www.cerf-jcr.org

The ‘‘Morning Glory’’ Project: A Papua NewGuinea–Queensland Australia Undersea Freshwater Pipeline

Charles W. Finkl{ and Richard B. Cathcart{

{Charles E. Schmidt College of ScienceDepartment of GeosciencesFlorida Atlantic UniversityBoca Raton, FL 33431, U.S.A.cfinkl@fau.edu

{Geographos1300 West Olive Avenue, Suite MBurbank, CA 91506, U.S.A.rbcathcart@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

Finkl, C.W. and Cathcart, R.B., 2011. The ‘‘Morning Glory’’ Project: A Papua New Guinea-Queensland Australiaundersea freshwater pipeline. Journal of Coastal Research, 27(4), 607–618. West Palm Beach (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.

Australia’s so-called ‘‘Dead Heart,’’ its hot arid interior landscape, can be brought into irrigated agricultural productionwith the importation of extracontinental freshwater supplies originating in Papua New Guinea. Despite Queensland’s LaNina-caused historic and costly 2010 to 2011 river flooding induced, in great part by tropical cyclone Yasi, itswesternmost torrid region is classed as arid, currently almost without any irrigation agriculture present. Freshwaterimportation from Papua New Guinea’s Fly River via an undersea pipeline mostly skirting the Torres Strait couldincrease the value of Queensland’s little-used dryland Outback and, perhaps, establish new overseas markets in Asia forexported agricultural products. An induced perennial Diamantina River could replenish groundwater recharge regions(Great Artesian Basin) and convert Lake Eyre to a permanent lake of slightly brackish water. Irrigated eucalyptus treeplantations might serve, in part, to counter some Earthly global warming. The Torres Strait Islanders will benefiteconomically as well as other social groups on the mainland of Papua New Guinea. Here we examine closely some of thetechnical aspects of a Papua New Guinea-Queensland (PNG-QLD) Undersea Freshwater Pipeline Macroproject (UFPM)installation. We offer a choice of two routings for the PNG-QLD UFPM (Case A) while at the same time making clear ourinformed preference.

ADDITIONAL INDEX WORDS: Papua New Guinea, Queensland Australia, submarine freshwater pipeline, inter-basin water transfer, Outback tree farming, global warming mitigation.

INTRODUCTION

As freshwater is potentially extractable from lakes, rivers,

dammed reservoirs, and groundwater aquifers and bores, ,1%

of all of the Earth’s water is available for human use, whether

for survival and/or industrial needs. The greatest current

influence on precipitation and temperature of Australia’s

climate from year to year is the El Nino-Southern Oscillation

(ENSO): El Nino usually brings hotter and drier climate, and La

Nina generally brings cooler and wetter-than-normal climate as

recently exampled during November 2010 to February 2011 by

northern Australia’s twenty+ billion AU dollar Queensland

[QLD] river flooding disaster necessitating a massive rebuild of

destroyed and damaged infrastructure. Australia’s Bureau of

Meteorology has reported that 2010 was the wettest year on

record for Queensland, with Brisbane last being inundated

(before 12 January 2011) in 1974. A political subdivision of

Australia, Queensland is a 1,730,649 km2 territory with a

coastline of ,13,347 km (Short and Woodroffe, 2009). Future

changes in Earth’s climate regimes and the increase in the

planet’s total population of living humans virtually ensure that

the fixed volume of freshwater will become scarcer and more

valuable economically in the Southern Hemisphere (Arblaster,

Meehl, and Karoly, 2011; Soh, Roddick, and Leeuwen, 2008).

In the particular instance of northern Australia, specifically

the Queensland case examined herein, a future increase in

annual average air temperatures and a simultaneous decrease

in annual rainfall will likely cause increased freshwater stress

on cultivated plants, stock animals, and settled humans—

indeed, a situation of ‘‘water poverty.’’ It is also possible that the

seasonal formation of tropical cyclones (nowadays officially 1

November to 30 April) in the Arafura and Coral seas could

become stronger, undergoing marked change resulting from

future climate regime change in the vicinity of Queensland and

its bordering Gulf of Carpentaria (Goebbert and Leslie, 2010).

Sea-surface warming in the Arafura and Coral seas possibly

could lead to tropical cyclones that are more intense, with

higher peak wind speeds and heavier, torrential precipitation,

heightening of storm seawater surges (Emanuel, Sundarar-

ajan, and Williams, 2008), and even shifting storm paths.

Essentially, the future is at this time unknowable, and

unforeseen calamities or boons cannot be excluded.

Australia is one of the driest inhabited continents in the

world, its rainfall is variable, meteorological droughts are

common, and secure obtainable surface freshwater resources

in many regions (drainage basins) are sometimes scarce.

Australia is relatively arid, with 80% of the land having a

rainfall ,600 mm a21 and 50% having ,300 mm a21.

