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The Forum > Article Comments > Watching our future going down the gurgler > Comments

Watching our future going down the gurgler : Comments

By Stuart Bunn, published 5/7/2006

We have yet to come to appreciate the true value of our freshwater assets.

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The ABS predicts Australia’s population will increase by 5 million and reach 25 million people in 2032. This represents a 25% increase in the population of Australia.

The Victorian Government has set a mains drinking water consumption target of 326 litres per person per day by 2020. This is a 30% reduction compared with the 1990’s average. Well done Mr Thwaites.

If 5 million more Australians each use 326 litres per day of drinking water, this is 595GL a year in 2032.

In 2001, there were 5.3 million separate houses (75% of dwellings) in Australia and by 2032 there should be 6.6 million separate houses. If 6.6 million separate houses each yields 70KL of rainwater a year, this will be 460GL or 80% of the water needs of 5 million more Australians in 2032. 70KL/house is achievable using technology for alternating between rainwater supply and mains supply at full mains pressure, and capturing rainwater from all downpipes using small tanks that are linked.

If all buildings in Australia – residential, commercial and industrial – each replaces mains water with rainwater, this could be adequate to meet all of the needs of another 5 million Australians (595GL/yr) in 2032.

The cost of installing a 5KL rainwater supply system yielding 70KL in every house in Australia is $2,750 (incl. GST) per house. Maintenance cost is $900 over 30 years. The total cost excluding interest is $3,650 or $1.75 per kilolitre. When the installation cost is capitalised, the operating cost is $0.43 per kilolitre.

The installation cost can be capitalised as a building cost (similar to mains drinking water charges) by making 30% reduction in mains drinking water consumption compulsory at point of sale of every building, with the installation of 5KL rainwater supply deemed to comply for a separate house.

Their ownership of mains water means that State Governments can mandate reduced mains drinking water consumption for all buildings, whereby the voluntary use of rainwater (which is owned by the building owner) is a deemed to comply solution. Why do the State and Federal Governments dismiss this option?
Posted by GC, Wednesday, 5 July 2006 10:56:18 AM
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Good piece, except fot the old chestnut, "Household water ..9% of total water use in Australia, ..67% used in agriculture. The rice industry uses almost as much as all Australian households combined (about four times the volume of Sydney Harbour), dairy and cotton use far more. Much .. agricultural production is exported - a virtual trade of thousands of gigalitres of water shipped overseas. Such industries support important regional economies but this international trade has come at the expense of the health of our rivers."

The implication that the water used by agriculture is exported is false, misleading and intellectually sloppy. The vast area of irrigated land transpires moisture at up to 6 mm each day and is redistributed as both rain and dew right over the rest of the country. And this is generally over and above the natural evapotranspiration level and it produces increased volumes and frequency of water cycling.

In this context, fresh water that flows to the sea achieves only a small part of it's real potential. It does provide a valuable ecological service along the way but 99.9% of this service is delivered upstream from the point where it meets the saltwater.

Estuarine species can move from fresh to salt water and back so there is no sound ecological reason why fresh water cannot be captured before it meets the saltwater for subsequent multiple cycling.

There is no reason why the water that was returned to the Snowy River could not be captured after it has done it's work restoring the river to health. It could be pumped from there to Melbourne and this would enable the existing Melbourne water storage to be diverted back to the Murray to restore flows and restore farm allocations in a win, win, win for the tripple bottom line.

Instead, we have proposals to desalinate pure sea water at excessive cost while only mildly brackish water, that could be desalinated at a fraction of the cost, is ignored at river mouths all along the coast. And this is the clever country?
Posted by Perseus, Wednesday, 5 July 2006 11:09:17 AM
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When the professor mentions the appalling state of our rivers, it would be helpful if he acknowledged the fact that in NSW mining under, or too close to, rivers has been a major cause of pollution and water loss in this State. This is thanks to a reckless and irresponsible approvals procedure for mine developments, in which deliberations are held in secret, and which has allowed several major rivers in NSW to be irreparably cracked and polluted. Remediation is not monitored or enforced, and anyway is not highly successful in the very few places where cracks have been grouted up. With the escalating profits and royalties from coal, several more rivers are under threat right now. The upper Hawkesbury-Nepean Catchment is being progressively desiccated, with dozens of creeks and streams undermined and with cracking of the Nepean and major tributaries like the Cataract and Bargo Rivers continuing apace. When are academics going to come to the help of community groups round the state which are attempting to highlight this issue ? With the ongoing wrecking of our rivers often in beautiful but inaccessible gorges, it's a case of out of sight, out of mind. But at the very least, the water loss involved when rivers are cracked in thousands of places should warrant a little attention.
Posted by kang, Wednesday, 5 July 2006 11:36:53 AM
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“Unfortunately, changing behaviour alone will not be enough in the face of a rapidly growing population and increased uncertainty of supply as a result of climate change.”

Thankyou Stuart Bunn for acknowledging that continuous population growth is a major part of this issue.

