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June 30, 2009
Peter Cullen, who was thinker in residence in Adelaide in 2004, said in his Flinders Research Centre for Coastal and Catchment Environments Schultz Oration in late 2007 about water and climate change. I thought that I might revisit this in the light of the focus of the forthcoming Adelaide Festival of Ideas on limits.
Cullen draws attention to what is becoming increasingly obvious. He says that:
Much of Sth Eastern Australia is drying out and is now in serious water deficit. It is no longer prudent to believe this is a drought that is about to break. There is every likelihood that we are seeing real climate change and this must be a driver to let is start managing our water resources as thought they were a scarce and valuable resource upon which we all depend.
He adds that the consequences of southern Australia drying out is that:
The demands on our dwindling water resources are escalating. Everyone believes their use of water should be the priority. The environment has been largely sacrificed with the Coorong rapidly becoming like the Dead Sea. We are facing a crisis. There will be a horrible shakeout in rural Australia and our cities are going to have to lift their games in water planning.
Adelaide, he argues, is faced with reduction in water availability from both the Hills catchments and from the Murray River. To its credit, Adelaide has moved beyond hoping for rain to meet the 245 GL it needs per annum with its projected population increases. What, then are the best options to plan for water security into the future?
Adelaide has the following options for augmenting its water supply are to purchase water from upstream irrigators, desalination, recycling and groundwater. The first is unrealistic in the long term whilst groundwater is not an option because the groundwater in the Adelaide Plains is over allocated. That leaves recycling and desalinisation.
Desalinisation has been the primary strategy with water recycling a very distant second. Although South Australia has been a leader in using recycled water for irrigation it has not supplemented this strategy to use reclaimed water to relieve the pressure on the city’s drinking water supply. There is no recycling of grey water into Adelaide's drinking supply, and there is a minimal use of recycling storm water. There is about 160GL every year of storm water going out to sea and the best expert advice is somewhere between 90 and 110GL could be captured from that.
However, only 5 per cent of the capital program for SA Water is going into stormwater recovery. Existing harvesting schemes only yield 6GL a year, with projects already committed expected to generate an extra 12GL a year. The Water for Good plan states that greater Adelaide's stormwater use for non-potable needs, such as gardens and toilets, is planned to be 20GL of stormwater a year by 2014, 35GL a year by 2025 and 60GL a year by 2050. Moreover, only households in new suburbs will be supplied with the stormwater because of the expense of fitting new pipes.
That is a very slow response.
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The Rann Government's Water for Good Plan is not online, even though it has been released. The water recycling projects going from this text include those at the Adelaide Airport, Riverside Golf Club, Old Port Road, Adelaide Botanic Gardens, Barker Inlet wetlands, and further stages of Waterproofing Northern Adelaide and Water Proofing the South.