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Australia water crisis looms

SYDNEY – Australians have been warned they face an environmental crisis unless they stop squandering scarce water resources in the world’s most arid inhabited continent.

Australians have done little to curb water usage despite the worst drought in living memory, with households in the desert-dominated country still using water at a rate 30 percent higher than the OECD average.

The problem is most acute in large cities, such as Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, which account for well over two-thirds of Australia’s 20 million population.

With reservoir levels below 50 percent in all of Australia’s major cities except Brisbane, experts have warned something must be done.

Sydney, the nation’s largest city, has near-record low dam levels as it continues to expand, with experts saying the bulk of the country’s population on the coastal fringes do not realize the extent of the problem.

In response, the Victoria state government has proposed hefty fines and even jail terms for individuals or companies that persistently flout water restrictions.

University of New England water policy research expert John Wolfenden said drawing ever-increasing amounts of water from river systems reduced waterways to a trickle, leaving them vulnerable to toxic algal blooms and devastating fragile marine ecosystems.

“Demand by far exceeds supply and the problem is getting worse,” Wolfenden said, pointing out the annual flow of Australia’s largest river system, the Murray-Darling, was now less than one day’s flow of South America’s Amazon.

A report by the government scientific body CSIRO this year said water shortages would intensify in the country portrayed by poet Dorothy Mackellar as the “wide brown land.”

It warned by 2030 there will be reduced rainfall and around double the number of very hot summer days in some states.

Proposed solutions to the problem fall into two categories, missive engineering projects to dramatically increase water supply or initiatives to reduce demand and ensure water is used more efficiently.

Some of the schemes put forward by the engineering camp over the years have bordered on outlandish, including towing freshwater icebergs from Antarctica and stimulating rainfall by creating artificial mountains in the desert or building a giant whisk to send seawater skyward.

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This information about Australia water crisis is taken from:
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Date: Monday, May 31, 2004
Section: The World

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