DOI: 10.2112/11A-00006.1 received 14 March 2011; accepted 14March 2011.Published Pre-print online 24 May 2011.’ Coastal Education & Research Foundation 2011

Journal of Coastal Research 27 4 607–618 West Palm Beach, Florida July 2011

In northern Australia there is a shift of the subtropical high-

pressure belts and subtropical jet that allows a dynamically

active low-pressure air mass to form over the northern part of

the continent (Bridgman, 2005). This combination stimulates

the entry of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ), which

results in a moist air flow that meets the SE trade winds along a

line from Port Hedland (Western Australia) to Cairns (Queens-

land). The previous season’s monsoon rain in India is strongly

correlated with below-normal rain that creates a delay in

monsoon onset in Australia. The monsoonal flow, generally

extending to about 15u S [latitude], is better developed east of

100u E [longitude], bringing the annual rainy season to

northern Australia. According to Bridgman (2005), about 20%

of the rainy period consists of breaks without precipitation

because the moist humid air in the NW airstream is not

naturally triggered to induce precipitation of any kind.

Although the climate of the study area surrounding the

Arafura and Coral seas is mostly tropical wet and dry or

monsoonal (Aw, Am in the Koppen climate classification), the

rest of the study area in the Australian interior falls into the

BSh and BWh categories that are steppe or desert (Oliver,

2005). The mountains of the Great Dividing Range in Queens-

land attain a maximum height of 1622 m at Mt. Bartle Frere

and there are several peaks in excess of 1000 m, mainly in the

north and southeast. Along sections of the Great Dividing

Range, the elevation abruptly increases away from the coastal

plain facing the Coral Sea, and then west of the Divide it

gradually descends onto the western plains. On the western

side of the Great Dividing Range the rainfall reduces quickly

to an annual median of about 700 mm and then gradually

decreases further with distance inland, especially south of the

Gulf of Carpentaria. At the same time, average maximum air

temperatures gradually increase with increasing distance from

the Queensland coast. A remarkable tubular-shaped cloud

formation, the internationally famous ‘‘Morning Glory’’ roll

cloud/multiple roll cloud formations (Figure 1), forms

when nocturnal sea breezes from the Coral Sea and Gulf of

Carpentaria meet over the rainforest of the Cape York

Peninsula (Goler and Reeder, 2004) and propagate in a

southwesterly direction over the Gulf of Carpentaria. These

Figure 1. Typical tube-shaped Australian roll cloud scene, also commonly referred to by meteorologists as a ‘‘Morning Glory’’ cloud.

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roll clouds are composed of freshwater droplets, so we may,

rather poetically and symbolically, imagine them as Nature’s

water pipelines!

Although tropical cyclones are a threat to all Queensland

coastal communities, meeting the region from both east- and

west-trending paths, they are a major source of rain for the

drier inland region. Settlement to the west of the Great

Dividing Range was made more difficult by the lack of a

reliable, accessible potable freshwater supply, the subject of

this macro-engineering proposal to pipe water to the arid

interior. Early settlement onto the open plains that flourished

during years of good rainfall foundered during drought periods,

just as they do during the early 21st Century. Mining is the

main current economic activity in this ‘‘wasteland’’ region of

northeastern Australia and industrialized mining needs water,

even nonpotable inferior quality freshwater, to conduct its

operations economically (Amezaga et al., 2011; Mudd, 2010).

The region’s relevant major seaports (Cairns and Brisbane

on Australia’s east coast, both damaged extensively by the

2010–11 river flooding episode, and Port Moresby on the south

coast of Papua New Guinea [PNG]) could be adversely affected

by both short-term weather and storm tides. Pollution impacts

in such distant seaports are highly concentrated therein and,

therefore, cannot affect the Torres Strait directly in any

remarkable way (Ng and Song, 2010) which, according to

ecologists, is today undergoing only a ‘‘light human impact’’

(Halpern et al., 2008). Some ecologists have alleged that the

Earth-atmosphere buildup of carbon dioxide gas could increase

primary oceanic production around Australia, thus improving

the fisheries take (Brown et al., 2010) and fishing fleet catchers

and overall traffic; like our later proposed freshwater pipeline

community context, the successful sustainable fisheries model

is social group-based comanagement organization that is

effective (Gutierrez et al., 2011).

Purpose and Goals

The purpose of this paper is to suggest the possibility of

bringing freshwater that derives from the lush tropical rain-

forests of PNG to the arid interior of Australia, its so-called

‘‘Dead Heart.’’ The basic macro-engineering project idea is to

bring water in an overland pipeline in the Fly River valley of

PNG across the delta, across the Torres Strait on the seafloor as

an entrenched submarine pipeline, then along two possible

routes with one along the western shore of the peninsula in the

Gulf of Carpentaria and the other possible route overland, both

potential alternatives finally emerging in the headwaters of

rivers leading to the Lake Eyre Basin (Figure 2), which covers

one-sixth of the Australian continent.

Study Area

On a global scale, the Lake Eyre Basin is one of the largest

internally draining systems; has the fifth largest terminal lake;

is an arid and semiarid part of the driest inhabited continent;

and is drained by the most variable, major river systems, the

Georgina, Diamantina, and Cooper. Other rivers draining the

more than one million square km of its Basin either contribute

to Lake Eyre only rarely, or in the case of some Central

Australian streams, become lost by percolation in the sandy

landscape (Gleeson et al., 2011) of the Simpson Desert and

never reach the lakebed (http://www.lakeeyrebasin.org.au/).

