“It is going to take a brave and powerful politician to tackle all the great issues of our use and reuse of water, but the hour glass is running low. The time to find and empower such a leader is right now.”

The problem is that we do not have any “brave” politicians, and there seem to be none on the horizon. Politicians see only the next election, their main interest being to gain or retain power. And, just how do we find such a person? Certainly not from the lawyers and trade unionists who seem to be the only ones interested in politics - and they seem interested only for the game of politics itself.

Most of the thoughts of this author are commendable, but he is just telling us what we already know. And as usual, we are being told that “someone’ has to do something, but unless that person can be found, if he or she really exists, all we will get is talk, talk and more talk.

These do-nothing politicians tell us that Australia lacks people with skills in certain areas. Well, we certainly lack skilled politicians!

Perhaps we should be taking what is thought of as an “extreme” view i.e. there is no political solution, so bypass the politicians

Why is a dam on the Clarence assumed to be too valuable to be allocated to farmers in the Clarence valley itself. It is their water after all and they have an equal capacity to boost production. In fact, it is more efficient and of greater economic and ecological benefit to add 5 MgL/ha to crops in a 1000mm rainfall district than it is to add 10 MgL/ha to crops in a 500mm rainfall district. For a start, you end up with twice the area of crops with a guaranteed water requirement. And the additional water is well within the natural range of variation in the coastal area but is a significant change in the inland area and comes with numerous risks.

Centralising water powers sounds great to many in the bush who suffer under the burden of metropolitan state governance but two words will curb their enthusiasm - Whitlam and Latham. One is a timely reminder while the other is a timely warning of the risks of centralised power.

NSW Farmers have the right idea by investigating the scope for a non-metropolitan state, or states, so the people who actually depend on the proper management of our rivers are represented by a government that shares that interest.

At the moment, river and water policy are play things for urban dilettantes who cannot even impose water tanks on their own community as a duty-of-care. So it is hard to see how the transfer of this "play thing" to a bunch of federal dilettantes will solve anything.

It is the regions that depend on their rivers that are left to make the best of these urban dabblings. And it is the regions, discussing their own issues, in their own style, amongst their own community of interest, that will develop the comprehensive, sustainable solutions they need.

Replace a failed state centralism with an even more remote federal centralism and kiss the bush goodby. Devolve state powers to large regions and watch how well they can work together with their own kind.

Everard Compton has a short memory.
The growing of water intensive crops in Northern Australia has been tried before:
Rice,at Humpty Doo in the 1940s - it was a failure.
Cotton,more recently in the Ord River area -it also failed.
It seems that a large water supply,while essential,is only one ingredient for success.
To my mind,it seems ludicrous that we should even be using such crops in what is the driest inhabited continent on earth.

Leave out "water" this government is lurching from one crisis to the next.

If 98% of tropical rainfall goes to the sea, that leaves precious little used by tropical plants or going into the soil. This claim is a bit amazing and unlikely to be correct, as most rainfall used globally and in Australia goes towards plant transpiration and evaporation even in the tropics.

For actual numbers, see my OLO piece "More crops per drop" a few weeks back, where these evapotranspiration flows are called Green water flows.

David Tribe

gmopundit.blogspot.com

Hell’s bells Everald Compton.

The most important initiative, that should be at the head of his list, is to strive for a stable population – to stabilise the demand for water, instead of pandering to an ever-increasing demand - to get away from the absurdity of continuous unending human expansion on this continent.

It seems that the most painful truth for people like Mr Compton is the fact that we have to stop growing sooner or later. And gee, maybe it is a good time to do it when our basic resources start to show real signs of stress. Well, it would be painful if these people even thought about it for more than a split second.

It makes no sense to continuously increase water supplies that will facilitate more and more growth, thus necessitating continuously increasing water supplies. It is the most absurd self-defeating spiral, unless we address the growth factor with at least as much vigour as the increase-in-supply factor.

“it is quite staggering that no political leader has ever emerged who will devote his or her life to overcoming all of the bureaucratic barriers which stop us building up our reserves.”

It is staggering beyond all belief that, with such high-profile water supply issues across the country that no political leaders have ever devoted themselves to stopping the continuous build-up in demand. It is all still about increasing supply, decreasing per-capita usage, and cramming more and more people in.

What would we achieve if the gulf plains or western plains of NSW were opened up? Wouldn’t it have happened already if it was economically viable? Schemes like this don’t come anywhere near being economically viable, even when just considering conventional economics, without worrying about environmental consequences - or holistic economics. Even if they were highly viable and thus successful at adding significantly to economic growth, they would just serve to facilitate a larger population, to the point where there would be no increase in per-capita economic growth.

The time to find and empower a leader in demand mitigation and sustainability is right now.

