More stories about our dwindling water supplies are very welcome.

So are stories of water wastage, and the abject apathy on the part of citizens and governments alike.

Desalination plants are an expensive,energy greedy way of making drinking water.

Government and council support of water tanks must be mandatory.

Research,funding,development and reuse of our waste waters ought to be a priority.

Toowooombas (S.E.Qld) Mayor has taken this road, and good luck to her.

If we were to stabilize populations in Australia, this WA, Oz and global water deficiency debate would be unnecessary. Any growth in tangibles (populations included) or the use there of, including water, cannot continue indefinitely – anyone disagree? Andrew Bartlett apparently does, from what I have read from him here. I wonder who is pulling his strings.

Grab a chess board, bung a grain of wheat on the first square; double it on each successive square until you reach the last, 64th square. Guess how many grains of wheat the 64th square would contain?

Roughly estimated, the last square would contain four hundred times the 1990 world wide harvest of wheat. Thanks to science Professor Albert A Bartlett for these figures. They are simple math and beyond dispute. http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/transcripts/645.

The same would apply to a drop of water.

I ask; why would we listen to anyone like Andrew Bartlett (Democrats), Beasley (Labour), little Johnnie (Coalition) or any pollie who proposes continued growth, be it growth in water use, populations, any finite resource use including fossil fuels, or the economy?

They are all busily arranging the deck chairs on OUR Titanic as it steams flat chat toward the iceberg.

Still, we get the pollies we deserve don’t we? Who to vote for when they are all proposing the same thing, more growth. This is why I am here. It is difficult to get an airing in the mainstream growthist media, backed by the wealthy corporations or their equally wealthy owners who fund government.

I fear for my grandchildren.

Bucko

Bucko,
I too have sorrow for what 'we' are leaving our children and grandchildren. If anything!

But then I see the interest and comments generated by 'those cartoons'.

And I realise that society will fight and argue about religion, but will not do anything about destruction of our environment.

As the Native American saying goes, when all the water is gone, all the trees dead etc etc,
then we will know we cannot eat money!

This is terrible news. The discovery of huge potable water reserves in the Perth region, I mean. As if Perth isn’t big enough. Why on earth would we want more human expansion in this part of the world??

I would be in favour of tapping this reserve in order to relieve the water-supply stress on Perth and all towns within or adjacent to the Perth basin, for as long as it didn’t facilitate further growth. But of course that isn’t going to happen.

It shouldn’t be a matter of choosing between desalination plants or tapping new aquifers, it should be a matter of taking the hint from our stressed resource base and declaring limits to expansion as part of an urgent sustainability strategy.

Bucko has got the right idea, and yes Senator Andrew Bartlett appears to be one of the few on this forum who just doesn’t get it.

It is one of the most mind-blowing things on the planet that, in the face of critical water-supply problems, we just have to keep on growing, as rapidly as possible, with no end in sight, thus continuously increasing the stress on already badly stressed essential resources. How can this be? What is going on in our collective headspace? Why is sustainability so far removed from the tiny brains of our politicians? Why haven’t the residents of Perth, Sydney and many other places around the country demanded sustainability instead of continuous growth, especially given the high-profile concerns about water over the last few years?

Phil Playford writes; “Perth’s water needs are expected to double in less than 50 years”. But he just accepts that this massive growth rate will continue and that we need to “satisfy rising demand associated with population increase and industrial expansion”. He finds it remarkable that there has been any consideration of bringing water to Perth from the Kimberleys or building desalination plants. But he fails to see that the really remarkable thing is the absurdity of continuous unending human expansion. He has paid no consideration to stabilising water consumption. It's all just grow grow grow!

I cannot understand why the water recyling option is never considered seriously in this country. Waste water is simply water with added impurities - take out the impurities and what is left is just plain water. Dam water is hardly pure however much we try.

Recycled water is perfectly drinkable and far better for the environment than desalination or drawing the last drop from underground supplies. I survived on it for 25 years in the UK and still only have one head! Millions of others around the world are also still alive and healthy despite drinking recycled water. I must admit the water in London has a bit of a taste of chorine but that can easily be fixed with an inexpensive household water filter. I can't remember any problems with Giardia as has happened in Sydney in recent years.

We really must look at the options more rationally. The only way desalination is acceptable is if it can be run on solar energy. Why do politicians insist that Australians will not tolerate water recycling - has it really been assessed properly or is there some sort of corruption involved?

Population growth, more water needed, more water needed, less water available.

Less water available, environmental decay. Environmental decay, diminishing lifestyle and ecosystem collapse.

Ecosystem collapse, unsustainable lifestyle. Unsustainable lifestyle, death.

You don't need maths to understand that.

