Shameful logic

I READ the comment piece by Melissa Grant (Gazette, 14 January) regarding the proposed desalination plant in Wonthaggi.
I am constantly surprised that most Victorians seem willing to sit back and let the Government get away with this ridiculous scheme, especially in 2009, a so-called modern society with a supposedly heightened awareness of what we are doing to our planet through environmental destruction.
I refuse to believe that people don’t care and prefer to assume that most people are simply too lazy to research the facts, because once you do, it is clear that this is a grossly irrational and ill-thought out proposal.
As an architect interested in sustainable design, it frightens me that the planning departments have allowed our built environment to grow so substantially in the last five to 10 years while also allowing all these new pipes to suck from the same dam.
It is so obvious, the more holes in the bucket, the quicker it empties and the harder it is to fill up. Yes, our water levels are low, but like yourself I can’t understand the argument based around the perception that it doesn’t rain anymore. Last month Victorian rainfall totals were 25 per cent up on the average.
My family is not connected to mains water and therefore catch all the water we use in tanks. Not once in the last 10 years of so-called low rainfall have we, a family of anywhere between six and nine, run out of water. It is still raining, we just need another bucket.
Another dam and a real incentive for people to collect their own water through tanks is a far better way to spend the quoted $3.1billion.
A dirty industrial plant on our pristine coastline, burning all that electricity and pumping all that CO2 into our environment every day for as long as we need/use water is not a good investment, it’s just a weak, halfway attempt at a solution that will ultimately contribute to the very problem that it is trying to solve, getting bigger.
Environmental vandalism of these proportions is shameful, especially in an age where we all know better. Mr Brumby and all his greedy friends should know better.
Nick Russo,
Upper Pakenham.