Lake Eyre, a great salt lake of tectonic origin (Wopfner and

Twidale, 1967), lies asymmetrically in the south-western

corner of the closed inland drainage basin in the heart of the

Australian continent (Figure 3). With an area of 1,140,000 km2,

the Basin is the largest Australian drainage division (apart

from the Western Plateau) and is one of the world’s largest

areas of internal drainage. The lake, whose lowest parts lie

,17 m below sea level, consists of two separate water fillable

beds. Lake Eyre North, 144 km long and 77 km wide, is joined

by the narrow Goyder Channel to the 64 by 24 km Lake Eyre

South. Although considered to be permanently dry, there have

been flood events during the last 40 years, with the most

spectacular fillings occurring in 1950, 1974, and 1984.

The deepest region of Lake Eyre North is the eastern part of

Belt Bay where bottom levels constitute the lowest topographic

point on the Australian continent approximately 217 m below

the Australia datum (Featherstone et al., 2011). The floor of the

lakebed is very flat and encrusted by salty deposits, but its

shoreline is well defined and consists mostly of sand dunes,

eroded gypseous loam cliffs, or low rocky escarpments. The

southeastern coastline consists of sand cliffs.

At the same time, the ‘‘Dead Heart’’ of Australia (Strange,

2010), the still unproductive arid Outback landscape, could

become verdant with the introduction of extraneous freshwater

supplies provided by long-distance interbasin freshwater

importation macroproject that would cause the Diamantina

River to become perennial, a significant hydrological improve-

ment (Tisdell, 2010). Such a macro-engineering project effort

would leave mostly unaltered all Australian mainland fresh-

water supplies, both developed and undeveloped, and would

become a new source of cash national income for PNG; the

‘‘Morning Glory’’ macroproject, here abbreviated as PNG-QLD

UFPM—the PNG-QLD Undersea Freshwater Pipeline Macro-

project—should, as well, alleviate the regional macroproblem

of inadequate freshwater supplies and storage, bringing into

intensive use drylands not presently in production agricultur-

ally, thus increasing Australia’s agricultural exports cash

income derived from the populace of mainland and offshore

Asia. New inland human settlements in Australia are likely to

occur and, thus, the continent-nation’s ‘‘Dead Heart’’ will

commence a significantly stronger beat and, as a direct result,

the people of Queensland and Australia will enjoy greater

economic prosperity! The final deposition of any excess

freshwater initially supplied by foreign imports is Lake Eyre,

a terminal playa that receives intermittent floodwater at times

associated with the La Nina phase of the El Nino Southern

Oscillation ENSO via the Diamantina River (DeVogel et al.,

2004).

The PNG-QLD UFPM is a two-choice macro-engineering

profession-induced dream that the populations of PNG and

Queensland can conjure for themselves by settling on a single

or dual result because there are two equally possible routes

along the east (submarine and land) and west coast (strictly

submarine) of Queensland’s Cape York Peninsula for our

postulated Case A iteration PNG-QLD UFPM that resemble,

when mapped, a cartographical ‘‘wishbone’’ (Figure 4), which

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Journal of Coastal Research, Vol. 27, No. 4, 2011

can be snapped (for good luck) or left whole (for good luck too),

depending upon the financing Queensland population’s ex-

pressed needs and wants (in the aspects of long-term

freshwater supplies for the 21st Century) and the required

legal permission granted by the Torres Strait Islanders and

PNG’s voting citizens. Ideally, of course, the PNG-QLD UFPM,

the ‘‘Morning Glory’’ macroproject, should consist of two

parallel but separated pipelines for security reasons. Periodic

rigorous inspection of all submarine pipelines is recommended,

especially after the cyclone season. Queensland already carries

out such regular inspections for the 6.8-km-long undersea

freshwater pipelines, first existing since the mid-1970s,

Figure 2. Overview of general study area from southern Papua New Guinea to the Lake Eyre Basin in northeastern South Australia. Ephemeral streams

flow southwards feeding into the endoreic basin from western Queensland. (Source: Google Maps.)

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connecting Pallarenda Beach on the mainland to Magnetic

Island through the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. Of course,

unlike some previous large-scale bulk freshwater development

projects, these submarine pipelines were initiated entirely by

Australia-based macro-engineers (Teisch, 2011). Submerged

pipelines for delivery of bulk freshwater under almost the same

pressure as the surrounding seawater do not require so strong

shells as submerged vehicular tunnels which are filled with air.

The Morgan-Whyalla Pipeline, first constructed during 1940–

44 and enhanced during 1962, crosses the Upper Spencer Gulf

after passing the Baroota Reservoir with a 14-km-long

segment.

