[LINK] Infrastructure issues

Adam Todd link at todd.inoz.com
Fri Apr 27 09:35:18 AEST 2007


At 12:35 AM 27/04/2007, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
>At 01:33 PM 26/04/2007, Michael writes:
>
>State bureaucrats have discussed the possibility of moving residents
>from Leyburn, population 200, and Killarney, home to 1500 people. One of
>Leyburn's 2 bores has run dry and there are fears the other could follow.
>
>It is costing $8000 a week to cart water to Killarney, which is at the
>source of the Murray Darling river system.

OK lets do some maths here.

$8000 a week to 200 people, so lets assume for a moment that scales 
to the 1500, hence $24,000 a week for all people in the two cities.

They don't say how many litres is being delivered, so it's impossible 
to detemrine litres per person.

At any rate it's $14 per person per week.  Which is $743 a year per person.

How lets see what it costs to move 1700 people.

Firstly they need homes to move to.  QLD Housing Commissions has a 5 
year waiting list as does NSW and Victoria.  Emergency Housing is an 
18 month wait, which is why there are still families on the QLD/NSW 
border living in Tents after the Cyclone a year ago.  They have 6 
months more to wait for emergency housing.  Then there are all the 
people who weren't affected by the cyclone who have been on the 
waiting list for 0-5 years or 0-18 months.



Lets assume that the 200 people are homes of 4 people (2 Adults and 2 
children) which means 50 house holds.

To move 50 house holds some hundreds of km's will cost $3000 per 
house hold.  That's $150,000.  Or equal to $57 a week per household, 
divide by 4 is $14 per week per person.

1500 / 4 = 375 homes @ 3000 = $1,250,000 / 1500 people then divide by 
52 weeks = again $14.

So that works out to be the same cost as the water.

Next, rent and mortages.  Some people will own their homes, some 
might be renting and others have a mortgage.  I suspect in these towns.

I haven't looked for property values in the area, but I can't imagine 
them being like Brisbane or Sydney.  So lets assume a rent for a 
family is around $200 a week.  Moving to a bigger city is going to 
increase that, plus you have the issue of unemployment - unless the 
government is going to find jobs for each home to afford to pay their 
bills, the families will be on unemployment and parenting 
payments.  Lets not venture into the cost of that as QLD Government 
will see that as a federal expense, not a State expense.  But the 
residents see it as a PITA

So a rent/mortgage increase to say $300 a week for the average 
household (50 and 375 families) will be a slog.

That's $100 a week more than they were paying now.

I think the water is cheaper.  Simply because the Government is going 
to have to find $5,000 a week for the first town and $37,500 a week 
in the second town to cover rent costs.

Job searching will be shoved onto the Federal Government services as 
a cost to the national Tax Payer, rather than the QLD Tax Payer, so 
we can't really include that as a cost to the QLD Government either.

You know a better solution would be to install water capturing 
devices, such as large pits with plastic covers for evaporation.

Condensation collectors in each home.  They only cost around $2000 
and supply an incredible amount of water, even in fairly dry locations.

A few Solar panels (OK how about a whole heap!) to each of the towns 
would cut electricity costs to zero, considering the cost per person 
in these towns and the cost of getting power to them and the cost of 
maintaining power lines and the green house gases generated by the 
power usage.  Even a few wind turbines would be good.

So the moving budget cost is $1,275,000, and the cost of subsidizing 
rents will be $2,210,000 being $3,485,000 / 1700 = $2050 for the year 
or $39 per person.

What an opportunity for the Government to do something TOTALLY 
environmentally intelligent instead of doing what usually happens:

"We the Government (and mostly baby boomers) wish to turn our backs 
on the future and we'll just move everyone to a new home because it's 
easier than coming up with a long term sustainable plan for the 
future.  Afterall, we did destroy the land and the environment, but 
we're only in power till the next election and hell, why would we 
want to do something that might give the next government a clap on the back?"

(sigh)








More information about the Link mailing list