Sajo, “Why do politicians insist that Australians will not tolerate water recycling - has it really been assessed properly or is there some sort of corruption involved? “

Who is it that provides the major donations to political parties, corporate and business Australia. Where does the allegiance of the political parties lie, with their biggest funds providers, who donate to them so that they can attain office and put into place legislation that supports the aims of the parties major fund providers. Who are, corporate and business Australia.

Another simple analogy, not requiring a degree, brains or maths to understand, just common sense.

Sadly the people refuse to see this and still want to believe the constant tirade of lies that politics produces daily. Even though people appreciated Andrew Bartlett answering posts, he didn't really answer them, just objected to them going against what he said. Yet everything he said, was unsustainable and quite stupid, when you relate it to the reality of our future situation.

No amount of water will solve the one glaring fact about this country, it's only capable of sustaining a small population, no more than 15 million. If it were capable of supporting the population we have, then we wouldn't have the rapid degeneration of the system as we are currently seeing.

Having had 30 years in the groundwater industry in SA I am dubious about the wisdom of increasing pumping from the 'new' groundwater resource. Worldwide, and WA is no exception, groundwater levels are dropping due to overpumping. In the long run you can't pump more water from a groundwater aquifer than is being replaced by rainfall. The Sandgropers should proceed with great caution.

I agree, Dave Clarke, I lived in Phoenix, Az, for 12 months and they have had all kinds of problems from sourcing more water from the aquifers than was being replaced. Not only did this increase salinity but due to the concentration of pollutants, many towns in Arizona ended up with contaminated water.

Before we proceed with anything we need to look at reducing water wastage and improve on water collection - residential (many home owners currently install tanks) however, property investors could look at water storage in the homes they rent out and large business could set an example by installing water tanks on their industrial sites.

The average person can't do it all by her/himself.

There is no doubt we currently waste too much water - there is much to be gained by being rational about saving water and then evaluating what our long term requirements are.

Welcome to OLO Dave.

My sentiments exactly. This has already manifested itself very significantly in Perth with the unsustainable drawdown of the Gnangara Mound, leading to the drying of swamps and cessation of water flow through some of the Yanchep Caves. Perth has come to rely very heavily on this water resource. Water from this aquifer also supplements supplies to the wheatbelt and goldfields, as Phil Playford states. Heavy utilisation of this aquifer is fairly recent, but there are already major problems with it.

Many would argue that the aquifers of the Yarragadee Formation are much larger and deeper and therefore much less prone to drawdown problems. But they are talking about a “sustainable” extraction rate of 300GL/year (45GL initially), which is enormous, and this is likely to get much larger if the population of the southwest keeps growing at the current rate.

I have learnt to be very wary about the use of that word ‘sustainable’ by anyone who is in any associated with supplying a resource or commodity to continuously increasing demand base.

However, I would still be in favour of tapping this resource, but only on a number of very strict conditions;

1. implementation of very significant water conservation and recycling measures

2. relief of extraction pressure on the Gnangara Mound as soon as possible, allowing it to recover and thus minimise further damage to swamp and cave ecosystems

3. reversal of the absurd idea of super-energy-intensive desalination plants

4. a limit to the extraction rate to something far less than 300gigs.

5. and most importantly by far, implementation of limits to human expansion and population in the southwest, that are not far above current levels.

Perth uses about 560 Gl/yr compared with Sydney at 480 Gl/yr with approximately three time the population. Direct users take 300 Gl/yr in addition to the Water Corporations 260 Gl/yr.

On creation of the Water and rivers Commission there was an issue of how much scoping investigation the Commission should do compared with the proving of resources by a proponent. The Commission tried for years to obtain sufficient funding investigation, monitoring and analysis of resource use but was unable to achieve funding from Treasury. in latter years the Commission was actively seeking resource management charges as a means of funding the required resource management.

Professor Playford's comments about the reaons for the amalgamation of the DEP and the WRC are incorrect and do a disservice to the then Board of the WRC. As the past CEO of the WRC I can verify that the reason for amalgamation was a management fad under the MOG review of Dr Gallop, and a reaction to some simplistic complaints about having two regulators.

The Commission's view was that the Water Corporation should have done the deal with Harvey Water years earlier and obtained 50 Gl/yr for $250 million cf $390 million for desalination. Further if the Commission had had the funds it would have been drilling and scoping the SW yarragadee. It tried continually to get investigation going in the SW.

In the event the State was forced to wait until the desalination enthusiasts had their day.

The creation of the Department of Water is belated recognition that water is too important to operate without a resource Manager which can integrate the environment, social and economic factors.

The critical question now is; will the Department of Water be given sufficient funding and allowed to fulfill the proper role of resource manager as is now being cried out for by the SW communities. Investigation drilling and monitoring are necessary but not sufficient the full management suite of optimizing for State good, must be invoked.