Pipe Dream Slithers Away

The Sunday Age

Sunday November 11, 2007

Jason Dowling

IT'S not the orange-bellied parrot this time - but the welfare of the striped legless lizard that may halt controversial Victorian pipeline work.

The State Government proposal to pipe water over the Great Divide to Melbourne could be blocked by the Federal Government because of concerns about the future of the endangered reptile.

Federal Liberal MP for Murray, Sharman Stone, pledged she would not "let a drop of water go across the divide to Melbourne to flush their toilets and wash down their gutters".

She told The Sunday Age yesterday that environmental concerns, including the fate of the lizard, could end the Brumby Government's pipe dream.

It plans to build a 70-kilometre pipeline from the Goulburn River to the Sugarloaf Reservoir to send 75 billion litres of water to Melbourne by 2010.

The State Government has said water for the pipe would come from improvements to irrigation systems in the state's north, designed to save 225 billion litres of water annually.

State Water Minister Tim Holding was livid at the tactics that may be used to block the pipe, which he said was all to grab votes.

"The Liberal Party tried to fool the people of South Gippsland at the last election with a cynical promise to stop the construction of wind farms because of the orange-bellied parrot - when all along they knew that the project was good for Victoria," he said in a statement.

Mr Holding said Melbourne Water was making environmental investigations for the pipeline and would provide this information to the Federal Government.

Dr Stone said the pipeline would have a big impact on voters in northern Victoria.

© 2007 The Sunday Age

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