A bit of fact checking!
In Seymour Hersh's book, reviewed in my previous post, he makes a huge amount of comments about the fact checking to which his work was quite justifiably subjected.
When I read a story on the ABC website about a town called Murrurundi running out of water I got interested and decided to check it out. The town is located in the Upper Hunter as shown by the orange polygon in this map of the State Suburb of Murrurundi from Census Table Builder.
About the only place in the area I had heard of is Scone, shown in the lower part of the map, adjacent to the big dam at Glenbawn. From the 2016 Census there are 1037 people, of whom about 20% are aged under 20, resident in ther State Suburb. I'd expect that a fair proportion of them live in the town, but there will be a few living on properties in the Hinterland.
Google Maps produces this map of the town
I assume the town dam is the blue blob. It is probably replenished from the Pages River. The current river heights from the BoM site suggests that falling into the Pages River at present offers a greater risk of concussion than drowing
The first quote that struck my eye was this: "Jen Morris, who runs Murrurundi's White Hart Hotel, said they would consider trucking water in but have no tanks to store it." A 50 kilolitre tank would cost about $8,000 - having bought one a year ago I am sure of that price. Plumb it into the pubs gutters and I'd be surprised if they had to buy many truck loads of water in a normal year. Certainly better value than closing the pub because they've run out of water.
When I read a story on the ABC website about a town called Murrurundi running out of water I got interested and decided to check it out. The town is located in the Upper Hunter as shown by the orange polygon in this map of the State Suburb of Murrurundi from Census Table Builder.
Google Maps produces this map of the town
The first quote that struck my eye was this: "Jen Morris, who runs Murrurundi's White Hart Hotel, said they would consider trucking water in but have no tanks to store it." A 50 kilolitre tank would cost about $8,000 - having bought one a year ago I am sure of that price. Plumb it into the pubs gutters and I'd be surprised if they had to buy many truck loads of water in a normal year. Certainly better value than closing the pub because they've run out of water.
Then we have another resident "Ms van Balen and her husband live down the road and do not have access to town water. "We rely on rainfall and that's just been non-existent in the last little while," she said. Ms van Balen and her husband live down the road and do not have access to town water. "We purchased probably, I'd say, four loads in the last 12 months at a cost of about $1,000."" Now I don't know Ms van Balen's family situation but I'd have thought if she has a tank of a decent size, and a reasonable sized roof to catch the rain, she should get by on their rainfall. For example:
That led me to look more generally at Murrurundi's recent rainfall.
The average annual rainfall (since 1995) is 856mm which is a bit more than the full BoM series offers. The area received close to that in 2015 and (using data from Scone Airport, 29km away , to fill in a few missing months) again in 2016. 2017 was rather low: only 604mm - but in the 22 years back to 1995 there are a couple of years with less rainfall than that. 2018 to date is also low - about half the average for the first 7 months of the year.
I wondered if having two bad years in a row was a problem, and certainly the two low years back to 1995 were isolated. However Murrurundi has a long series of rainfall records and there have certainly been periods in the past with 2 dry years (below 600mm) in a row: The three years from 1938 - 40 were all below 600mm as was 1935 and 1946 with no year in that period above average rainfall.
Another quote: "The long-term plan is for a pipeline between Glenbawn Dam near Scone, about 50 kilometres from Murrurundi, due to be completed in two years." Possibly they have taken their eye off the water conservation ball as a "soft" solution is nearly here.
I doubt if the farmers will want to buy water from the dam as it will cost a lot: 50+km of pipeline has to be paid for somehow. It was good to see one farmer quoted as saying "While Mr Wylie supported drilling for water, for farmers and the town, he worried about how long the groundwater supply would last if drought conditions continued." This does make me wonder whether this story hasn't been stirred up by threats to ground water other than drought? Did anyone say fracking and coal seam gas?
My overall thought is the journalists haven't really done their homework but have found some nice people in a town in some strife and reported their concerns without really looking at the range of solutions open to the residents, or indeed the historical background.
If she is paying $250 for a load of water, at Carwoola prices that is 14 kilolitres, so my guess would be she has at least a 20kl tank. After 6 weeks with no rain we (two adults) might have taken 5kl out of our tank (in-house use only), which would be replaced by 17mm of rain. In the last 18 months there have only been 3 months in which Murrunrundi has received less than 17mm of rain.
That led me to look more generally at Murrurundi's recent rainfall.
The average annual rainfall (since 1995) is 856mm which is a bit more than the full BoM series offers. The area received close to that in 2015 and (using data from Scone Airport, 29km away , to fill in a few missing months) again in 2016. 2017 was rather low: only 604mm - but in the 22 years back to 1995 there are a couple of years with less rainfall than that. 2018 to date is also low - about half the average for the first 7 months of the year.
I wondered if having two bad years in a row was a problem, and certainly the two low years back to 1995 were isolated. However Murrurundi has a long series of rainfall records and there have certainly been periods in the past with 2 dry years (below 600mm) in a row: The three years from 1938 - 40 were all below 600mm as was 1935 and 1946 with no year in that period above average rainfall.
Another quote: "The long-term plan is for a pipeline between Glenbawn Dam near Scone, about 50 kilometres from Murrurundi, due to be completed in two years." Possibly they have taken their eye off the water conservation ball as a "soft" solution is nearly here.
I doubt if the farmers will want to buy water from the dam as it will cost a lot: 50+km of pipeline has to be paid for somehow. It was good to see one farmer quoted as saying "While Mr Wylie supported drilling for water, for farmers and the town, he worried about how long the groundwater supply would last if drought conditions continued." This does make me wonder whether this story hasn't been stirred up by threats to ground water other than drought? Did anyone say fracking and coal seam gas?
My overall thought is the journalists haven't really done their homework but have found some nice people in a town in some strife and reported their concerns without really looking at the range of solutions open to the residents, or indeed the historical background.
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