It seems Mr Compton is a greenhouse sceptic, only interested in getting more coal mines on line. He doesn't seem to have heard of lots of scientific work in the last few years that show it is our land-management practises that are leading to less rain combined with the havoc humans have wreaked on the global atmosphere.

As for the population issue, it's really a matter of what we do with the water and how we consume, not how many of us there are. Only a small percentage of our water goes to city water supplies. Much more goes on irrigating crops for export to other populations. Or to cooling power stations or for use in mines or aluminium smelters.

As for big dams, you can build them, but you can't make it rain. The so-called solutions sound more like Howard's picket fence- so last century!

Welcome to OLO cherax

“As for the population issue, it's really a matter of what we do with the water and how we consume, not how many of us there are.”

It is not just water provision to population centres that is affected by growing populations. Water that goes into agriculture, powers stations, etc, goes towards providing food and other resources and export income for our population. It is all affected by continuous human expansion.

Mr Compton is involved directly in increasing coal exports. Eight new coal mines in the Surat basin. Great! Our scale of coal exports is enormous! But apparently never big enough. Again, with population stabilisation in Australia, we wouldn’t feel so pressured to continuously increase coal production, or exports of whatever resources we can increase the supply of

I thought that the equation on this was widely known, but apparently not.

Households consume only around 15% of Australia's water resources. And over the past five years, we have reduced that consumption from 96.5 KL/person annually, to 84KL/person.

If farmers had achieved a similar efficiency gain over the same period, they would have "released" an additional 73KL/person for consumption by the general population - enough for an additional 17 million people.

Not many votes in telling farmers to be more productive though, so I expect the government - and all future governments - will stay as far away from this one as they can.

As for opening a new coal mine, surely this is a classic example of what Private/Public Partnerships were designed for?

The coal mine and its rail feeder system can be built into the cost/benefit analysis of both the corporation and the government, taking into account the need for the company to make a profit, and the government's need to encourage economic growth. If the equation works out, the money will be surely found, and an equitable deal on building, owning, operating and if necessary transfer, can be worked out.

It is such a no-brainer, I'd offer to help put the plan together. I charge a lot less than Macquarie.

I understand your perspective, Pericles, but you have missed an important point. The 15% of urban use is not actually used at all. The water simply passes through or over a human, or his wastes, before being flushed down a pipe where it's disposal is percieved as a problem to be fixed.

But there is not a farmer in Australia who would not loan his irrigation water to the city users, if, and only if, the city could be trusted to return that water to him when his crop needed it. Primary treated sewerage has $9 worth of nitrogen per megalitre and the soaps can substantially reduce the need for lime on acidic soils. So what the city regards as a problem the farmer would regard as a value added product.

The cities could access a much greater proportion of the total available water and have no adverse impact on total supplies. The only limiting factors are the distance that such water can be accessed and returned, at the cost of the city, and within comparable price ranges.

And with effective decentralisation, and devolution of political power to independent regions, the actual share of total available water used by urban areas could be reduced even if the population were to double.

It puts all Ludwigs population snake oil in an interesting light, don't you think?

Population, water crops per drop,coal mining,water and regional devleopment,Federal power, local power, bush versus city, right wing versus left wing ............... still compartmentalising one issue, one group one perspcetive against another ...........mmmm... adds strength to the fact we need a new way of working and thinking about water and a much needed apporach which adds a ethical and moral position which includes much needed mutality (benefit to the whole) in decision making

Provides only more evidence to seek to work differelty with a different focus to achieve solutions to complex problems

c'mon everald you can't be serious put the commonwealth in charge of water. what about the nathan dam, held up for years because the Federal Minister did not take all factors into consideration under a Federal Act. The High Court ruled the Federal Minister stuffed it up. The Nathan Dam will now be delayed another ten years whilst the Federal Minister tries to get it right. With all due respect you won't live to see it built and won't get to see the surat basin opened up for coal mining because the federal minister stuffed it up.

The cover feature article in "New Scientist" magazine this week is "The parched planet". It quotes the following agricultural water requirements. To produce:

* 1 kilo coffee - 20,000 litres
* 1 quarter-pounder hamburger - 11,000 litres
* 1 250 gram cotton t-shirt - 7,000 litres
* 1 kilo cheese - 5,000 litres
* 1 kilo rice - 5,000 litres
* 1 litre milk - 2,000 litres
* 1 kilo wheat - 1,000 litres

The article points out that many countries (including Australia) are surviving by depleting artesian water supplies which, while being a nominally renewable resource, are in many cases being renewed at nothing like the rate at which they are being used up.

Expansion plans for Cubby Station announced last December could make it the world's largest cotton producer, http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2006/s1547290.htm. Effectively, growing cotton for export is exporting water. Cotton futures for March delivery are currently priced at $US1.30 a kilo (58 cents/pound). A kilo of cotton represents 28,000 litres of water so the return is less that 5 US cents/kilolitre (about 7 cents).