This is rare in such articles, and I have been very critical on a number of occasions on OLO about the lack of even a mention of increasing population pressure.

However, you then go on to discuss many ways in which we can improve water-use efficiency while not even touching on what we can do about population growth. In omitting this, you are emitting half of the problem and half of the solution, or worse – actually facilitating ever-larger populations by way of reducing per-capita water usage, so that more and more people can be squeezed in under the same water resources, thus condemning us to not finding a solution.

As untenable as it might seem, issues such high immigration and transmigration into regions with water-supply issues have GOT to be discussed openly – as openly as the things that you do mention.
Posted by Ludwig, Wednesday, 5 July 2006 10:01:44 PM
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At the national scale, urban dwellers aren’t the real water guzzlers. Household water consumption accounts for only 9 per cent of the total water use in Australia, compared with 67 per cent used in agriculture. The rice industry alone uses almost as much as all Australian households combined . (SO WHAT)

Much of this agricultural production is exported - a virtual trade of thousands of gigalitres of water shipped overseas. Such industries support important regional economies but this international trade has come at the expense of the health of our rivers. (Don't ya just hate those capitalist rice cockys )

The real water crisis in Australia is that we have yet to come to appreciate the true value of our freshwater assets. ( Too right Stuart )

Aust rice production 1.3 million tonnes

moistue content dried rice approx 14% = 182 megalitre (meg)

85% exported = 155 meg per/anum

@ $400m export value = $2.58 mil per meg

Or $2.58 p/litre for water contained in rice exported

Not quite thousands of gigalitres . Anyway what's the price of treated drinking water supplied under pressure to the kitchen tapp ?

So who doesn't understand the value of water ?
Posted by jamo, Wednesday, 5 July 2006 11:16:46 PM
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I think perhaps the fastest growing sector of our natural resource reliant industries would have to be the regulation industry .

Working tirelessly to keep the myth alive lest all the wonderfull funding might dry up .
Posted by jamo, Wednesday, 5 July 2006 11:29:52 PM
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Further to my last post…

As untenable as it might seem Stuart, you and everyone concerned about water issues MUST surely address the population side of the equation, or if you like, the continuously increasing demand side of the equation, as well as the improvements-in-average-per-person-efficiency side of the equation.

This is critically important.

I’m sure you can see exactly what I mean. But I feel that you won’t, as is almost always the case.

To me, it is one of the strangest phenomena that people who care about sustainability have this enormous blind spot with population issues. Do they get hung up on the connotations of elitism, racism or Fascism? Do they fear going against dominant government and business doctrine and thus perhaps jeopardising their jobs or funding? Is it that the message from government, media and business people is so powerfully pro-growth that many environmentalists get psyched into believing that growth is good and only good? Or is it just some innate feeling that human expansion is entirely good and shouldn’t be questioned?

In southeast Queensland, these things are now critical – with new dams having just been confirmed and reasonable water-conservation measures having being implemented…..but no efforts whatsoever even considered for slowing the population influx.
Posted by Ludwig, Wednesday, 5 July 2006 11:37:51 PM
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Jamo
you seem to be missing the point with your analysis of the water content of dried rice. You must be a rice grower!!

Its not the water contained in the exported rice thats important, which of course is miniscule.

Its the water used to grow the rice which is relevant; my understanding is that this is more than our environment can afford.

You are probably right that this is not very relevant to household consumption issues, because the source is remote from population centres.

My view is that conservation and nill immigration could go a long way to solving our urban water problems.

Rice growing would be a good topic for OLO.
Posted by last word, Wednesday, 5 July 2006 11:40:33 PM
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Here we go again, Ludwig. Population growth is irrelevant if every new house has a 13,500 litre water tank. The water is already delivered in good order to the roof top and a proper sized tank will deliver it at a lower cost than existing mains water. Those in apartments use much less anyway (no lawns) and can get their water from the roof of their local supermarket etc.

Funny how the CSIRO issued a full apology for the gonzo science behind the recent attack on the rice industry but the mug punters never got to hear of it. Blame the AGE, SMH and ABC for keeping that load of bovine excrement in the vacuous heads of the metrocentrics. Garbage in, garbage out. People don't even wipe their backsides with those papers anymore.
Posted by Perseus, Thursday, 6 July 2006 11:18:56 AM
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Of course we need to halt immigration and one day we might even have the guts to introduce a one-child policy. I'll rephrase that: we might have to. Academic commentators on water not only consistently fail to grasp the population nettle, they also continue to ignore the wrecking of rivers by poorly regulated mining operations. As for everyone having tanks: sorry to have to throw a little cold water on this one - as housing developments remorselessly mushroom across all arable land near the coasts, a multitude of tanks will contribute mightily to the desiccation of catchments, rivers and aquifers, which will no longer be replenished, and this at a time when rainfall in southeatern Australia has been decreasing by an average of more than 50mm each decade since mid-20th century.
Posted by kang, Thursday, 6 July 2006 7:23:10 PM
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Perseus, sometimes you seem to accept that population growth / continuously increasing demand is obviously a major concern, and then sometimes you seem to denounce it entirely.

