Adelaide's water supply 'critical'

[Lusankya]

All dressed up

Adelaide's water supply at 'critical' level

By Matt Williams

ADELAIDE is at risk of relying solely on rain to fill depleting reservoirs amid warnings the city's water supply situation is at its most critical.
The State Government yesterday confirmed Adelaide has only 47 days' supply – about 24 gigalitres – to pump from the River Murray from a 201-gigalitre "critical human needs" entitlement this financial year.

The state's reservoirs are at 54 per cent capacity, down from 81 per cent in November, and holding about six months' supply, but this is the first year SA Water has been restricted in how much water it can take from the Murray.

In a drought year, up to 90 per cent of water in the state's reservoirs is extracted from the Murray.

Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists member Mike Young told The Advertiser if the drought continued there was a "real risk" of the entire River Murray system failing and Adelaide having to rely on water from the Adelaide Hills catchments.

"The risk is if we have another drought like we had last year there is going to be nowhere to get our water from," he said.

Asked to elaborate, Professor Young said Adelaide's water supply arguably was in its worst-ever state.

"We're in this for the long haul – unless we have something like the 1956 (Murray) floods," he said.
So far, only 12mm of rain has fallen on metropolitan Adelaide compared with 40mm at the same time last year. Adelaide's average rainfall to the end of March is 58.6mm.

Before the entitlements for "critical human needs" being invoked last year, a Government spokeswoman said SA Water had a rolling licence, meaning it could take 650 gigalitres from the Murray over a five-year period.

State Water Security Minister Karlene Maywald said SA had secured a further 201 gigalitres from the River Murray for "critical human needs" for the next financial year – and SA Water would plan its pumping schedule within months.

"Every year, SA Water does pump some River Murray water into its storages but the volume depends on how much rainfall is received in the Mount Lofty Ranges and the level of reservoirs," she said.

But Professor Young said without "above-average rainfall" the city was "going to be in real trouble because there will be no water to pump".

". . . We all need to understand that even if we have a relatively good year, before we get out of jail and back to normal (with no water restrictions) we will need to refill the Lower Lakes, the 30-odd wetlands that have been closed off, Lake Bonney and much of the New South Wales and Victorian system," he said.

Mrs Maywald said restrictions were reviewed each month from rainfall and inflows to the Hume and Dartmouth catchments.

Opposition Leader Martin Hamilton-Smith described the water supply issue as a "crisis", saying that it could have been prevented if the Government had planned appropriately.

During Adelaide's 15-day record heatwave, more than 9 gigalitres of water was used, peaking at 728 megalitres on Monday.

So, essentially, in a normal year about 1/5 of the water for the 1.1 million people who live in my city is from the Murray, except now that's running out Granted, we still have the reservoirs, which will last another six months, or more if we get some rain, but really, this city can't survive on rainfall alone.

[Sea Skimmer]

Best to start building some desalinization plants then. Solar powered ones would be ideal, but I suspect that they’ll take longer and cost more to build then using natural gas, so it may be necessary to take the fossil fuel option in the short term if this emergency keeps going. I hope for all you’re sakes that you DON’T go and get a record flood rain which convinces your political leadership that no long term problem exists.

[weemadando]

I've often said it, Skimmer, the issue is that Australia has this retard mentality of "but it's not natural, and we have so many natural resources".

People will not accept a desalination plant or water recycling or anything like that until they get nothing but dust from the tap and there isn't a goddamn drop of water to be found in the land.

Even now, the biggest argument that I hear from the moronic, primarily baby-boomer, horde is: "just build more dams!" Never mind the fact that our current catchments are so fucking low BECAUSE WE'RE IN A FUCKING DECADE LONG DROUGHT, and that building a dam would require appropriating masses of land and probably more resources in the end than a desal plant...

But it's still better than desal or recycling because, "it's natural, and desal and recycling aren't."

In short. Most of the Australian public are retards who I wouldn't trust to manage an empty bucket.

[Stark]

I still remember Brisbane bogan television refusing to accept recycled water... after 20 years of drought. Now it rains a bit, so clearly there's no long-term problem, right? Being stupid and shortsighted won't cause any problems later?

OH WAIT.