Sydney residents currently pay $A1.20 a kilolitre. Something is not quite right.

There is a previous On Line Opinion article on Australia's water at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=857

I would agree with you MikeM something is wrong.

What you are saying is that the products are created and consumed by agriculture.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Agriculture produces all of the above products at the demand of almost exclusively, the urban areas, as very few people are in the regions involved with agriculture.

What this means , is the products get produced by the demand from the urban areas, not demand from farmers, so lets put the blame for the water use where it lies.

Secondly, most of the wealth created by an agriculture product is retained by the urban areas. Let’s take wheat;
• Farm gate price is between $125 and $150 a tonne,
• but the wheat- bix you buy is in the $,000’s
I ask who gets the most benefit from the pipeline of production for turning wheat into weet-bix.

The other side of the equation, is that when wheat leaves the farm gate
• It is world market priced, i.e. will be bought at the same price by the worlds poorly paid factory workers.
• When it is weet-bix, it is far from being competitive to the same customers.
• I ask, what happens after the farm gate to create such an uncompetitive price, from a truly competitive primary price?

As was mentioned in the postings, the city don’t use a lot of water, they just contaminate it and discard it. By use, I mean transpired through plants that have a “new wealth”, such as food as a result, for domestic and export use.

"Agriculture produces all of the above products at the demand of almost exclusively, the urban areas, as very few people are in the regions involved with agriculture.

"What this means , is the products get produced by the demand from the urban areas, not demand from farmers, so lets put the blame for the water use where it lies."

It is generally true that there is a demand for what farmers produce, although as we saw when the wool market collapsed some years ago and more recently when there was a world surplus of sugar, many farmers are unwilling or unable to stop producting commodities that nobody wants much.

But it's not me or people like me sitting in Australian cities that are the major consumers.

From the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, dated May 2005, http://www.dfat.gov.au/aib/competitive_economy.html :

QUOTE
1 Australia is one of the world’s largest exporters of beef. The value of Australia’s beef and veal exports totalled $3.8 billion in 2003–04.
2 Australia is the world’s third-largest exporter of dairy products. In 2003–04 Australia’s exports of dairy products were valued at $2.2 billion.
3 Australia is the world’s largest wool producer and exporter. In 2003–04 Australia’s shorn wool production was 475 000 tonnes and wool exports were valued at nearly $2.8 billion.
4 The major grains and oilseeds produced in Australia include wheat, barley, canola, oats and sorghum. Australia is the world’s second-largest wheat exporter and exported 15.2 million tonnes of wheat in 2003–04.
5 Australia’s key cotton export markets include China, Japan, the Republic of Korea and Thailand. Australia’s raw cotton exports in 2003–04 were valued at just under $1 billion.
6 Sugar is one of Australia’s major exported crops with exports of around 4 million tonnes in 2003–04, worth around $1 billion...
END QUOTE

$1 billion of cotton exports at 7 cents return per kilolitre of water represents the export, in effect, of 14 million megalitres of water a year. (For comparison, Sydney's main water supply source, the Warragamba Dam, has a capacity when full of 2 million megalitres, http://www.macarthurtourism.com.au/php/macarthurAdmin.php?section=sub_selection&cat_id=3&subcat=Dams .)

Perhaps, instead of paying $1.20 per kilolitre for his water Mike M would prefer to revert to the 'good old days' and send we females out to cart his daily water supply for him. Or should the price be charged at 'bottled water prices' i.e. $4,000.00 per tonne?

The agriculture products are wanted, but at a lower price that is not reflected in the retail price.
What this effectively means is that the productivity in the urban areas has declined, requiring a greater share of the “primary wealth” produced by the agriculture sector.

The other side of the story is that changing the products you farm is not like changing your car.
It’s more like changing a car factory to a tank factory.
Massive cost with unproven returns.

Quote
“But it's not me or people like me sitting in Australian cities that are the major consumers.”

Australian urban are 5 times the foot print of a world urban.
So this means even excluding the exports, Australian urban people have a much bigger impact as a result.
This is aside from the jobs, maybe yours that is created for Australia, meaning a much greater level of wealth in the urban areas.
What about the massive reduction of export earnings, as you listed in your post?
This will cause a massive blow out in the trade deficient.
Are you going to advocate a massive reduction in our living standards to re-balance the books?

Sure cotton returns 7 cents per kilolitre
What does Sydney return for its water as net export earnings? My answer would a negative.

You price is also cleaned and delivered, 24 hours a day.
Cubby station does not get that, as well as uses the water at the source, so cost becomes similar.

