Photo Hunt: Water

Water is useful for

Drinking

Fishing and Hunting

Cleaning

Beach Going


Swimming

Scenic Backgrounds

We just need a bunch more of it here in South Australia.

photohunt

South Australia Water Prognosis. Grimmer and Grimmmer

In a week when we finally get some rain, it is depressing to see this and read this.

234km upstream of its now mud- and sand-choked entrance to the Southern Ocean, the river flowed proud and strong. People would ski and fish in the lagoon at nearby Walker Flat, on one of the Murray's most picturesque reaches.

Today, the waterhole is virtually dry. Lifeless gum trees stand like sun-scorched toothpicks on its banks, where the water used to be waist-deep. "I walked out the other day with waders into a metre of mud," said David le Brun, who operates night tours for visitors to Big Bend.

"For the people on the river, who live on it, it is devastating."

Nothing new, just the grim reality.

Very like the Colorado River just as it enters Mexico. Everybody else gets their dibs. South Australia gets the dregs.

South Australia, the water gringos of Australia.

Salisbury leads in water reuse

One of Adelaide's northern suburbs is benefitting from very progressive water planning. Over much of the city, the lack of rain has dried out much of the vegetation but is not impacting on the Salisbury council area, where more than 25 years of planning and development have paid off.

Mayor Tony Zappia said stormwater collected through wetlands systems has been stored in underground aquifers, ready for use across the council area.

"We have substantial amounts of water in reserve underground and we have been using that water to irrigate many of our reserves and sports grounds," Mr Zappia said.

"Even with the water restrictions, we'll be able to continue to irrigate these reserves and maintain them, whereas had we been reliant on mains water, we would not be able to."

The council has the capacity to collect, clean and store seven billion litres a year through wetlands at Greenfields, Pooraka, Para Hills and Burton.

Annual water use has never exceeded what has been collected and it is hoped there is enough to see out the drought period.

In the next four years there are plans to extend the network throughout Salisbury.

We investigated doing this on a small scale at the kids school. While it was technically possible, the benefits were not there, given the large capital expense and the limited run off from the school. We did however reestablish a small wetland area to be fed from stormwater runoff. We got a grant to put in a tank and are just waiting for some rain. However the project on Salisbury's scale is a great model for other Australian Communities. Some of the wetlands have fantastic native vegetation and wildlife.

Salisbury is one of a number of Adelaide's northern suburbs that are part of the Australian Solar City Project, where individual houses will be encouraged to install renewables and energy conservation gizmos.

These sorts of projects can make a big difference, especially in the middle of the big dry that we have in Australia at the moment.

Update: These must have been the kinds of projects the Margaret Beckett was talking about and that Flute was not aware of when he elegantly savaged the current incompetent reactie fools running the country at the moment.

Beckett said politely.

And of course Australia has more cause than many other countries in the world to understand the force of these arguments, because you already are a country that can teach the rest of us a great deal in terms of management of water resources, for example, and because actually you need to do so.

To which Flute responded

"That’s why the Murray Darling is buggered, recycled water is synonymous with wee wee, and no one has done a thing about the relentless, predictable and preventable decline in dam levels over the last five years.

We could teach the UK as much about water management as they could teach us about dentistry."

Well apparently we are not all bad when it comes to water management programmes. More of this kind of forward thinking needed.

South Australia Water Wars

South Australia, one of the drier places in the world has water restrictions which will really impact the way people live starting today. In the run up to the start of the water restrictions, residents went on a water consumption orgy, according to Ruperts Rag.

Adelaide's daily water consumption has jumped 50 per cent in the lead-up to water restrictions which begin at midnight tonight. A significant amount of the water has gone into pools, spas and lawns, with homeowners preparing for the restrictions which ban emptying or refilling existing pools.

Residents soaking their gardens before the tough water restrictions come into force, coupled with a lack of rainfall, also have contributed to the surge in water use.

SA Water said average metropolitan daily water use was 531 million litres this month compared with 356 million in October last year. Comparative figures for regional SA are not available.

The Level Two restrictions, the most stringent in the states history, are expected to cut the state's water consumption by 10 per cent a year. A 10 per cent cut to average household water use would save residents about $15 a year on their water bills. The Opposition said this was a poor cash reward for people saving water.

Household water use costs 47c for every 1000 litres for the first 125,000 litres a year and $1.09 for every thousand litres after that.

While the restrictions are good, seems to me that taxing excessive water use should be part of the process. We are encouraged to dob in violators of the new requirements, but hitting people in the pocket book is likely to be more effective in the long term. That is assuming that the State Government doesn't just pocket the money (which they are good at).