Australia is currently in crisis. We are suffering drought. The farmers are affected severly.Australia is a land of contrasts. It is a harsh country for anyone trying to make a living as a farmer.
The issue that concerns me is that the public has been told to conserve water. This makes sense until you look at the statistics. Approximately 5% of the total water supply is used by cities. This means that all attempts to reduce water consumption by the public will result, at best let's say 1-2%. Somehow, this doesn't sound very impressive and it shouldn't be the only solution to the problem.
One of the government initiatives being discussed, is to buy back water from the farmers. Believe it or not, there are farmers who have surplus water.
Another proposal is to ship water from Tasmania to the mainland. Am I the only one to see the insanity of this idea?
Furthermore, Far North Queensland (FNQ), has annual record rainfall, it's rainforest territory.
Yet, the rest of the state is in crisis with shortage of water.
We do tend to blame the government more often than not in Australia. But in this case, the infrastructure is the responsibility of the government and it's failed badly.
Anyone interested in reading further on the unique aspects of the Australian continent should read The Future Eaters by Tim Flannery.
7 comments:
That sounds like a bad situation.
We have similar problems from time to time here in my area. More often than not we are on some extreme water rationing. No washing cars outside of reycled water facilities and landscape watering is once per week at 2:00am
The world start to have problems, yeas. I remember in 1979 I was in a part with some Quwaitians..I told one of them: "Start to digg for water more than oil. 10 years from now, people will buy water to drink in bottles to the same price as cocke." All laughed and took it as the joke of the evening. 10 years later...we in deed started to buy drinking-water in bottles.
Bill, thanks for the reference.
I forgot to mention that there is cotton farms and rice farms in Australia. The insanity of such an enterprise in such a dry continent is staggering. Also, the point that only 5% of total water supply is used by cities. 95% is used by farmers! I don't want to knock farmers in general but rice/cotton farming should be questioned.
Kirsten, bottle water is indeed popular amongst the youth. So popular in fact that their teeth are rotting because they won't drink tap water which has fluoride added. What's the solution? Add fluoride to bottle water. Maybe add fluoride to coke as well:-)
Who's using all the water if the public only uses 5%?
Is most of it already used for irrigation?
Chris, I guess you could say that most of the water supply is used for irrigation. The way it works is the rivers are siphoned off by the farmers so the dams miss out. Then it is forbidden for farmers to trade water amongst themselves.
Lex. In California we have aqueducts the run the length of the state redistributing water. It's the only way we can farm and have cities.
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