Friday, May 28, 2004
Bleak prospects
By Ben Sandilands
Some blame global warming but whatever the reason the reality of severe drought has bitten home in Australia's largest city.
THE STARK possibility that Sydney, Australia's largest city, could have no water in its dams in less than two years' time has finally dawned on its four million inhabitants. It took an attack on the freedom to fill household swimming pools - something of nearly sacred significance to urban Australians - to ram the message home.
Until late last year, the four-year drought that is ravaging the land just beyond the city limits, on the other side of its famous Blue Mountains, had hardly affected city life.
Stories of farming families of many generations being driven off the land, and whole communities withering away, had little impact other than higher food prices in the green and pleasant 50-km-wide tract of sprawling suburbia that stretches from the surf line to the encircling mountain ranges.
But as New South Wales' Utilities Minister, Frank Sartor, kept warning, little, if any, rain was falling in those ranges, which contain Sydney's water catchments.
And now, along the vast labyrinthine flooded gorges of the Warragamba Dam, which supplies 70 per cent of Sydney's water storage capacity, the `lost' valley of the Burragorang has reappeared. The rotted foundations of bridges and townships and long silent church bell towers are basking in bright sunlight that has not fallen on them since 1960, when they vanished under the rising waters of a project touted as supplying Sydney for 600 years.
The Warragamba Dam was full to almost overflowing in August 2000, when a wet spell ended an earlier less serious decline in dam levels. But by August 2003, it was only 65 per cent full, and by May this year it slipped under 46 per cent, its lowest ever level.
The culprit was not so much wasteful use of water by domestic and business users but evaporation. Although initial water restrictions late last year cut the rate of consumption by more than 10 per cent, remorseless dry westerly winds began to suck the moisture out of the catchments at an unprecedented rate.
The Sydney Water utility's hydrologists advised the Government that even when (rare) good showers fell, the soil had become so dry and to such a depth that falls that might normally cause useful runoff were completely absorbed into the parched earth.
Current estimates are that about 50mm of rain a day needs to fall continuously for two weeks to trigger the opening of the automatic floodgates that would stop a replenished Lake Burragorang surging over the top of the dam wall. To date though, every promising forecast has seen clouds pass over the city and rain either on the beach line or a few km out to sea.
The Bureau of Meteorology admits to be being stumped by the weather pattern, as the usual rules of forecasting that indicate a high probability of rainfall no longer seem to apply to the Sydney region.
Since late last year, new `water police', in bright yellow cars, have been raiding backyards busting illegal garden-hosers. The initial restrictions affect hours of hosing, ban most types of fixed sprinklers, and forbid the use of hoses to wash down hard surfaces such as driveways. Yet fines have so far had little effect.
With car washing by hose virtually outlawed, Sydney has become a city of dirty cars. Suddenly, a clean car has become a sign that either its owner is a water cheat or has waited in a long queue for the use of exempt car washing services.
The new stage two restrictions from June 1 will be much tougher. People cannot fill any of the thousands of new swimming pools without a permit proving they have fitted water-saving devices such as reduced flow shower heads or washing appliances inside their homes.
Stage three restrictions, if needed, will involve paying serious sums of money for water usage, with threshold triggers that will cause all the water used within a fixed period to be charged at a maximum penalty rate.
Figures produced by the Australian Water Association, which is calling for compulsory codes of water conservation, show that the average Sydney household regardless of number of people uses more than 400,000 litres of water a year on outdoor uses including pool, garden and car washing. With additional indoor consumption varying between 193,000 litres a year for one or two persons, or 398,000 litres for households of five or more persons, some typical larger homes consume more than 800,000 litres of water annually.
- Guardian Newspaers Limited 2004
Copyright © 2004, The Hindu.