What Have We Learned, If Anything?
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What have we learned about our dependency on water in this, the dryest continent? Very little, I’ll bet.
After a week of downpours which killed ten people and gave us the heaviest rain in something like 43 years, we’ve been (kind of) let off the hook a bit because the depleted reservoirs have been getting a good fill.
Only up to the 40-percent mark, however. And we’re not even there yet. It’s just predicted or expected. There’s no reason to be complacent about our water situation at all.
But we will become complacent, won’t we, because that’s the nature of our system. Politicians who are only interested in the next election, and people who should know better. But we don’t.
Twenty-five years ago when I was looking to build or buy my first home in Sydney I wanted to have rainwater tanks, but the councils here forbade them. You see they had to keep up the monopoly for what was then called the Sydney Metropolitan Water and Sewerage Board. Heaven forbid we should harvest our own. That would impact the money-making activities of the MW&SB, known nowadays as Sydney Water.
In my hippy-like self-sufficiency musings, I had also asked about composting toilets, but they were prohibited as well. Can’t put the sewerage monopoly out of work, can we?
Now Sydney’s grown a great deal since those days, and it’s pretty obvious, even to Blind Freddy, that the water infrastructure we have is not coping adequately. Lack of upkeep seems to be the cause, as far as I’m concerned. Maybe someone who’d more knowledgeable than I am will quibble the point, but I am pretty certain it’s a sound thesis.
We’ve got more people taking out more water that the supplies can cope with. The farmers and industry keep demanding even more though the rivers and the rains aren’t enough. And people expect they’ll always have enough water to get by with.
Isn’t that a bit crazy?
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