Australia’s National Water Initiative suggests markets and

defined property rights over freshwater for ensuring that

Australian freshwater flows to its highest value use (Straton

et al., 2011). Freshwater sent from PNG is not ‘‘Australian’’! As

yet undetermined future local climate regime change could

raise the sea level in Torres Strait and, thus, possibly generate

some additional, though clearly nonfatal, legal macroproblems

regarding the correct and accurate delimitation and demarca-

tion of existing maritime boundaries separating Australia and

PNG (Houghton et al., 2010). Raised sea level would benefit

shipping using the Torres Strait, although accurate new tide

tables must then exist to inform ship captains. On 30 July 2010,

during a session of the Federal Court of Australia in the

litigation named ‘‘Akiba on behalf of the Torres Strait Islanders

of the Regional Seas Claim Group v State of Queensland (No 2)

[2010] FCA 643,’’ the Torres Strait Islanders were awarded

‘‘native title,’’ giving indigenous locals various rights of access

and use of maritime resources. The native title rights to the

islanders were nonexclusive—meaning the traditional owners

had ownership of the seawater but could not exclude other

social groups (e.g., commercial fishermen) from using the

resources. The Federal Court of Australia’s ruling encompasses

not only the seawater but also the bays, estuaries, tidal inlets,

and the seafloor. So, for our purposes, the Torres Strait

Islanders have a strongly determining say in the pipeline’s

seabed routing and, as well, in the construction of the PNG-

QLD UFPM! Strikingly, the UFPM resembles a 216-km-long

freshwater pipeline macroproject, proposed in 2001 but still

unbuilt, carefully designed to convey 10 m3s21 of that useful

fluid beneath the shallow Persian Gulf from Iran to Kuwait

(Anon., 2001).

Australians today are pushing the limits of macro-engineer-

ing with visions of projects to transport freshwater from distant

locales to its cities (Figure 5). Australians have had successful

formative experiences with long-distance freshwater transfers:

the 530-km-long overland pipeline completed in 1903, the

Coolgardie to Kalgoorlie Goldfields Water Scheme, designed by

Charles Yelverton O’Connor (1843–1902), to continuously

convey approximately one cubic m of freshwater per second, a

total of ,300 m uphill from the base-supplying reservoir in a

168 cm diameter steel pipe (Figure 6). Twenty-first Century

humans, to ensure our basic freshwater needs, should have

daily access to ,20 to ,50 L of potable water entirely free from

any harmful contaminants. The macroproject originally in-

volved building a 21 Gigaliter storage reservoir at Mundaring

and then pumping the water via eight large steam-driven

pumping stations through a 557-km-long steel pipeline. In

January 1903, the extracted Mundaring water flowed into

Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie. When completed in late 1902, the

Goldfields pipeline was the longest freshwater pipe in the world

and the first major pipeline constructed of steel (Hartley, 2007).

The Goldfields Water Scheme secured the viability of a

valuable mining industry and helped to underpin the 20th

Century economic future of Western Australia. Since then the

Weir’s capacity has been increased with the addition of the

Lower Helena Weir downstream of the main dam. Water from

this smaller dam is pumped back into Mundaring Weir.

The freshwater flow starts in a pumping station in the

Helena Valley at Mundaring Weir located about located 39 km

east of Perth, Western Australia. This water transfer plan from

the wet coastal region to the dry interior of the state is

considered one of the World’s greatest engineering projects.

The Mundaring Weir is the start of a bulk freshwater pipeline

that distributes water to agricultural towns in the wheat-belt

area, Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie. Today, the water is distribut-

ed a total of 700 km from the weir to Kalgoorlie. The Mundaring

Weir is one of the marvels of 19th and early-20th Century

Western Australian macro-engineering (Figure 6a). O’Connor

initiated plans for the Mundaring Weir in 1895 but these were

fiercely opposed in Parliament, and the approval was not

granted until 1898. O’Connor was a victim of vicious political

campaigns and his macroproject plans were subject to vigorous

criticism. In March 1902, O’Connor took his own life, partly as a

result of the social pressures involved with his role in the

Mundaring Weir’s construction. The Mundaring Weir was

completed a year later, and the large geographical-scale

Figure 3. Part of the Lake Eyre Basin focused on the main lakebed and

showing some major features of this little-inhabited arid landscape that

can accommodate freshwater imported from Papua New Guinea that

would flow into the basin down the Diamantina River to empty into the

lowest elevation place. (Source: Australian topographic map series.)

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Journal of Coastal Research, Vol. 27, No. 4, 2011

freshwater scheme changed the course of infrastructural

development in central Western Australia forever. This

example of massive freshwater transfer via long-distance

pipeline, completed more than a century ago in Australia, is

instructive of what can be achieved by intelligent applied

macro-engineering, will, and tenacity to alleviate the harsh

conditions of near-permanent meteorological drought in the

arid interior of the Australian Outback (Figures 6a and b). This

freshwater pipeline followed an entirely overland track

whereas the PNG-QLD UFPM proposed here can involve

transit both overland and on the seafloor from PNG to the

northerneastern Australia state of Queensland.

In this regard, it is worthwhile noting that iffy supercom-

puter simulations of future climate in the Torres Strait seem to

show that there will be a common reduced freshwater

availability for the Torres Strait Islands. Thus, the islanders

might desire to consider some localized zero-cost legally

contract-affirmed freshwater extractions from the completed

PNG-QLD UFPM for their own immediate needs. The PNG

Gas Project, first envisaged during 1995 and now under

construction, is intended to complete development of existing

oil and natural gas production fields in the highlands of PNG,

commercializing the reserves extant at Kutubu, Gobe, Agogo

and Moran fields, such that treated natural gas can be exported

to Australia by a sales pipeline running 273 km beneath the

Gulf of Papua (skirting the Fly River delta’s unstable

submarine base) to the international border with Australia

near Pearce Cay in Torres Strait. Before the gas pipeline is put

into service it will be hydro-tested—that is, the pipeline’s

integrity will be discovered using freshwater pressurization!

