The Rudd Government is buying into the flawed plans to alleviate the water crisis. IT IS possible to have life without oil, but life without water is impossible for more than a few days. Given the impending water crisis you would think that, at the very least, the Rudd Government would have looked at all the alternatives before Water Minister Penny Wong announced a $13 billion investment program in "strategic water priorities" in a speech to the Annual Water Summit on Tuesday. The plan appears to tick the proposal to divert water from irrigators along the Southern Murray-Goulburn basin to urban users in Melbourne. The result will be more increases in fruit and vegetable prices, and devastation to towns and communities along the basin. Any additional environmental flows that might be created for the southern Murray will probably be too late to avert a water crisis for the 90% of the population of South Australia who depend on water pumped from the Murray. Without heavy rain in the upper catchment or the release of water from the Dartmouth Dam, which is allowed to flow past the already desperate farmers along the southern Murray, the poisonous heavy metals leached out of the exposed soils of Lake Alexandrina will by 2009 seep up the Murray to Murray Bridge, where Adelaide's pipeline draws its water. There isn't much time. Wong is talking about a 10-year plan. From the perspective of Adelaide, the best result would be that the $3 billion funding for buying back licences would be spent this year in the hope that there will be enough rain to allow an environmental flow sufficient to save the lower Murray from being permanently poisoned so that SA can be kept on life support. And for Victoria there is the planned expenditure of $1 billion on the north-south pipeline connecting the Eildon Reservoir to Melbourne Water to take up to 75 gigalitres of water, even though Eildon's reserves are down to 14% of capacity. Eildon can't meet the needs of its own irrigators. The $3.1 billion capital cost of the planned desalination plant at Wonthaggi is designed to produce 150 gigalitres of potable water. This is equal to one-third of Melbourne's annual requirements and will be four times the cost of existing water supplies. It is lunacy to waste money diverting water from the distressed Murray-Goulburn Basin and build a desalination plant pumping carbon dioxide equal to an additional 140,000 new cars into the atmosphere when the likelihood is this water won't be needed. Even though 2007 was a dry year in the Melbourne catchment, the inflows into Melbourne's dams exceeded consumption. Based on the best official information publicly available, the Your Water Your Say action group produced forecasts that showed that Melbourne storages would be overflowing in 2014 with potential to be 97% above consumption in 2016 if these two projects go ahead. Perhaps the projections are flawed but we wouldn't know. The Government refuses to meet the authors of the study or respond to it. On the face of it, Melbourne Water will be pinching water from irrigators or environmental flows for no good purpose. The water from the proposed desalination plant won't be needed by the time it comes onstream. It can't be stored. It will be pumped back into the ocean with its brine byproduct. But Victorians will pay. The pipeline will cost between $77 million and $126 million a year in interest and capital repayments, depending on whether it is financed by public debt or as a public-private partnership. The desalination plant will be a PPP with the lead partner expected to be the French multinational Veolia, which owns Connex, the operator of Melbourne's urban rail franchise. The PPP is likely to be set for 35 years on a "take or pay" contract, which will cost Victorian taxpayers about $550 million a year irrespective of whether the water is used or not. One thing is for sure: once this expensive insurance policy is in place, there will be no incentive for conservation and recycling initiatives