JUST A DROP Australian 16/9

[Bronwyn]

Just a drop
Are the states imposing almost useless drought restrictions on water consumers while failing to build the infrastructure to bring water where it's needed? Environment writer Matthew Warren and Asa Wahlquist report
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September 16, 2006
AS last summer ended, booming southeast Queensland was the only urban sprawl on the mainland without water restrictions. But suddenly, it seems, Queenslanders are also running short of water.
On the first day of business after last weekend's Queensland state election, the re-elected Labor Government led by Premier Peter Beattie awarded 180,000 pool owners the toughest and most expensive water-saving requirement in the country: compulsory covers for their swimming pools to reduce evaporation loss. Many can expect to be out of pocket by as much as $2000 as a result. Are such restrictions value for money in terms of the cost of water saved? Not always.

Federal parliamentary secretary for water Malcolm Turnbull says the new Queensland "pool tax" is the latest example of short-term thinking and poor water planning in Australia, resulting from serial abuse of water utilities by state and local governments. "Water-saving measures are good, but you have to look at them with a hard head," Turnbull says. "Water is not the only scarce resource. So is money."

Water infrastructure - dams, desalination and recycling plants - is costly to build, but once in place the operating costs of the business are relatively low. State-owned water utilities are a valuable money pot for cash-strapped governments reluctant to give up some of the revenue stream to expand supply.

As part of new water restrictions beginning in Brisbane and other parts of southeast Queensland in November, gardens can only be watered legally by bucket or can. The taps have really been screwed down on backyard pools, effective as of summer 2007. As well as being required to fit a pool cover by the middle of next year, owners will need to complete two of three indoors retrofits: install a dual flush system in their toilet, fit a water-efficient shower head and buy a new, water-efficient washing machine.

Such is Brisbane's water supply that every drop counts, seemingly no matter what the cost. The Queensland Water Commission is quick to point out that 12 million litres of water is lost every day through evaporation from swimming pools. What it doesn't mention is that the cost of this imposed saving will be more than four times the cost of the water.

At about $500 a pool cover, and assuming an ambitious but as yet unspecified regulatory regime to deliver savings of two-thirds of all evaporation, it will cost about $4 for each kilolitre of water saved. Presently Brisbane Water sells the same amount of water for 85c.

Pool covers as a demand management strategy come in at five to 10 times more expensive than most of the more broadly accepted demand management options, including water-efficient showers and washing-machine rebates. This cost does not include optional extras including cover rollers and the extra cost to pool owners of replumbing their bathrooms.

That it has come to this level of crisis management seems extraordinary in the fastest-growing corner of one of the most developed countries in the 21st century.

Dams take a long time to fill and a long time to empty. Queensland's Wivenhoe Dam is only a quarter full, enough water for two years, but who's taking chances?

Being surprised by a water shortage is like having a tortoise sneak up on you. You need to be looking the other way for an awfully long time.

And yet all state governments except the one in Tasmania have embraced the symbolism of water restrictions as a public response to shallower water levels, starting with Perth in the spring of 2001. Canberra followed suit a year later, then Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney in 2003.

For Brisbane, the warnings were writ large on the Wivenhoe Dam wall as early as 1991. The South East Queensland Water Resources Strategy of that year found that "existing storages ... have inadequate yields to meet the needs of the future predicted populations at current rates of water use. Even with stringent demand management, the provision of additional water supplies will be necessary in the future."

The Water Services Association of Australia represents the big water authorities providing water to three-quarters of Australians. It asserts population growth in Australia's cities - with the exception of Perth - has been catered for not by providing new water services, but by reducing per capita demand.

In a paper on urban water last year, WSAA pointed out the easy measures had been targeted "and further measures are likely to be intrusive and may encounter community resistance".

In 2004-05, despite water restrictions in every mainland capital except Brisbane, city water authorities paid over $658 million in dividends to their respective state governments. That year, city water users saved 220billion litres, with one exception: Brisbane.

The National Water Commission is reviewing and assessing the existing water restrictions. Chief executive of the Irrigation Association of Australia, Jolyon Burnett, says there is a bewildering array of water restrictions. "In southeast Queensland until this new state Water Commission took over, there were up to 14 different regulations. It is absolute madness, and the public have felt that this was a bit of a joke."

Burnett argues there are three problems with the present water restrictions. The first is the poor process, with a lack of consultation and lack of warning. "Secondly the lack of science, and thirdly the inequity. Outdoor water use is the only one that attracts mandatory attention," Burnett says.