Predictable postconstruction societal behavior of the Torres

Strait Islanders is essential for the successful long-term

commercial use of the PNG-QLD UFPM (Omonbude, 2007).

PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Rated by its liquid freshwater discharge—approximately

6000 m3s21 with a mere 25% normal seasonal variation, with its

flood period occurring during October to November (Canestrelli

et al., 2010)—at its mouth, PNG’s Fly River ranks within the

Earth’s top 10 tropical rivers. El Nino events usually cause a

lower freshwater flow and, consequently, a negative sediment

discharge perturbation (Ogston et al., 2008). Named in 1842

honoring the discovering Royal Navy ship HMS Fly (launched

Figure 4(a). The fowl’s ‘‘wishbone’’-shaped routes of the PNG-QLD UFPM serving Queensland. General epicontinental view of potential water transmission

lines, one a coastal route and the other an inland track, both leading to headwaters of a river that flows into the arid inland Lake Eyre Basin. A coastal (red

line) or inland route (black line), or even both (black and red), on land or on the seafloor along the Cape York Peninsula may be selected as feasible new

infrastructure bringing life and industry to a developable western Queensland, Australia. (Source: Google background image.) (b) More detailed image of the

Torres Strait showing the narrow gap (approximately 130 km) between Papua New Guinea and Australia with shallow waters in the Strait dotted by

numerous islands. Much of the navigable route through Torres Strait is confined in both width and depth. Entry to western Torres Strait is via Varzin

Channel with a minimum width of 0.3 nm and depth of 10.5 m. Passage through central Torres Strait is via Prince of Wales Channel (POW) with minimum

width of 0.3 nm and depth of 11.0 m. The rocky-bottom POW is a chokepoint for all deep-draught shipping. The PNG-QLD UFPM (see Figure 4a) could be laid

west of the POW, being fully entrenched at the POW chokepoint so as not to obstruct any deep-draft commercial or military ship traffic. (Australian Maritime

Safety Authority, http://www.amsa.gov.au/Marine_Environment_Protection/Torres_Strait/Risk.asp).

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Journal of Coastal Research, Vol. 27, No. 4, 2011

1831, scrapped 1903), the Fly River and its tributaries rise in

the Star Mountains, service a catchment of ,76,000 km2, and

flows ,1000 km to the Gulf of Papua bordering New Guinea’s

south coast. The southern and eastern coastline of the Gulf of

Carpentaria, a shallow epicontinental sea between Australia

and PNG with a maximum depth of ,70 m, is dominated by

carbonate beach sands as is the Coral Sea coastline of the York

Peninsula facing the Great Barrier Reef (Short, 2010).

Because it forms an international boundary line separating

PNG and Indonesia (Irian Jaya) and because the boundary

protrudes slightly east of the 141u E longitude divide, by treaty

Indonesia retained the right to navigate from the land–river-

bend bulge to the mouths of the Fly River in the muddy delta;

fluvial sediment flux (mud, sand, and plant litter) to the

coastal zone is conditioned by geomorphic and tectonic

influences, geography, geology, and human activities (Pickup,

1984a, 1984b; Syvitski and Milliman, 2007) (Figure 7).

However, only shallow-draft vessels can pass upstream

,870 km to the Fly River’s junction with the Palmer River

and there are few people, and very little economic activity,

currently present along the Fly River’s banks. Vast commercial

copper and gold mining facilities beside two Fly River

tributaries, on the Ok Tedi River and the Strickland River,

washes some contaminated muck into the Fly River that is

eventually deposited by the delta’s distributaries. East and

west of the delta prawn fisheries exist. Commercial fishing is

conducted regularly in Torres Strait.

