Australia's water situation worsens

Peter Mac

"Water, water, everywhere, and all the boards did shrink.
Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink."
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner

Australia seems to be becoming more and more like the ancient 
mariner's ship, surrounded by water but with its inhabitants 
menaced by a desperate shortage of fresh water.

Several months ago rains generated crops from seed sown by 
Australian farmers as a last-ditch gamble against a long drought. 
However, the rain was not sufficiently heavy or prolonged to 
penetrate far below the parched surface of the earth. Large areas 
of the country are slipping back into their former arid state, 
and the nation is now faced with the terrible predicament of 
"back-to-back" drought.

Nor is the dilemma confined to rural areas. Sydney's Warragamba 
dam is now down to about 48 percent of its total capacity, and 
reduced flow is exacerbating salt pollution of river water to the 
point where Adelaide's water supply is under a critical threat.

But unlike the ancient mariner, the nation is not dependent on 
divine intervention to rectify these problems, which are the 
result of global warming and criminally wasteful use of our 
desperately precious water supplies.

The phenomenon of global warming is a result of man-made activity 
that results in the emission of large amounts of gases, whose 
presence in the atmosphere prevents the sun's rays from being re-
radiated back into space. This in turn results in a gradual 
build-up of the atmospheric temperature (the so-called "green-
house effect").

The very first and most basic step that Australia needs to take 
in order to deal with this world-wide problem is for the 
government to sign the Kyoto Protocol, the international 
agreement on measures needed to curb global warming.

However, the Howard Government has stubbornly refused to do so. 
The arguments they cite to justify this stance reflect those used 
by many members of the business community, who still deny that 
global warming is taking place.

Some organisations have elaborated plans and strategies to deal 
with the water crisis. The latest is the Farmhand Foundation. 
This group has outlined a number of steps that are well worth 
supporting, for example the capping of old artesian water bores, 
which lose large amounts of water each year.

However, it has also recommended collection of water at source 
and its distribution by means of a national grid. This scheme 
appears to exacerbate the problem of inadequate water flows in 
the natural river systems with consequent devastating impacts on 
wildlife and small farming.

In other parts of the world, global warming may result in 
catastrophic floods, such as those seen last week in Haiti, while 
in Australia it manifests itself in periods of prolonged drought. 
However, the resultant water shortage is being compounded here by 
the massive extraction of river water for flood irrigation 
purposes.

The worst culprits in this respect are the huge irrigator 
agribusinesses such as those that run Cubbie farm and other 
cotton-producing properties in Southern Queensland. Their 
extraction of water from the local Culgoa River has resulted in 
the loss of massive amounts of water that would otherwise have 
reached farmers in Brewarinna and other parts of Northern NSW.

And once again these businesses have a critical influence on the 
elaboration of water policy, and even on the extent of public 
discussion on critical aspects of national water use.

This was highlighted last week by ABC TV's Mediawatch 
program. The presenter drew attention to the withdrawal from 
ABC radio's Country Hour of an item that contained 
criticism of the Cubbie Station "water guzzler" irrigators. The 
program was particularly critical of the role of cotton grower 
Leith Boully in this respect.

The program noted that Ms Boully combines her business interests 
with heading two government advisory boards concerned with water 
use — and is also a member of the ABC Board!

It's hardly surprising, then, that the Country Hour segment on 
irrigation water use was dropped. As Mediawatch revealed, 
the segment contained an interview with Brewarinna farmer Ed 
Fessey. He described the huge vested interests that irrigators 
like Ms Boully have in preserving their almost unrestricted 
access to river water that are of concern to the southern 
Queensland irrigators:

"[they've] got pretty big investments in water up there and also 
the ability to extract water at very low dollar rates. And also 
there's no system of measuring many of the extractions of the 
water out of the rivers up there. I think there's only 20 or 25 
pumps that have metres on them. The rest is reported in on an 
honour system! It doesn't augur well for a visible and 
transparent system of water sharing."

And that's an understatement!