[weemadando]

I still remember Brisbane bogan television refusing to accept recycled water... after 20 years of drought. Now it rains a bit, so clearly there's no long-term problem, right? Being stupid and shortsighted won't cause any problems later?

OH WAIT.

Yeah, give it another 10 or so years and we'll hopefully start to see some images coming out of Australia of emaciated people clustering around a hand-pump well that is producing a trickle filthy water, probably from the sewer systems.

Because, in all honesty, with the mismanagement of the situation, that's where we are heading.

Unless of course, the governments bite the bullet, take some fucking responsibility for the situation (HAH!) and stop bickering over who's fault it was and how many votes they'll lose for making sure people have fresh, clean water to drink and just fucking build desal or recycling plants.

[Chris OFarrell]

Same problem down here in Sydney. The Government was TRYING (and still is) to bring a Desal plant on line, which would be BUILT and READY, so in the event that water levels went under 30% for Sydney catchments, we would be able to turn it on and, if not reach 1:1 replacement with it, at least take a large chunk out of our usage and hopefully allow the catchments to fill back up from the reduced output.

But we had PROTESTS and screaming and crying and gnashing of teeth. I grant you the process to build the plant could have been handled rather better then it was, but the ignorance was just STAGGERING. And now we've been lucky to get some good rain over the summer, so Sydney's secondary catchments are full and the primary catchment is at 60% or so. And of course now the opposition are dusting their hands and saying 'well, that problems over, stop the fucking Desal plant!'.

I mean it scares me people are THIS stupid.

We need to spend the time we have brought WITH this good rain to systematically build wide scale water recycling plants throughout Sydney, storm water harvesting technology so the insane amount of water Sydney just flushes out to the ocean from rain can be recovered, and combine that with standby Desal plants and we'll be set for the future.

But you get the Bogans (Rednecks for the US people) ripping their hair out screaming 'I'M NOT DRINKING MY PISS!'

I spent 30 minutes one day explaining to one of these people how the Earth is effectively a closed system for water and the water they are drinking has probably been seawater, part of cells in various plant and animal species, excreted urine and crap, all utterly natural and recycled naturally...

But when I try to say 'then lets artificially speed up the process and not put it out to sea and hope some day it MIGHT come back', they just start screaming.

Its truly staggering.

[thejester]

Hang on, how much water does Adelaide actually have available? 'Cause Melbourne is sitting at a cool 34% and there's no particular hint of panic.

[weemadando]

We in Melbourne may have a wonderful 34% of capacity, but the fact is, unless we get some significant falls this winter, we're fucked. Population growth going to far outstrip conservation efforts before long.

And then we have the other issue of 34% isn't much of a safety margin. Especially given that as soon as we get any more rain the government will probably life water restrictions just to bump their approval rating by 0.5%.

[Lusankya]

Hang on, how much water does Adelaide actually have available? 'Cause Melbourne is sitting at a cool 34% and there's no particular hint of panic.

We have six months supply in our reservoirs. We actually have a lot less water storage in our reservoirs than the other capital cities, because whenever we have shortfall we just pump from the Murray. So while we might be "at" 54%, that's nowhere near as much as your cool 34%. The problem is, now that the pumps we have in the Murray are looking like being above the waterline shortly, that's not going to be an option.

Look at it this way: the prospect of running out of Murray water is enough to make my sister decrease her shower time from 40 minutes to 4 minutes. Nothing gets my sister out of the shower in less than 40 minutes. Not even chocolate.

Even now, the biggest argument that I hear from the moronic, primarily baby-boomer, horde is: "just build more dams!" Never mind the fact that our current catchments are so fucking low BECAUSE WE'RE IN A FUCKING DECADE LONG DROUGHT, and that building a dam would require appropriating masses of land and probably more resources in the end than a desal plant...

You'll never hear people in SA arguing for more dams. I heard that all the time in Victoria, but I couldn't help but think that the flow from all of the rivers they wanted to build dams in went into the Murray, which meant that we'd get less water.

We should be getting a desal plant in a few years at least as well.

Adelaide go-ahead for $1bn desal plant

John Wiseman | December 05, 2007

A $1.1 billion desalination plant is to be built in Adelaide by 2012 to supply the city with 50 gigalitres of water annually.