Fly River headwaters emerge from forested limestone

uplands where ridges reach maximum elevations of about

2800 m with slopes greater than 20u. Foothills of volcanic

origin occur basinward of the higher uplands, especially

along the northwestern margins of the catchment (Fig-

ure 7). The northeastern margin of the catchment takes in

part of Mount Bosavi, a volcanic peak reaching up to 2800 m

in elevation. The main part of the catchment is coastal

plains with floodplain river valleys. There are extensive

wetlands and back swamps that increase in frequency

downstream towards the Fly River delta. North of the

confluence of Fly River branches at Everill Junction is Lake

Murray, the outline of which follows the dendritic drainage

pattern of the coastal floodplains. The lowermost parts of

the catchment contain wetlands with back swamps mostly

covered by mangroves. Sediments in the Ok Tedi and Fly

rivers are derived from (1) reworked bed and bank material,

(2) material eroded from late Pleistocene and Holocene

terraces cut by the active channel, and (3) material resulting

from present-day erosion of upland catchment areas of

major tributaries such as the Ok Tedia and Strickland rivers

(Bolton, 2009). Mine wastes discharged from the Mount

Fubilan copper-gold mine located in the headwaters of the

Ok Tedi River also contribute to the sediment load of the Fly

River. The Fly River delta complex (Figure 8), which

empties into the Gulf of Papua, contains coastal estuarine

flats, beach ridges and swales, and mangrove swamps. The

delta is flanked by meander river valleys and levee plain

river valleys whereas the southwestern margin contains

beach ridges and swales. These delta and prodelta sedimen-

tary formations would be avoided by the water pipeline that

heads in Everill Junction where there is clean freshwater

coming down from the highlands to the coastal plain by

routing the pipeline more or less straight southward over

the Oriomo Plateau (Figure 7), which is mostly character-

ized by coastal plains that are periodically flooded. A slight

deviation of the pipeline eastward would avoid construction

difficult through meandering floodplain valleys along the

coast (see Figure 4a for our suggested generalized bulk

freshwater pipe routings).

Tidal influence propagates upstream ,400 km to Everill

Junction, where the Strickland River and Middle Fly River

meet, although the limit for saltwater intrusion into the

estuary is ,100 km inland from the mouth of the Fly River

delta (Robertson, Damiel, and Dixon, 1991). Everill Junction is

the assumed establishment point at which the PNG-QLD

UFPM freshwater primary filtered freshwater intake installa-

Figure 5. This is an example of a macro-engineering project that proposes

to bring freshwater from the tropical wet and dry NW region of Australia to

Perth, the growing capital city of Western Australia, some 1750 km to the

south (Leigh, 2004). The coastal and inland routes, yellow line and dashed

yellow line, are nearly the same distance haulage for the speculated bulk

freshwater pipelines.

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Journal of Coastal Research, Vol. 27, No. 4, 2011

tion is to be located. The most recent comprehensive elabora-

tion of the Fly River’s actual early-21st Century hydrological

and biological state is well documented in Bolton (2009). To be

clear, the ENSO-meteorological event usually lowers the

availability of surface freshwater in northerneastern Australia

as well as PNG, which is a technically intractable limitation

upon the proposed PNG-QLD UFPM, other than by creating

voluminous inland dammed reservoirs on PNG to even the

annual exportable runoff by planned freshwater releases that

can be picked up by the fixed fluid intake station. The Fly River

intake is the only proposed headwork connecting the bulk

freshwater pipeline (Burstall, 1997) on PNG with the fillable

reservoir in Queensland, Australia.

In this particular macro-engineering expose, we do not

assume that all 6000 m3s21 is extracted from the Fly River in

Case A and less than half (4.9 billion cubic m yearly pumped

through an 11-m-diameter undersea pipe) is taken in Case B!

We examine and calculate the kind of pipeline (materials

composing same), seabed laying techniques, and oceanographic

factors impacting the laid freshwater pipeline (Figure 4a).

Undersea bulk water pipes can be specified by two size

parameters, (1) diameter and (2) wall thickness, and two

physical parameters, namely, (1) material specification and

(2) method of manufacture. Other than to hint that pipe

sections ought to be connected by Gibault joints, we will not

here commit to technical specifications which should remain

open to investigation and informed discussion. However, we

have offered some overall observations of needs for this

macroproject. We will confine our attention to that part of the

suggested Case A infrastructural iteration PNG-QLD UFPM

that (1) crosses the shallow Torres Strait and (2) follows the

west coast of the Cape York Peninsula until it reaches its

destination at the southernmost shoreline of the Gulf of

Carpentaria. In Figure 4a, this subject macroproject Case A

PNG-QLD UFPM route is shown by a solid red line that

traverses the westernmost part of the Torres Strait and

thereafter hugs Cape York Peninsula’s western coastline.

Our attention became focused on the Fly River interbasin

water diversion after reading the intriguing macroproject

assertion of Australian environmental and freshwater resource

experts Fereidoun Ghassemi and Ian White (2007, p. 397):

‘‘water transfer from Fly River in Papua New Guinea to

Diamantina River in Queensland.’’ We first considered a

positively buoyant, submarine, seabed-anchored aqueduct

similar to a transatlantic bulk freshwater pipeline, the TFA

for short, from the Amazon River to Mauritania (Badescu,

Esvoranu, and Cathcart, 2010) to span the Torres Strait, but

later we decided upon a simple seabed-entrenched fixed

pipeline, which is described herein. While torpedo anchors

were feasible for the TFA, the very shallow bathymetry of the

Torres Strait (,50 m) is not as accommodating as the Atlantic

Ocean in terms of seawater depth required, and active dynamic

positioning appears too complex and energy intensive (Raie

and Tassoulas, 2009). Thus, we settled upon a partially-

entrenched seafloor installation, fixed in place by the usual

means, utilizing conventional offshore lay barges. Such lay

barges, safely moved by anchor-handling tugs possibly sup-

plied by the Australian managerial group Adstream Marine,

will be necessary for the operation. (The Dutch–Swiss-owned

Allseas Marine Contractors is the world’s largest seabed

pipeline installer and could be asked to participate in the

planning and laying of the PNG-QLD UFPM.)

