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Facts and figures have replaced stunts in the debate over logging the city's catchment areas. The results put more pressure on loggers, Melissa Fyfe reports.
Chances are you have probably noticed the campaign to stop logging in Melbourne's water catchments. Banners aplenty have been draped across freeways, including one, couched in the colloquial, that said: "Bracksy stop logging our water catchments, mate."
A bath full of woodchips has been placed outside the offices of Melbourne Water and 4000 cups, in the shape of a droplet, left on the steps of State Parliament - all protests by the Wilderness Society. This was how the debate ran: stunts from the green movement, derision from the timber industry and bureaucrats ducking for cover in the middle.
But late last year the Water Resources Strategy - a major review of Melbourne's water use - assessed the issue and recommended that the State Government investigate the economic, environmental and social impacts of moving logging out of the catchments and into plantations.
The issue is that logging takes water from Melbourne. The many figures and studies differ, but the figure accepted by Melbourne Water's managing director Brian Bayley is that the city would have 20,000 million litres more water a year if logging was phased out.
The young trees that regenerate after logging are incredibly thirsty. Melbourne Water research shows that water yield from logged areas drops 50 per cent by the time these trees are 20 to 30 years old. After that, they gradually use less water until they reach an age around 100, when their thirst levels out to 100,000 litres a year (a typical Melburnian uses 140,000 litres a year).
Only 0.2 per cent of the city's catchments are logged - around the Thomson and in parts of the Upper Yarra catchments. But the long-term impact on water yield is considerable.
The Water Resources Strategy estimated that if logging in the Thomson was gradually phased out by 2020, 20,000 million more litres would be available to Melbourne by 2050: it takes 30 years to get the water back. No figures are available for water lost in the catchments of the Yarra tributaries, where less logging is done.
How much is 20,000 million litres? Enough to fill 20,000 Olympic swimming pools. The Tarago reservoir, likely to be recommissioned to boost supply, is about that big. "It's a fair amount of water," says Mr Bayley.
Opponents of logging in city catchments also believe erosion from logging will reduce water quality. However, after some initial concerns, Melbourne Water is confident this is not so. "We audit (the loggers)," says Mr Bayley. 'We don't trust them, we don't just let them go. We did a lot of work eight or nine years ago, we felt we needed to tighten it right up and we are fairly happy with it now."
Environmentalists such as the Wilderness Society's Megan Clinton believe the issue is one of social equity: everyone shares the benefits of more water, but the wealth of logging accrues to just a few.
The debate is also about the environment. It's about more habitat for the Leadbeater's possum and the sooty and powerful owls, for example. Australian National University biologist David Lindenmayer says that, if left alone, the young trees in Melbourne's catchments could grow to be one of the state's only large tracts of old-growth mountain ash.
Dr Lindenmayer says that while the debate has centred on the trade-offs between water and wood, the forests' role in being a carbon sink - to help reduce greenhouse gases - should also be considered. "Old-growth mountain ash forests have the largest log volumes of fallen trees in the world. About 550 tonnes of carbon per hectare is stored in those fallen logs," he said.
On the other side of the debate is Gippsland-based Neville Smith Timber, which specialises in logging the 1939 regenerated mountain ash. The company would be the biggest loser if logging was phased out.
Executive director James Neville Smith agrees that water is valuable but points to the jobs and wood products his company provides. He said Neville Smith employs 300 people and value-adds more than any other of the state's sawmills, producing timber for furniture, windows, doors and flooring, as well as lower grade products. "If you look at most of the light-coloured timber windows in most commercial applications in Melbourne, they would be from those forest areas," he says.
The wood that comes from the Upper Yarra tributary areas of Armstrong, Cement, Starvation and McMahons creeks goes mostly to sawmillers in the Yarra Ranges.
Reid Bros at Yarra Junction will become the biggest sawmill taking mountain ash from these areas once Powelltown's Blue Ridge Hardwoods takes a Government exit package mid-year. The other mills that depend on these catchments are Warburton Timber Company; McCormack Timbers at Broadford; and Black Forest Timbers at Woodend (after a deal with the State Government to replace wood lost from the Wombat Forest).
Reid Bros owner Ron Reid employs 22 people, but says several hundred would be affected if the catchments closed. About 20 to 25 loggers work as contractors.
Generally, the loggers who get wood from Melbourne's catchments get better wood and use it for higher-value "appearance grade" purposes. The logging is done in areas that regenerated after the devastating 1939 fires. The trees are like a forest of poles. They are a logger's delight: high quality wood and good for the sawmill.
Yet the number of logs that end up in the sawmill is low. In the Thomson catchment, 36 per cent are milled. The rest are chipped and pulped. In the Yarra tributaries, only 26 per cent of logs go to mills.
Much of the "residual" wood goes to make office paper. The State Government has a 30-year contract to supply the Gippsland-based Paperlinx with pulp for woodchips, which are turned into high quality white paper. Just over a third of these chips will come from Melbourne's water catchments.
The Australian National University's Judy Clark is a post-doctoral fellow who specialises in the economics of native forest logging and plantations. She says existing plantations could provide the chips and structural timber taken from catchments.
But she admits that finding an alternative source of mountain ash for furniture and flooring is harder. Mountain ash is difficult to grow in plantations. It takes a lot of water and likes higher elevations. Plantations would have to replace prime agricultural land.
Dr Clark says that when chip and structural timber harvesting moves to plantations, loggers of appearance-grade wood may cull more selectively.
Perhaps in the end it will come down to economics. On figures from the Department of Sustainability and Environment, the State Government gets about $3,790,350 in royalties each year from logging in the Yarra tributaries and Thomson catchments.
The value of 20,000 million litres of water in the Melbourne market is some $15 million, based on the retail price for a million litres.