Desal plant’s impact

PLANNING Minister Justin Madden has deemed the proposed desalination plant to be built on the Bass Coast area near Kilcunda will not adversely impact on the environment.
Mr Madden’s announcement last week surprised very few people because his government would not have taken this project so far forward if it thought its own environmental regulations would throw a spanner in the works.
I am one person who thinks the plant will not impact on the environment any more than most other factories in Victoria of similar size.
That doesn’t mean it won’t.
Of course it will.
But planners are way off track if they think the environment and people will not severely suffer by bringing a major electricity supply from the Latrobe Valley across some of the state’s best farm lands. Farms and the environment will most certainly suffer in a big way from having more of these unnecessary pylon monstrosities across their lands.
Governments these days appear to take the view that people do not have full ownership and rights to freehold property, and too bad if what they hold proud ownership to, is decimated.
That smacks of socialism where the government owns everything and the people don’t care about anything.
If the Gippsland farmers’ welfare, livelihoods, and sensitivities, are not given worthy consideration when the final decision is made about this electricity supply then the government must hang its head in shame.
The pylons are not a necessary option and to build them would be outright bloody-mindedness.
This desalination plant will put heavy and probably dirty brine back into the ocean.
Nevertheless, the ocean is a big place and can accommodate the intrusion more so than the land environment can tolerate an expansion of fossil fuel power generation.
This desalination plant is not a very palatable option.
But in view of the fact that the generous rain needed to fill any new dam or dams is an unlikely possibility, and the four decades of disgustingly bad water resource management in Australia, few options remain.
My view, however, is that we should use the vast mass of moving water to drive undersea turbines that would provide electricity needed for this plant.
Such power generators would leave the farmlands for healthy food production and reduce the number of chimneys belching smoke.