It seems to me that you are somewhere between your ‘traditional’ position of being highly critical if not totally condemning of those who express concern about this issue and some form of acceptance of what really is the bleeding obvious.

Please realise that your push for the acceptance of water tanks is not at odds with the need to accept that the number of water-consumers simply cannot continuously increase. They fit together.

And please reconsider your statement; “Population growth is irrelevant if every new house has a 13,500 litre water tank.” It is a million miles from the truth.
Posted by Ludwig, Thursday, 6 July 2006 11:45:17 PM
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Wrong, Ludwig. The shift from Dam based water supply to roof based water supply, and its incorporated shift from public supply to private supply, involves a 40 fold improvement in catchment yield in an average year and a more than 400 fold improvement in a drought year. In a drought year a Dam catchment delivers no runoff (zippo)while a roof top will still yield, at worst, half the volume of an average year.

And as I have stated to you on numerous occasions, population increases are only minor increments of 1 or 2% a year while the shift to rooftop catchments involve a 4000% improvement. And while there may be certain circumstances where population growth is an issue, it is not even statistically relevant in respect of domestic water supply. In this case the population horse is dead, so stop flogging the damned thing.
Posted by Perseus, Friday, 7 July 2006 9:36:15 AM
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Perseus,

1. If every new house has a very large tank, it won’t reduce current demand on the public system one iota. Existing houses, as well as unit blocks and businesses need to install tanks to a pretty significant extent as well, along with water conservation measures, to reduce the demand on current water supplies to a point that we can all feel comfortable with. That is, to a point where the supply capability will confidently provide this essential resource during the driest of times.

2. There is a potential trap with large tanks. If they are taken up on a large scale in the belief that they drought-proof us but this fails to be true, then as growth continues, the demand on the public system could still be considerably greater than it currently is during really dry times. So the public system still has to keep up its supply capability for the rapidly increasing population.

3. Once people have large tanks and still have the public supply to fall back on, many are not likely to be particularly conservative with their water usage. So what may appear to be drought-proofing tanks may only serve to increase water usage in many cases.

4. There is also the prospect of tanks becoming a source of some disease or another, or probably much more likely; of the populace being spooked into not using their tank water due to some such scare. Again, the public system needs to remain strong, keep up with the ever-increasing potential demand, and be ready for sudden massive increases in demand.

continued
Posted by Ludwig, Friday, 7 July 2006 10:07:15 PM
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5. Even if water conservation measures and alternative sources (predominantly tanks) are implemented on a large scale, and the population keeps on growing at anything like the current rate, we are still going to have supply problems. Water tanks can potentially give us a several hundred percent improvement, but in the real world, this will probably be vastly less. Also, this improvement is a one-off. Once water tanks have been widely installed, that’s it, there’s minimal room for further improvement in that manner. Compare this to a 2 or 3% per annum rate of population growth. This will lead to a 100% increase in demand, all else being equal, in something like 25 years, and a 300% increase in about 50 years. So, what might seem like a small rate of pop growth, is in fact very substantial.

There are no two ways about it. SEQ needs a population policy that will have declared limits to growth. It will implement methods whereby that overall limit and whatever regional limits might be declared within that, are approached in a gentle manner and as equitably as possible. Come on – this sort policy is practiced on some islands with growth or visitor pressure, for obvious reasons. It is time to extend this simple concept to regions with growth pressure.

Local government regulates building approvals and thus decides on what development can occur where. Well, overall limits to development are just an extension of this. It is completely and utterly absurd and irresponsible, in areas with obvious negative impacts from growth, not to implement a management strategy that includes limits to growth.
Posted by Ludwig, Friday, 7 July 2006 11:50:01 PM
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Perseus, it is not like you to abandon a debate like this.
--

In today’s Sunday Mail there was a ‘Waterwise Special’ section several pages long. It covers lots of good ideas on water conservation, including harvesting your roof water. But of course, there is not a mention of population stabilisation or the need to stop the demand from continuously increasing.

There is also an article by Andrew Bolt, which expresses support for Premier Beatty’s new dam approvals and is highly critical of the greenies or the concepts of environmental flows or protection of endangered species blah blah…. the normal polarised expression from Mr Bolt with no attempt to present any semblance of balance.

But worse, he writes “Its(Southeast Queensland’s) population is booming and its water use is tipped to soar by half again by mid century” and then proceeds to say absolutely nothing about the notion to reducing or capping this population growth. It is the same old enormous blind spot – the same old, ‘oh we’ve got growth, so we have to pander to it, rather do anything about it’ mentality. Either this, or his bosses won’t even allow a mention of the possibility of even thinking about the notion of possibly even considering mitigating population growth!

It is appalling, and it makes a complete mockery of Bolt’s expression on the whole subject. But then, that’s nothing new.
Posted by Ludwig, Sunday, 16 July 2006 11:46:51 PM
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