Very interesting that you should say that. Is there an omen or lesson in it.
CY O'Conner the Engineer in charge of designing and then building the Goldfields pipeline was severely hounded by sections of the media, and parliamentarians of the time, many with agendas, during construction of the Dam on the Helena River and pipeline to Kalgoorlie. Many accused him of bumbling, corruption and mismanagement, on a grand scale. Much of the public believed the scheme was doomed to failure. The Premier of the time was a solid supporter.
No one knows the reason, for certain, but about a year before the scheme was commissioned, early one morning, O'Conner rode his horse into the sea near Fremantle, and shot himself; at Robbs Point, about 5 km south of Carnegie's new offices.
As was the practice in those days, O'Conner had arranged the clearing of native vegetation, (trees), on the slopes of the Helena River dam catchment, in order to direct more water into the reservoir, only to discover the run-off was carrying huge quantities of topsoil into the dam and silting it up. So, to stabilise the slopes, he established the first plantations of softwood in Western Australia that are now supplying logs to local millers. Global warming has reduced the average annual rainfall in the South West by about 25 % on 1970's figures, which means that more water evaporates out of the dams than natural surface run-off contributes, these days.
The water supplied by the dam, that is pumped to Kalgoorlie, and much of the Wheatbelt making farming out there possible, is pumped out of bores drilled into the sandy aquifers below Perth, or is desalinated seawater produced by two large desalination plants that operate continuously. One of these takes all the power produced by wind and solar farms located north of Perth.
You can sense the thinking and history that has influenced much of the strategy behind Carnegie Clean Energy in this short story, I believe.
The Scheme, over 100 years later on, is regarded as a spectacular success, and in one form or another, it continues to contribute much to the efficient operation of the Western Australia economy; mostly in a form not envisaged by its original designer.
Just saying.
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