Watering Australia must become our number one issue. It should not become overshadowed by the COVID pandemic crisis. We must keep it top of mind if we want life in the bush to return to some normality. If you politicians are not pushing for it, replace them.
As a result of significant growth in immigration in recent year, recurring severe droughts, floods and fires, is causing severe environmental degradation. Competing interests, such as grazing, irrigation, urban water supplies, and upstream and downstream users has reached a critical stage.
Or regional communities can withstand most crisis, but without water, we can only look forward to these communities, of all shapes and sizes going into a state of long-term decline. Water security is the principal driver of regional, rural and remote community growth and prosperity.
Many of us hope the COVID-19 pandemic is a real wakeup call for everyone starting with our politicians and bureaucrats whose thinking always seems to be behind reality when it comes to watering Australia.
Growing and beautiful towns won’t exist without watering them.
A significant barrier which affects effective water management is the highly variable precipitation levels in Australia. Australian rainfall is more variable than in the rest of the world as the Southern Oscillation drives it not the seasonal changes. To have the same reliability in supply, dams in Australia need to be six times more massive than in Europe. And twice as large as the world average, to ensure water sources during dry seasons.
Water reform was first on the national agenda at 1994 of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) when some sort of strategic framework was created. Knowledge of surface and groundwater systems continued to grow, and the awareness of the sustainable water markets increased.
Further water reform was agreed to at the 2004 COAG meeting, under a national blueprint known as the National Water Initiative. But still, those with responsibility for our water resources are too big on rhetoric and low on action. We need more people who can get their minds around projects like ‘The Ord River Irrigation Scheme’ and the ‘Bradfield Scheme’.
“Thousands have lived without love; not one lives without water”. W. H. Auden
“Water is the most critical resource issue of our lifetime. With the health of our waters being the principal measure of how well we live on the land”. Luna Leopold