Logging and Water Loss
- The next drought is only one El Nino away. Water will always be in greater demand as it is a finite quantity. Every litre is valuable and can be often used and reused until it evaporates or is lost. Licences are highly prized and theft of water is rampant in the Murray Darling Basin.
- EVERY user of water pays for it, with a large component of their quarterly bill going into the ongoing maintenance of the infrastructure –reservoirs, dams, pipelines, drainage etc. Yet Vic Forests (and their interstate counterparts) are not required to pay a cent! Why is this so, particularly when their operations account for a 30% loss of water to our catchments?
- The most recent (Dec 2018) average price of water to landowner drawing from the Murray Darling Basin stretching from Queensland to Adelaide was approximately $3030 per 1 million litres of water.
- In a study in 2011, the amount of water lost due to logging was scientifically estimated by government researchers at15, GL of water per annum
- In a comprehensive Nov.2018 research paper ‘Resource Conflict in Forested Water Catchment’ published by the Australian National University, focusing on logging and water yield loss in the Thompson Water catchment, the authors concluded that past logging operations in this catchment have led to an annual loss of 15,368 ML in water yield.
- This loss in water yield is from the Thompson Catchment alone!
- Based on the average cost to the farmer $3030 per 1 million litres of water, that constitutes a total loss to the Victorian economy of $46,565.04 each year
- Who ends up paying for this water loss? We all do!!
- It should be a legislated requirement for Vic Forests (and their interstate counterparts) to pay back to their respective State Governments for the loss of water yield to our catchments.
- The domestic user and farmer pays for every drop of water they use or waste. Why then is the Forestry Industry in various states exempt from their responsibilities to pay for water loss for all the years they have logged our native forests?
- It should not be WE who pays for this loss in water yield -as we no doubt do at present – by way of ever rising quarterly bills
- When the earth is raised bare by clear-felling, bulldozing and burning our native forests, the water loses to the environment amount to at least 30% of the previous total
- Thirty percent compounded year on year amounts to mega litres and gig litres. Farmers who use extraction from the rivers for irrigation must pay for every litre. Trading in water amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars.
- Why then should forestry practices that deplete our streams, not be charged for compounding losses they cause? The answer is simple. It would be unsustainable!
- Accurate hydrological values and measures should clearly calculate losses that are offset against any clear-fell industrial scale logging operations in all catchments of our rivers and streams: Precisely as was done, in the extensive 2018 ANU study of the Thompson Catchment here in Victoria.
- Logging operators must themselves insist on large scale plantation logging in preference to current practices in our native forests.
- Stranded assets and loss of employment will result unless alternatives are developed as clear-fell logging in our native forests is phased out.
- The move toward alternative forms of harvesting in native forest (selective logging) and plantation timber should be driven by the board of Forests and Reserves, Victoria and the forest industry itself.
- As is the requirement mining companies, logging contractors should also be required to pay a bond for any losses or damage to the landscape. After-all it is CROWN (public) land where they operate from.
- Clear-fell logging is another form of exploiting resources and like mining contracts, should include the cost of rehabilitation.to its original state.
- The practice clear-fell logging is incompatible to the principals of either restoration or rehabilitation
- Water losses are permanent for at least 60 years. They only start positive improvement 30 years from this time – period, where they reach equivalent water values.
- It takes approximately 30-40 years after forest is logged, for average water yields to return to 50% of pre – logged status and another
- It takes 150 -200 years for water yield levels to return to their pre-logging state.
- Victoria has some of the most pristine water in the world and its capital city- Melbourne- a city with 5 million people and growing, reaps this reward. A key reason for this is that the city’s first water infrastructure planners closed many of the key water catchments to recreational and industrial use (such as logging).
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