Freshwater coursing through the ,2200-km-long pipeline(s)

nowadays can be manipulated to gain a practical reduction in

Figure 6. (a) Part of the modernized 168-cm-diameter steel pipeline that feeds freshwater from the Mundaring Weir near Perth 700 km inland to Kalgoorlie

in the Western Australian mines. (Source: Amanda O’Brien, The Australian, October 21, 2009.) (b) Route of the O’Connor bulk freshwater pipeline. The steel

pipe was of the strong type known as ‘‘lockbar pipe,’’ easily capable of retaining water with a pressure 10 times that exerted by air in a vehicle tire! Such

piping was still being used as late at 1940 in some places. The O’Connor pipe is a very important lifeline providing the primary supply of treated freshwater to

the cities its serves. It needs to be supplemented soon.

614 Finkl and Cathcart

Journal of Coastal Research, Vol. 27, No. 4, 2011

Fig

ure

7.

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.)

The ‘‘Morning Glory’’ Project 615

Journal of Coastal Research, Vol. 27, No. 4, 2011

the ordinary pumping power required to overcome common

turbulence (Hof et al., 2010) and new nontoxic antifouling

compounds can be used to coat the pipe that effectively reduces

freshwater flow friction as well as the attachment of sedentary

marine biota (Efimenko et al., 2009). Especially in shallow

waters, high seafloor stress and tropical cyclone-induced strong

underwater seawater currents that strip the seabed of sediment

can crack and rupture any weak undersea pipeline causing

catastrophic natural gas leakage. Any freshwater pipeline leak

will be benign, not an alarming industrial danger or pollution

episode (Dachs and Mejanelle, 2010; Gagliano et al., 2010).

Geologic processes in the coastal realm proceed at a relatively

rapid rate, often comparable to the time scale of changes

initiated by humans: this corresponds to the ‘‘[macro-]

engineering scale’’ of Cowell and Thom (1994). The Torres

Strait seawater current speeds and direction are governed

mainly by the spatial orientation of the many reefs and the

degree of channel restriction—POW Channel has maximum

seawater current of ,8 knots while Varzin and Gannet

Passages max at ,1.5 knots—and there is the distinct

possibility, near the Fly River prodelta where unstable bottom

mud is prevalent, that harmful sediment resuspension can be

induced by the turbulent wake of deep-draft vessels, especially

those carelessly moving at high speed (Garel, Fernandez, and

Collins, 2008).

TORRES STRAIT GEOGRAPHY

The risk of tropical cyclones in the ,50-m-deep Torres Strait

is commonly claimed to be ‘‘low to moderate.’’ However,

meteorological tides (storm surges) can affect the navigability

of the few channels permitting shipping passage—the Great

North East Channel from the Gulf of Papua—somewhat. There

is a low to moderate risk for future seismic activity that could

possibly affect the abuilding or completed installation (McCue,

2010) and active sun-initiated space weather makes steel pipes

corrode more quickly than otherwise is the case (Marshall,

Waters, and Sciffer, 2010). The PNG-QLD UFPM could, like the

PNG Gas Project, reach Australia at Cape York after crossing

the 130-km-wide Torres Strait. And, again, like the underway

PNG Gas Project, the PNG-QLD UFPM could follow the same

routing as the natural gas transmission pipe southward to serve

the coastal cities of Queensland. Or, as we suggest, it might

continue as a submarine pipeline southward along Cape York’s

western coast in the shallow (,100 m) Gulf of Carpentaria to

terminate at the gulf’s southernmost coastline.

We prefer not to disturb the freshwater supplies systems

currently employed by Queensland’s east coast-sited urban

regions and, instead, to provide irrigation water for the state’s

arid interior Outback. We have no intention to repeat coastal

changes initiated by construction of the Snowy Mountains

Hydro-electricity Scheme—namely, a morphological change at

the mouth of the Snowy River dating from 1951 to the present

day (Wheeler et al., 2009). From the Carpentaria Gulf’s shore,

the Case A version of the PNG-QLD UFPM would reach the

head of the Diamantina River’s Basin headwaters area,

probably at some topographic elevation ,313 m (maximum).

The entire Basin has an area of 15,745,481 ha, with

,1,660,000 of nonagricultural land—all extant agriculture in

the Basin is dryland agriculture with little or no irrigated

agriculture! At an elevation of ,19.6 m, the Diamantina River

flows into Warburton Creek, which ultimately flows to the bed

of Lake Eyre during wet years (Costelloe et al., 2003); the

middle and lower reaches of the Diamantina River are a

complex of braided channels and wide floodplains where

depleted-by-pumping underground aquifers may be recharged

by a constant slow flow of freshwater of extrabasin origin. We

estimate the 2011 financial cost of this mostly underwater

route at about four plus billion Australian dollars.

Conceptually, it can be argued that all freshwater develop-

ment macroprojects involve bulk transfer of freshwater over

long geographical distances. Certainly, the Case A concept of

the PNG-QLD UFPM is not a ‘‘normal’’ transfer since its main

focus is on very large-scale artificial bulk freshwater from a

runoff-surplus PNG to a water-deficient continental region

(Australia) in order to further the economic development of the

latter, primarily through agricultural and industrial develop-

ment, including the economically booming mining industry.

Nevertheless, all PNG citizens benefit greatly, both immedi-

ately and over the long term during the 21st Century.

