Antinuclear

Our water supply is out of sight, out of mind. And that’s a problem

Although Australia is a land often devastated by drought, if you live in the city, it’s very unlikely that you’ll turn on the tap and find no water comes out.Even during the Millennium Drought nearly a decade ago, we avoided coming close to a Cape Town-style ‘Day Zero’.

And given about 70 per cent of Australians live in major cities, it’s easy to forget just how good most of us have it.

Whether it’s for cooking, drinking or bathing, we don’t have to collect water from a well, or pump it ourselves, or worry about it being dirty or unsafe.

The sources of our water supplies are out of sight, out of mind.

But it hasn’t always been that way — and we need to stop and think about where it comes from.

If we don’t, we risk being unprepared for when the next prolonged drought comes around.

‘Liquid sausage meat’

It’s important to note that not all Australians have access to safe drinking water: spare a thought, for example, for remote Indigenous communities, or for the people trucking drinking water to small drought-stricken towns……..

[The author gives a history of Australia’s water sources, water use, and restrictions]

We have to start thinking about our water

More than a decade has passed since those tough restrictions on household water use.

As our cities grow and the climate changes, it’s no longer reasonable to wash our hands of the water question.

For our hotter and drier cities of the future, building more dams won’t be the answer.

Seawater desalination plants aren’t without their problems: desal is energy-intensive and its salty brine is damaging to the local marine environment.

Although some cities like Perth are making headway with wastewater recycling, the cheapest and easiest option for all of us is to change our water behaviour, and to better live within our means.

Relying on technology alone is not the answer.

The development of urban water supplies and sanitation over the past century or so has brought incredible benefits to our lives, while technology and infrastructure allows us to consume that water in the blink of an eye.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, households in the Northern Territory (349kL) and Western Australia (241kL) use the most water each year, while Victoria (166kL) and Tasmania (147kL) use the least.

Climate, soils and pricing all play a role here, but these statistics suggest that some cities have much thirstier habits than others.

Thinking more carefully about where our water comes from — and at what cost — is vital to making sense of living in Australian cities now and in the future.

Dr Ruth Morgan is an environmental historian at Monash University, and an ABC Top 5 humanities scholar for 2019.https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-11/changing-australian-water-attitudes-for-conservation/11647258