The News Review:

- Water supplies back in all homes
- Water is the issue to make Brumby
- COMMENTARY: Water supply and summer demand

Water supplies back in all homes
BBC News – Aug 2, 2007
Acting Assistant Chief Constable Steve Ackland said: “These were put in place at the beginning of this crisis. “I can reassure members of the public that these have now been replaced by more substantial structures which will remain in place until a more permanent solution is found. Martin Kane, Severn Trent’s director of customer services, added: “All customers affected by the shutdown of Mythe water treatment works now have a supply. “However, some customers at the edge of the network served by Mythe may be suffering some interruptions or low water pressure. He said the restored supply was safe only for showering, bathing, flushing toilets and washing clothes. “We are sampling tap water intensively to ensure we can get customers back onto a drinkable supply as soon as possible next week. “Water for drinking will still be widely available from bowsers and bottled water distribution points and we will guarantee availability of millions of litres of bottled water every day for as long as the incident continues.

Water is the issue to make Brumby
The Age – Aug 2, 2007
Brumby has inherited one of the most extraordinarydecisions of the Bracks government: namely to invest about $3billion in a desalination plant in Wonthaggi and another $1 billionto pipe water over the Great Divide into the Melbourne reticulationsystem. Why both? The desalination plant is designed to produce 250gigalitres a year and the pipe to have a capacity of 90 gigalitresa year. Melbourne’s water consumption is about 450 gigalitres ayear, so the pipeline option alone would add 20 per cent toMelbourne’s water supply and the desalination plant would addanother 50 per cent to Melbourne’s water supply. Most water experts condemn the desalination plant asenvironmental vandalism and economic madness. The cost ofdesalinated water would be six times the cost of the mosteconomical alternatives and desalination would spew some 945,000tonnes a year of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — equal toputting another 240,000 cars onto Melbourne’s roads. Compared with the desalination plant, the pipeline is a sensibleoption, but its implementation is likely to lead to a majorconfrontation with irrigation farmers in the Goulburn Valley.

COMMENTARY: Water supply and summer demand
townonline.com – Aug 2, 2007
From a supply standpoint, we are in pretty good shape. Rainfall for May, June and July was somewhat below the 50-year average, but the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation and the National Weather Service report that streamflows and ground water levels are normal and their predictions are for above normal precipitation in August and September. So why are restrictions necessary? Is our supply so tight that even in a normal year we cannot meet our water needs?First, it depends on what you mean by “supply. ” Under the MA Water Management Act, supply is not what is available in the ground or in the reservoirs, but what the MA-DEP permits a water district to pump: its “registered amount. ” The Hingham-Hull Water District’s registered amount is an average of 3. 51 million gallons per day (MGD). That registered amount was determined by MA DEP based on the water company’s average daily production in the Hingham-Hull Water District from 1981-1985.