Water, Water Everywhere, But Not a Drop To Drink
by Warren McLaren, Sydney 
on 10.10.06
I don’t normally do stories like this. Usually I’m looking for an upbeat, positive angle on things. But on this occasion I’m changing tack, as a result of the extraordinary number of articles that have been flooding the Australian national broadcaster on this topic in just the past few days. I guess one benefit, may be that people’s self interest might extend beyond their plasma TV as they finally begin to glimpse the bigger picture. [Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs suggests that after breathing and regulating our body temp our most basic human need is to drink water.] Let's start with the international expert saying Sydney is competing with Mexico City and Beijing to be the first city to run out of drinking water. The same state’s water patrols have reportedly inspected 350,000 properties in an effort to save 200 billion litres of water from being wasted. The rural city of Bendigo, in the state of Victoria, believe they won’t have sufficient drinking water for their 95,000 residents within the next 15 months. And one of that state’s wettest farming regions, Gippsland, is also running dry. A major dam is only at 24% capacity and falling, with summer still two months away. (In a side story, one company, who we’ve mentioned before is looking to export potable water to the mainland from the island state of Tasmania, in converted oil tankers.)
To the north of Victoria, the Goulburn Valley, one of Australia's biggest fruit producing areas has been told make do with just 21% of its annual water entitlements. As one farmer observed, this is the driest period on record since 1902, with the government forecaster is predicting a nearby region’s oat crop will fall in line with a national trend that could see it 36% below last year’s harvest. Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, is staring down the possibility of even deeper water restrictions, as water flows in the massive Murray River system get even worse than normal. Over in Western Australia, there have been protests by indigenous people over the likely environmental impacts of that state’s capital extracting 45 gigalitres a year from the Yarragadee Aquifer. And even in the nation’s capital, Canberra, second stage water restrictions are expected to be enforced next month. A new book has just hit the shelves, urging for a national water audit system that forces all Australians from irrigators to brewers to account for their water usage. And if they don’t demonstrate certain performance standards they should lose their water access. All the while, The Weather Makers author, Tim Flannery has been cruising the nation’s river systems in a ‘tin’ boat, pondering the logic (or otherwise) of growing of water intensive cotton and rice on the globe’s driest continent (after Antarctica, that is). These news stories may be but a week old, however the writing has been on the wall for decades, it’s just that no-one has wanted to read it. So while some of the planet’s current geo-political turmoil might be the result of fighting for dwindling oil reserves, that’s just a kid’s pillow fight compared to the upcoming tussle for life-giving water.
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Warren, thanks for this post. Treehugger needs this well rounded coverage. Everything can't be shiny and happy, there is inspiration in what needs to be done.
Coverage has been pretty thin on TreeHugger lately, with heavy reliance on corporate PR statements for quasi eco products.
I like to see more posts like this that cover a topic with some depth and breadth, not some sales pitch from some dubious comsumer product that we'd be better off not buying anyway. thanks.
Would we really fight over water ? Or just clean up what we have, or desalinize it.
People are already fighting over water in some regions of the world.
Also, one of my heros, Madeleine Albright once warned that increases in water shortages, globally, can pose a major national security threat to the US, for one.
I think I'm a little more optimistic, that we will innovate new solutions, but I guess we'll see.
Good, interesting article.
I still felt some optimism creeping in! By the way, I just returned from the veterinarian who suggested that my allergic dog would benefit from kangaroo-based brand of dogfood from Australia, apparently a feed of last resort in the US - land of industrial additive everything. Perhaps Austrailian Roo hunters will be able to trade their product for some tankers of Lake Superior water before the drought gets the wildlife too. (:->
http://www.permaculture.org.au/greening.htm
http://www.sustainableagriculture.org/desert/
http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC14/Fukuoka.htm
this might give some inspiration towards low tech nature near methods
Spain's overall water table is around 40% capacity now.
The Woodrow Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Project has shown that there is actually more collaboration over water problems than there is fighting.
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=1413&categoryid=A84F71E7-65BF-E7DC-4E3D65C4974A971A&fuseaction=topics.news_item_topics&news_id=196897
...there is actually more collaboration over water problems than there is fighting.
There's also plenty of international co-operation regarding oil.
There was a related slashdot article a couple days ago
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/06/212252
This link was burried in the comments:
http://www.rexresearch.com/airwells/airwells.htm
Interesting, but no doubt insufficient for current consumption rates.
I was surprised to see that water shortages are a problem in Australia, though I suppose the underlying point is this isn't just a "developing country" problem.
On a note of optimism, there are solutions as other comments to this post have implied- one product that could have a huge impact is permeable concrete that captures raingfall and returns it to local aquifers.
I didn't believe this could exist until I read about it myself, but one of the companies in our portfolio, EcoCreto, is producing it in Mexico City which has a huge impending water crisis. Their full story is available on our site: www.new-ventures.org/risingventures
Take care,
-Derek
When will we learn ?
The water situation in Australia is grim.
107 Years ago Henry Lawson made this statement:
" Every spare penny should be spent on water conservation...... To attend to these things is a national work, for the benefit of the whole nation; to neglect them is a national crime - it is suicidal. "
" Drought-Stricken ( Henry Lawson published in " The Worker, 1900 " ) "
108 years have passed and this statement was issued.
Releasing a new report on the state of the Murray and Darling rivers, the Prime Minister of Australia said:
"It is a grim situation, and there is no point in pretending to Australia otherwise. We must all hope and pray there is rain."
He acknowledged that an irrigation ban would have a "potentially devastating" impact.
But "this is very much in the lap of the gods", he said.
When are we eventually going ro learn from previous mistakes?
http://home.iprimus.com.au/foo7/lawsondrought.html
http://home.iprimus.com.au/foo7/ausdrought.html
Romsey Australia
romseyweather.r8.org