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Government Measures
NSW Premier Bob Carr recently announced a 25-year plan
to combat Sydney’s depleting water supply,
proposing a range of measures that are receiving
both praise and criticism.
First in the plan is the expenditure of $800million
to pump water from deeper depths from Sydney’s
two major dams and to pipe water to Sydney from the
Shoalhaven River.
The second is to spend $4million on desalination (removing
salt from seawater to produce drinking water), along
with other measures including waste-water recycling,
user-fees for households that are big water users,
offering water-saving plans for businesses and building
water-efficient homes.
"We need fresh thinking," says Ian Kiernan,
founder of Clean Up Australia and a member of the panel
advising Carr on water.
Waste Water
Among the criticisms of Carr’s plan is the lack
of a cohesive strategy to recycle waste water. Useable
drinking water will go down the toilet or be used to
water gardens, rain is wasted as it goes untreated
into storm water drains, and water is pumped great
distances from inland reservoirs and often used just
once in the city before it is piped away waste.
Services Sydney is a company with a radical proposal
to build a modern treatment plant, break into Sydney
Water's market and treat sewage to a much higher level.
Some of the water extracted would be sold to factories
and farms and some would go back to rivers. Ultimately,
according to company director John van der Merwe, sewage
water could be treated to such a level to make it drinkable.
The government, however, has made no commitment to
effluent (waste water) recycling. While Sydney residents
adhere to increasingly stringent water restrictions,
the city still recycles only 0.5 per cent of its waste
water compared to Melbourne and Adelaide, which recycle
20 per cent and 15 per cent respectively.
Warming up to desalination
Desalination seems to be a better option than treating
recycled effluent for drinking water, a government
statement said, going against Carr’s previous
dismissal of desalination as too expensive and environmentally
damaging.
"I said earlier it was too expensive and too
rich in greenhouse emissions," the Premier said. "The
point about desalination is it's becoming more affordable
and a greener option."
As the technology for desalination gets better it
is considered no longer a marginal idea in Australia.
Plants can be built more quickly than dams and seawater
is easier to come by than rain.
The technology is already in use in drier climates
around the world in places such as Spain, Malta, Cyprus
and parts of the US, and by February 2005, a consortium
will be chosen to build a $348million plant at Kwinana,
south of Perth.
Power sources for plants could be cleaner options
such as solar, wind or gas, Carr has suggested.
The Australian Water Association (AWA), however, says
a desalination plant would be a waste of time and money
except as a last resort in a greater plan to reduce
water demand, raise water prices, use rainwater more
profitably and increase recycling.
Governments Need to Act to Avert Water Crisis
Governments around the world will be required to do
a massive amount of work to increase water efficiency,
says Professor Frank Rijsberman, general manager
of the multilateral government-backed International
Water Management Institute in Sri Lanka.
"We’re in the middle of a paradigm shift
from taking water for granted to seeing it as one of
the most important priorities," he said in a telephone
interview from the International Crop Science Congress
in Brisbane, Australia. "We're not going to really
run out of water, but we have our work cut out to try
to use it more effectively, more efficiently."
Rijsberman forecast growing conflicts for scarce water
between cities and farms and between different regions
and users. But he said there were solutions: water
markets that rationed supplies by forcing users to
pay and governments that strictly regulated water use.
Water reforms now being introduced in Australia, the
driest inhabited continent on Earth, offered a model
for much of the rest of the world, he said.
The Australian government recently announced a A$2
billion (US$1.4 billion) national water plan based
on engineering works to rehabilitate river flows, conservation
through capped irrigation offtakes, guaranteed access
for farmers — and a national water rights trading
plan.
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