You're taling through your arse, MikeM. An exported crop is not exported water because, unlike urban runoff that flows into the sea and is wasted, farm water transpires, it creates life where there was less and when transpired it cycles back to earth as dew or rain, to produce more life.

And all this gonzo water analysis of how many litres of water it takes to produce a kilo of grain etc also misses the point. If the rain falls on a bit of national park it will support one possum every 20 hectares and take a whole order of magnitude more water to produce a kilo of possum food. But your urban planeteers have no problems with that sort of waste. We actually need both and what I find is that most possums would prefer to eat the stuff on my farm rather than the meager pickings served up in the national park.

And what about suburbia? 700 litres a day and what do we get for it? About $6 worth of blood and bone, two dozen farts and an ear full of cliche's and half baked opinions. I'll take the kilo of rice any day matey.

Please excuse my utter ignorance on this subject, but where exactly does the water consumed in the production process "go"?

For example, one statistic quoted earlier in this thread was that the production of one kilo of cheese requires 5,000 litres of water.

While this is clearly a frightening statistic, is it the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Can anyone on this forum explain where all that water came from, and what happened to it?

Was it all compeletely destroyed, or was it simply "used", only to reappear in another form - evaporated into clouds, perhaps, or filling an artesian basin somewhere?

Enquiring minds need to know this stuff, you see. It helps separate the genuine problem from the scary doomsday stories.

In answer to Pericles question,"where does the water go?",if he were to visit any food processing facility,much would be revealed.
A lot of water is used just to clean incoming produce.
With some products,a brine solution is sometimes used to separate good from bad.Have a look inside a can of carrots or peaches;much of what you see is - water.
Then there is all the hosing down,for health and safety reasons,of hard surfaces.
Where does it all go? Some,hopefully a lot,is recycled but much is not.

So what happens after a farm uses water?

Plants transpire water, but farm plants produce food and fiber as a result

Urban plants produce a nice green lawn in a hot dry climate

Farm water is drunk by animals, to product that is new wealth to be shared around the economy.

Much City water is used once, turn into “grey” water and discarded in to the ocean

Problem here seems to be that most of the new wealth seems to stay in the urban areas, not where it is produced.
This happens because what a farmer needs to produce this new wealth with, he has to buy at prices well above world market prices, yet sell his product at world market prices, minus the exbortant cost to export it through our ports.

Sounds like discrimination in any form you like to put it me...

So who uses water smartly?
So who uses water to most benefit the community’s well being?

As usual, a person commenting on a topic with a negative view point, and no knowledge.

This person is also claiming his 5 time’s footprint impact on the world’s resources as a positive.
Yes more products that are produced from water are exported than used here.
But it produces a massive wealth level in the urban areas as a result, so if you are going to argue against exports, also argue against the high living standards in the urban areas.

Well there's truth and then there's 'truth'. The former is what we each, solipsistically, consider to be the most valid (although usually biased toward the outcomes we really want to be the truth), the second is somewhere in-between all of our individual notions.

Our ecosystems are uniquely adapted to a sporadic and essentially stochastic input of precipitation within any one season, and inter-seasonally. It is the second part of this equation that is the real limit for an Australian population – average annual rainfall is very misleading. When we speak of drought, what are we really talking about? Surely not the lack of precipitation to grow a crop, or the water levels in our dams and the subsequent water restrictions we may face. It is to be expected that rainfall is and will continue to be sporadic in nature (with arguments of climate change aside). It is not drought, it is the nature of our climate, and we should be taking this into consideration when planning urban expansion, a new crop to grow, or a new industry.

To argue how much water a crop takes to grow and where this water ends up is valid, as it is to question how urban areas demand water which usually comes from rural landscapes in the forms of run-off, then pollute or ‘waste’ this water thereafter. Yes, both arguments area valid. Most farmers would almost certainly value their water availability and quality as it directly affects their day to day production, moreover, longer-term survival. For urbanites, the true cost of production of food is probably not reflected in pricing, and it should be as it is rather hard for farmers to be ‘green when they are in the red’.

Lastly, urban areas must become more ‘rural-like’, and their populations learn to ‘trap’ their own water and use it locally. In the first week of March 2006 for example, the Gold Coast had more than 250mm of rain flow promptly off the concrete and bitumen into the ocean, while pulling water from the Upper Brisbane dams which are still on level 3 water restrictions.

Everal got his dates wrong Nathan Dam has been talked about since tge 1899s. In 1920 the Premier Theadore announced that the Scheme was tp proceed. The dam was to have sufficent water to irigate 220,000 acres. Apart from the small Theodore area all that seems to have eventuated was the establishing of a new Irrigation Commission. I note followong the present premiers annpouncement about a new Dam he has announced the setting up of a new Water Commission, I wonder if History will be repeated