GULF OF CARPENTARIA

A shallow sea enclosed on three sides by Australia, the Gulf

of Carpentaria is bounded on the north by the Arafura Sea

(Oliver and Thompson, 2011). Submerged coral reefs, only

discovered early in the 21st Century, dot the sea at depths of

20–30 m (Harris et al., 2004). These pose no problem for

installers of the PNG-QLD UFPM. The PNG-QLD UFPM will

trace a route parallel to the Cape York Peninsula close to the

carbonate sand beach, terminating somewhere in Pascoe Inlet

where it then extends ashore in a southeasterly direction to

join near the headwaters of the Diamantina River at an

unspecified place yet to be chosen. This mapped land region

Figure 8. Fly River delta in the Gulf of Papua showing the direction of

flow of fluid muds in the prodelta. Due to difficulties of pipeline laying in

this type of environment, the water pipeline would avoid the Fly River

delta environment entirely and transit overland across the Oriomo Plateau

(cf. Figure 7). (Modified from Hori and Saito, 2007.)

616 Finkl and Cathcart

Journal of Coastal Research, Vol. 27, No. 4, 2011

bordering the Gulf of Carpentaria is generally low-lying,

consisting of flattish floodplains, with a gradual apparent

transition in vegetation from tropical growth at the coast to

arid scrubland in the south. The climate is hot (33 to 36uCJanuary maximum) and humid with two meteorologically

definable seasons annually (dry season from May to October

and wet season from November to April when .94% of the

region’s yearly rainfall occurs). Pastoralism is the dominant

land use north of the Tropic of Capricorn in this Queensland

region. It is estimated that by 2050, the region may experience

a 22% annual rainfall decline and a +4–8% increase in annual

evapotranspiration (Petheram et al., 2010).

Less than 1% of Australia’s farmed land is presently

irrigated, yet the exploitable land adaptable to irrigation

agriculture is very great in the region situated between the

Gulf of Carpentaria and Lake Eyre! The 2011 human

population of Queensland is slightly greater than four million

people. Southern Australia suffered widespread meteorological

drought conditions for more than a decade, and it is likely that

the nation’s farming population will move northward to wetter

Queensland if extrasufficient and all-season freshwater sup-

plies could be, somehow, made certainly available (Carroll,

2008). The imagined Case A PNG-QLD UFPM (Gulf of

Carpentaria branch) macroproject is conceptualized, and

designed, to fulfill that purpose adequately!

During 2009, intentional climate modifiers proposed the

irrigated afforestation of Australia’s ‘‘Dead Heart’’ as a means

to help actually halt (anthropogenic) global warming, should

that be found to be truly in mankind’s best interests (Ornstein,

Aleinov, and Rind, 2009). Australia’s outback landscape located

in southern Queensland is ideal climatologically for their geo-

engineering task of establishing vast eucalyptus tree forests

(Youngentob et al., 2011). However, their wish that 500 mm of

freshwater be applied artificially each year to a ha of dryland

means that ,5000 m3 is needed just for that one ha! Such

freshwater application must be kept isolated by desert and

fencing to avoid being overrun by Cane Toads (Chaunus [Bufo]

marinus). Surface accumulations of freshwater can become

Cane Toad-invasion hubs, an undesirable situation (Florence

et al., 2011; Urban et al., 2007). Ornstein and his colleagues do

not unambiguously state exactly how much land must be

devoted to planted and nurtured eucalyptus forests in central

Australia. Further, we note that native eucalyptus tree

species—especially Eucalyptus saligna and Eucalyptus

sideroxylon—are better suited than their species choice to

future climate conditions, higher air temperature, and carbon

dioxide gas concentration increase (Ghannoum et al., 2010).

We do not yet assume that Queensland’s beautiful pipe-

shaped clouds, the famous ‘‘Morning Glory’’ aerial phenome-

non, will be altered, made absent, or enhanced by new forests

planted south of the Gulf of Carpentaria. A Diamantina River

feeding creeks and rivers that finally empty into the basin and

bed of Lake Eyre, made perennial by the PNG-QLD UFPM,

Case A conceptualization, would be an instructively supportive

infrastructure, permitting a new reliance on surface runoff

rather than pumping sometimes rather poor-quality freshwa-

ter from the subterranean (2–3 km thick stratum) Great

Artesian Basin, which is estimated to contain ,65 million

Gigaliters of water—about 820 times the volume of surface

water present in Australia. In effect, the ‘‘Morning Glory’’

macroproject could help remediate the overstressed Great

Artesian Basin through a profoundly transformative macro-

engineering concept (Darabaris, 2006).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We gratefully thank Heather Vollmer of the Coastal

Education & Research Foundation (CERF) for preparing the

figures contained herein. Her interest, diligence, and geo-

graphic information system capabilities are very much

appreciated for her research and final figure production for

this paper. For reviews of this paper, we thank Christopher

Makowski (Department of Geosciences, Florida Atlantic

University, Boca Raton, FL 33431, USA) and Craig Kruempel

(Tetra Tech EC, Inc., 1901 South Congress Avenue, Suite 270,

Boynton Beach, FL 33426, USA).

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