He wants to see pre-established trigger points, set at storage levels appropriate to each system, at which water restrictions come in. "Sydney doesn't have published trigger points. It is a political decision, not a science-based decision. It is less politicised in Melbourne, but nevertheless politicised. And in Brisbane, clearly level four had been discussed and it was postponed until after the election. "In Western Australia they are more science-based than anywhere else," Burnett concludes.

Well-run water authorities work out their targets, then manage their systems to met them. Phil Kneebone from Perth's Water Corporation explains water restrictions had the potential to destroy the nursery sector. "We simply do not get rain for eight or nine months a year, and 40,000 jobs were at risk."

In September 2001, Perth brought in a two-day-a-week sprinkler roster. "It was backed by rock-solid scientific evidence that lawns and gardens in southwest WA could survive on 10 to 15 minutes of watering in summer, two days a week," Kneebone says.

The system is managed so it will need to go to a total sprinkler ban only once every 100 years. To meet that target, Perth's water authorities have acquired irrigation water, pumped groundwater, recycled and built a 45gigalitre (billion-litre) a year desalination plant that will come on line later this year. "It (the water restrictions) has worked extremely well in the years since. We haven't had to alter it, although we have come close a couple of times," Kneebone says.

Sydney, on the other hand, brought in water restrictions with no warning. Burnett says irrigation, turf, landscaping and nursery businesses suffered an immediate downturn, and more than 2000 full-time equivalent jobs have been lost. "That would put the impact on a par with the closure of the Mitsubishi factory in South Australia, yet it has barely rated a mention," he says.

The difference between the two cities is evident in the response to desalination. While Perth's is nearing completion, Sydney's expensive plan to build a desalination plant proved politically explosive, and has been shelved.

A water industry insider cautions that restrictions at least protect taxpayers from government knee-jerk reactions, "throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at new water infrastructure when they don't have a planning context for doing that".

The states, he says "haven't been investing or preparing to invest in infrastructure in the way they should have been. Water restrictions do have a role but the response is to have proper planning".

Perth is in deep drought: water flowing into its dams is one-third the quantity of 30 years ago. But what about the other cities? Are they faced with droughts they could not have foreseen, or planned for?

Blair Trewin of the National Climate Centre says Melbourne has had nine consecutive years of below-normal rainfall and this year looks like being No.10. "There hasn't ever been a run of even close to that in the past," he says. "For Sydney and Brisbane it is fair to say that it is in the ball park of being among the worst two or three multi-year droughts of the last 100 years, but you couldn't definitively say it was the worst."

Two more dry summers and Brisbane will be out of water. Sydney Water, thanks to the Shoalhaven River, which is supplying the equivalent of nearly 80 per cent of its water usage, says it has water for little more than four years.

Southeast Queensland entered the drought with 19 big water supply storages with 12 different owners, and 18 local governments deliver watering to their ratepayers.

Local conditions vary: Brisbane's water storages are at 27.25 per cent, the Hinze Dam behind the Gold Coast is 89 per cent full and Borumba, which serves the Sunshine Coast just north of Brisbane, is at 84 per cent. The Gold Coast shares Brisbane's water restrictions, the Sunshine Coast does not.

In June, the Beattie Government appointed the Queensland Water Commission to pull the different water managers together and advise on water security. It is overseeing the construction of a water grid, linking the region's dams.

The commission has announced that level-four water restrictions, which include mandatory pool covers, will begin at the end of next month. The region's power stations, which use 110 million litres a day for cooling, will switch to recycled water and the Gold Coast is considering a desalination plant.

The Queensland Water Commission estimates that, relying on the current storages, southeast Queensland residents can expect, on average, water restrictions for six years in every 100. "But they may last much longer or much shorter depending on the actual climatic events of the time."

Some are adapting quickly. Brisbane couple Keith and Vi Hall have just bought a pool cover. Brisbane's restrictions and promotion of water awareness prompted the family to book their pool in. "We have a big, odd-shaped pool and we thought it was a step in the water conservation direction," Viv Hall said yesterday. "We haven't had a lot of evaporation and we've had a bit of rain in the city of late, but we still thought it was the right thing to do."

Chris Maggacis at Brisbane canvas and vinyl suppliers Copelands & Pickers says the company faces a deluge of orders. "We're planning to begin a night shift soon."

Additional reporting: Hamish Townsend

[Darren E]