disconnection.

 

[Goldfreak]

I am in SA at the moment. But my experience of what happened to farmers and small land holders in north queensland is why I know what they are up too.

 

[grubstake]

I am in SA at the moment. But my experience of what happened to farmers and small land holders in north queensland is why I know what they are up too.

For the benefit of those of us who don't have any idea what your warnings are all about, could you please be so good as to explain further.
Thanks.

 

[Goldfreak]

Sorry to be unclear grubstake. Its about putting a meter on your bore so they can charge you at a later date.

 

[grubstake]

So it's like the thin end of the wedge by the state government?

Thanks for the clarification, I'd thought maybe it was something to do with fracking or mining.

 

[Smoky bandit]

Lol..good luck with that. :lol: :Y:
They wont be touching mine.

 

[user 4386]

This has been the case in Victoria for a long time - underground water is treated as another commodity by the government, as is surface water. There is actually a valid case for monitoring (it is the charging that is contentious). Underground water does not just sit there under your land in most cases (it varies, water flow is complex), it flows in aquifers from other properties to yours, then on from your property to others. If it is pumped too heavily, you deprive farmers down-flow. Also, that pressure is keeping the rocks of the aquifer open - if you deplete the aquifer by over-use, the rocks of the aquifer can close up and once that occurs the situation cannot be reversed - the flow will be lower forever (so will directly affect you). If you are in a coastal area, the reduction in pressure can cause sea level to invade the aquifer under adjacent land, so the water becomes saline and useless (it is already tightly balanced in areas like Westernport Bay in Victoria). So again, it can affect you directly. In the USA they have permanently lost a lot of their underground water for this reason.

And of course monitoring does cost the government - meters are not free, but neither are the scientists and technicians involved in monitoring (which can involve complex computer modelling throughout areas of tens of thousands of sq km in single water flow systems in some cases). The water that you are pumping in some places, eg Western Queensland, is up to millions of years old, so you can be effectively mining water. Unfortunately this was not recognised in decades past, and it is difficult for consumers to get their head around changes related to what they have seen as "theirs" because it comes out of their bore. As for charging - well that is always an argument between users and government with anything.

Few things are as simple as they appear at first glance.

 

[Smoky bandit]

Well when you put it like that you can see why they may want to regulate large agricultural farms and their water use..
But for the average joe blow like me it's only used for washing machinery and watering a very small amount of livestock..It has saved me alot of money over the years especially when theres been no rain for long periods.

 

[Goldfreak]

Ironically the biggest user around ere is the government by a large margin but stillthe aquifer is healthy as its in a high rainfall and most of the market gardens in the district have ceased operations and become dripper fed vineyard

 

[user 4386]

Well when you put it like that you can see why they may want to regulate large agricultural farms and their water use..
But for the average joe blow like me it's only used for washing machinery and watering a very small amount of livestock..It has saved me alot of money over the years especially when theres been no rain for long periods.

It is all relative. On the scoria cones around here, average Joe Blows come to blows over other Joe Bloes destroying their flow from further up-slope. There are so many variables - big company cropping, family sheep farming on a hundred thousand hectares, growing berries on scoria cones and

 

[user 4386]

Well when you put it like that you can see why they may want to regulate large agricultural farms and their water use..
But for the average joe blow like me it's only used for washing machinery and watering a very small amount of livestock..It has saved me alot of money over the years especially when theres been no rain for long periods.

It is all relative. On the scoria cones around here, average Joe Blows come to blows over other Joe Bloes destroying their flow from further up-slope. There are so many variables - big company cropping, family sheep farming on a hundred thousand hectares, growing berries on scoria cones and potatoes downslope. It was not a value judgement, it was an explanation of why it is done that many people are unaware of. Obviously the average small farm bore is not the main concern, but there is an attempt to get as complete a database as possible - bores are one of the best "samples" that scientists can have to understand flow that they cannot see - there are other methods, electrical etc, which help fill in the flow between such bores.

Probably another thing that most people don't realise is that surface water and groundwater are continuous - pump too much water from bores and the rivers stop flowing. For a long time the government pushed the idea that Murray Basin salinity was caused by deforestation of the highlands - now known to be nonsense (the water in aquifers around Ouyen for example has taken 15,000 years to get there from the highlands and forestry was not an important industry in those days). It is an issue however on controlling salinity on the scale of your farm or along the side of a range of hills. The primary cause in areas like the Murray Basin is underground water at less than 30 m depth that has a salinity seven times that of sea water - in the 1970s we had very high rainfall that raised the water table by up to seven metres and it is only still slowly dropping - the salt from the water below was brought up into the grass roots as a result - flattish pans that used to give good wheat yields are now salt pans......this also impacts on the Murray, the sudden increase in its salinity near Red Cliffs is related to discharge of saline water from this aquifer at that point. We have modified drainage around Lake Corangamite in wet-as-buggery southern Victoria near Colac, and discharge there has caused it to have water much saltier than sea water (they also used to have a bit of a nitrate problem) - we can even see that from satellites.

The government is not only interested in the flow (and your consumption) from bores, but monitors variations in things like salinity, nitrates (eg from your pea crop), sulphates over time, to get advance warning of upcoming deterioration in the aquifer.

 

[user 4386]

Ironically the biggest user around ere is the government by a large margin but stillthe aquifer is healthy as its in a high rainfall and most of the market gardens in the district have ceased operations and become dripper fed vineyard

Things work on all scales - much of the water in southwest Queensland (e.g. Eromanga) originated at least hundreds of thousands of years ago on the Great Dividing Range. Some areas are a real balancing act. others have little problem.

 

[Goldfreak]

Ironically the biggest user around ere is the government by a large margin but stillthe aquifer is healthy as its in a high rainfall and most of the market gardens in the district have ceased operations and become stripper fed vineyard

edit dripper fed :8

Mod Edit.
Fixed.
Wondered what was going on there. :awful:

 

[user 4386]

Does anyone know how to completely remove a post when it duplicates (as occurred here)? I tried editing by removing al words, but of course that does not clear anything because the blank version is not accepted and it reverts.l

 

[7.62marksman]

hit the report button and the mods remove it for you