The desalination plant’s output will meet 25 per cent of Adelaide’s annual water needs and provision has been made for its capacity to be doubled in the future.

South Australian households will pay hefty price increases for water from mid next year to pay for the new infrastructure which includes a $300 million pipeline to link water storages in the north and south of the city.

The Rann Labor Government made the much awaited announcement for a go-ahead for the desalination plant this morning.

The first step in the project will be to set-up a $10 million pilot desalination plant next year to test filtration and water treatment technology.

Port Stanvac in the southern suburbs of Adelaide – the site of a former oil refinery – has been identified as preferred location for the plant.

The state will introduce a new three tiered pricing structure for water which it says will mean an increase in real terms in the cost of water of 12.7 per cent.

However there are price rises of more than 40 per cent on some of the tiers.

“Today’s announcement is the culmination of months of planning and consideration to secure our water supply in the face of the current extreme drought and record low inflows into the River Murray,” Premier Mike Rann said this morning.

“Building a desalination plant is an extremely complex and expensive undertaking and we must now focus on paying for this important investment in securing our water supply into the future,” he said.

The Premier said the new pricing should mean an price increase for water of less than $1 a week for 60 per cent of households.

[tim31]

I suppose the Rann Government had to do something with the money they got back from Mitsubishi.

Dam is a dirty word down here(Franklin River anyone?), but they're still building them: the Meander dam is slowly filling as we speak. But we rely on these dams not just for drinking water, but also for power generation. And yet elements of the Greens are still insisting a wind farm on the west coast would be viable.

[thejester]

We in Melbourne may have a wonderful 34% of capacity, but the fact is, unless we get some significant falls this winter, we're fucked. Population growth going to far outstrip conservation efforts before long.

And then we have the other issue of 34% isn't much of a safety margin. Especially given that as soon as we get any more rain the government will probably life water restrictions just to bump their approval rating by 0.5%.

They didn't last time we had so-called drought breaking rains, so I doubt it. You'd have to think that this panic is a little premature given we're going into winter, even if it does highlight just how fucked the water issue is.

'Course, if people are going to take 40 minute showers then the government can build desal plants till its blue in the face, but the fundamental problems remains: if people are flippant with water, we are always going to have problems.

[Lusankya]

Clearly you're not up-to-date on Adelaide water terminology.

Here's a rough guide:

Water (n): Vital liquid. Comes from the Murray.

Rain (n,v): A phoenomenon that occurs elsewhere.

To many people, if you say "no Murray", you might as well be saying "no water". Especially in recent years when we've been getting 90% of our drinking water from the Murray.

Adelaide has decreased its water use buy almost 30% since the same time last year, which means that we'd now not be relying on the Murray if rainfall was normal, but it isn't. In fact, if it doesn't rain today, then we'll probably be looking at 11mm of rain for the first three months of 2008, compared to the average of 59.6mm. The weather bureau claims that there is a 55-60% chance of us having a wetter than usual autumn, but that prognosis was released in late February, when we were being hit by a lot of cool changes, so I don't place much faith in that prediction.

[Hillary]

I still remember Brisbane bogan television refusing to accept recycled water... after 20 years of drought. Now it rains a bit, so clearly there's no long-term problem, right? Being stupid and shortsighted won't cause any problems later?

OH WAIT.

It doesn't just happen in Oz, Stark. We had two years of drought in the South East. Reservoirs were at something like 40% of capacity, so the water companies imposed a hosepipe ban.

Everytime it rained, so many people complained about the ban, as if one downpour meant the reservoirs would suddenly be full again.

It is extremely worrying that the general populace automatically assumes that local/central government & corporations can resolve any problem thrown at them, without causing any inconvenience to them (the public) whatsoever.

The fact that it hasn't rained, shouldn't mean that there is limited water available. The fact that oil supply is being overtaken by demand shouldn't mean that oil prices should rise or (in future) that availability is limited. These fat-cat directors and corrupt politicians should simply "do their job" and solve the problem.

When the shit really hits the fan, I hope I'm dead and cold in the ground, as people simply aren't going to be able to cope. Carnage will ensue.