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March 14, 2007
Peter Cullen is speaking at the Brisbane Institute tonight on the severe shortage of the precious resource of water. Many, including to Premier Beattie, respond to this shortage by throwing money at a few big projects, such as reviving the Bradfield Scheme. According to his speech notes in the Courier-Mail Cullen's argument is that:
The Murray-Darling Basin appears to be drying out. In the past six years inflows to the Murray River have been about 40 per cent of what has been recorded in the long term.This seems to be a combination of a drought that will eventually break, and climate shift that will not. Since the river was over-allocated before this happened, it is now clear that we are going to have to adjust to taking less water from the basin. Over-allocation means people do not get the volumes they anticipate, and the environment becomes degraded.
That is the history of water development in the Murray-Darling Basin. We have climate change at a time when our groundwater aquifers have just been emptied. That history indicates that the water crisis is not simply the result of historically variable rainfall being made more unpredictable by climate change, along with the pressures of population growth. The water problem is also a consequence of poor understanding and management of our water resources in the past.
Cullen adds:
It seems that with the climate shift we are now experiencing inflows to the basin that are about half what they were in earlier and wetter times, and it may be that the annual allocation of water will now only ever be about half of what the entitlement notionally says.This is how the system has always worked, and entitlement holders cannot expect to get access to water that doesn't exist, nor should they expect to pinch someone else's water, including that allocated to the environment.
That means an an efficient irrigation industry that can create enough wealth to pay its way and not rely on public subsidies re cheap water as it has in the past. It may well be that climate change will eliminate irrigation from many areas.
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Jumping the conversation here from the previous water post.
For the home user: user pay is the best system for conserving I would think.
An aspect yet to be debated is that tennants may be charged for excess water use either ontop of rent or inclusive