WE have water everywhere. Floods in New South Wales (again) and heavy rains all along the Queensland coastline as dams overflow, causing further destruction in some areas.
As Dorothea Mackellar told us, this is a land “of droughts and flooding rains”.
So, if a young Miss Mackellar was able to identify this land of “drought and flooding rains” more than a century ago, why do we struggle so much with the concept in the 21st century? Has the intelligence of our civilisation deteriorated to such an extent that we are no longer capable of understanding our country’s variable climates and, in a more technological age, adapting to them?
Right now we have water in abundance; in fact, for many people there is far too much.
This is in stark contrast to the early years of the 21st century when we suffered the Millennium Drought, and then again just a few short years ago when many parts of the continent were again in drought.
During the Millennium Drought, we saw a knee-jerk reaction from our politicians, as is their custom, amid doomsday fears that the days of flooding rains were in the past and our dams would never fill again.
In South Australia, a smart government saw an opportunity to capitalise on these fears and seek massive flows of water from Hume and Dartmouth dams, sending them all the way to the mouth of the Murray River. Along the way, Adelaide and numerous other communities in SA were able to shore up their water supplies in the name of ‘environmental flows’.
The Federal Government even committed significant funds to a desalination plant, designed to further assist SA and ensure it had water in abundance.
Fast forward to 2022 and let’s see what is now happening.
Firstly, SA won’t use its desalination plant, because getting water from the upstream dams is a cheaper option.
Next, large quantities of fresh water are being poured the length of the Murray River with a number of consequences, including large (unnecessary) transmission losses, and when we return to drier times this will be further waste of our precious resource.
Large quantities pour out to sea, which is also a disgraceful waste.
At some point, we have to get smarter with our water storage and management in this “land of droughts and flooding rains”. We have to accept that at times, like now, there will be water in abundance.
This water needs to be stored and effectively managed, rather than being wasted which is occurring under our present management regime. If this means construction of dams and enlarging the capacity of present dams to improve our management for environmental and agricultural purposes, let’s accept this, instead of following the ‘greenies’ like sheep for no other reason than their political influence.
Andrew Hateley
Finley, NSW
