Homestead mailing list

[Tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>]

There wasn't much to start with.  Need to reduce 20,000,000 population 
to 8.000,000 ot hire aborigine tesachers to tezch surival 
skills---catching and eating fruit bats and "Gowannas"

.
                
	The Christian Science Monitor - csmonitor.com 
<http://www.csmonitor.com/index.html> 	
                

from the November 19, 2004 edition - 
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1119/p07s01-woap.html


   Where's the water, mate?

*Sydney and other Australian cities could run dry by 2006.*

*By Janaki Kremmer* | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

*SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA* - In the town of Goulburn, three hours south of 
Sydney, nightly baths are a thing of the past. Dishes are allowed to 
pile up. Hoses no longer douse dirty cars and thirsty plants.

The 22,000 people in town haven't suddenly grown slovenly. A change in 
habits is being forced by a dry spell stretching back to the 1970s that 
is squeezing Australia.

To conserve, dishwashing is done in batches, plants are watered with 
runoff from showers, and cars are cleaned with gray water from washing 
machines.

Barring monsoon-like rains, such adjustments will need to happen on a 
massive scale if Australia's biggest cities - including Sydney, 
Melbourne, Canberra, and Adelaide - hope to continue having drinking 
water in just two years' time, experts say.

"Too long we have been living like we might live in Europe and not in 
accordance with dry climate conditions," says Leigh Martin of the Total 
Environment Center in Sydney. "Most people who balk at reusing sewage 
water should be educated about recycling."

Australia is not only the driest inhabited continent on earth, but also 
the greatest consumer of water per capita, according to savewater.com.au 
<http://savewater.com.au>. Australians use more than 260,000 gallons of 
fresh water per person per year, or 24,000 gigaliters - that's enough to 
fill Sydney harbor, 48 times over. About 70 percent goes to agricultural 
irrigation, 9 percent to other rural uses, 9 percent to industry, and 12 
percent to domestic use.

The outlook is ominous: The Warragamba dam that supplies 80 percent of 
the water to Sydney and was last full in 1998, wavers around 39 percent, 
despite some good spring rain this year.

Not so long ago, the effects of drought were felt mostly by farmers and 
bush-dwellers, but now it has come to the backyards of city folk, 
emptying their swimming pools and drying up their roses.

The water manager in Goulburn says that his town may be out of water by 
August 2005. "Many gardens are dying, and this year only one public 
swimming pool will be opened using last year's water," says Matthew 
O'Rourke. He says that if push comes to shove, they may consider 
trucking water in from other towns.

Many cities in the country are now considering recycling on a large scale.

Perth is already moving to desalinate sea water, even though it would 
bring enormous environmental consequences. While desalination plants are 
not rain dependent and can be built quickly, they use large amounts of 
power and contribute significantly to greenhouse gases.

This is not good news for Australia, says Penny Whetto, an atmospheric 
scientist with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research 
Organization, who says that with temperatures around the country 
expected to rise by 6 degrees Centigrade by 2070, something radical is 
required to control warming.

The water shortage may force changes in agriculture.

Experts believe that in 17 years the Murray River will be too salty to 
drink. The Murray is one of the country's foremost river systems, 
responsible, along with the Darling River, for irrigating 40 percent of 
the country's crops. The growing of European-style crops is one of the 
main reasons for the degradation of the fresh water, experts say. The 
large amounts of irrigation that run into the ground dissolve the salt 
below into runoff.

There are urgent plans to top up Sydney's dams from the Shoalhaven River 
via a new $195 million pipeline as part of the state government's plan 
to meet the city's water needs for the next 25 years. However this will 
depend on rainfall, and the pipeline is not going to be built until 
2009. And environmentalists say taking water from the river could 
destroy sensitive ecosystems.

Other plans include pumping the deep water of the Avon and Warragamba 
dams. This will be finished by 2006 and is expected to boost drinking 
water by 5 percent.

One of the biggest issues, according to some researchers, is population 
growth.

In a 2002 essay, environmentalist Tim Flannery says that Australians 
could live sustainably today if the population totaled 8 million people 
(rather than the present 20 million). He is calling for tighter 
immigration controls.

But Paul Perkins, the chairman of the National Environment Education 
Council, says that if Australia does not take the thousands of 
immigrants who apply every year then someone else will, "and that will 
be Australia's loss."

"We have incredible land masses to be shared and that's what it all 
comes down to - sharing resources - just as Northern China has learned 
to live with much less water, so can we, and without reducing quality of 
life. And for this, a concerted national water initiative is required," 
says Mr. Perkins.

The federal government has announced that it will release $1.5 billion 
to help alleviate the growing crisis. It has also established a national 
water commission to oversee future water projects.

Full HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and 
related links <http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1119/p07s01-woap.html>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

www.csmonitor.com | Copyright © 2004 The Christian Science Monitor. All 
rights reserved.
For permission to reprint/republish this article, please email Copyright 
<http://www.csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/encryptmail.pl?ID=C3EFF0F9F2E9E7E8F4>