Much of Australia’s water management has been geared to coping with drought seeing that it has a long history of frequent droughts.
The preparations that were put in place included building various storage units to ensure reliable supplies to cities and towns, as well as installing major irrigation systems, especially in Murray Darling Basin (MDB), which has resulted in Australia being the biggest storehouse of water per head of population than any other country.
Thanks to this preparation, Australia was rather well prepared during the early years of the Millennium Drought, complete with restriction policies, contingency supplies, and comprehensive drought response plans.
The Millennium Drought however, turned out to the longest and most severe drought on record, and lasted for a long 13 years with the tenth year of drought (2006-07), being the lowest year on record. This extended drought created conditions that were well outside what had been planned for, and it is predicted that due to climate change, these conditions will occur more frequently in the future.
This resulted in urban water management focusing more on managing demand and encouraging water conservation through use of restrictions, regulations and incentives, as well as instituting programs to change consumer behaviour. These steps were taken in conjunction with other steps, such as augmenting urban water supplies and creating a more diverse portfolio of supply options which included recycling water as well as using storm-water and groundwater, and building desalination plants as rainfall-independent supplies.
Various other actions were also implemented, which helped water-resource managers and policy-makers learn some lessons that have now been incorporated into all aspects of water management in Australia, including:
- Understanding that minimum rainfall records from the past can be broken, which necessitates having a more sophisticated approach of scenario planning for water management;
- The importance of drought-planning at all magnitudes, by all divisions of the water sector including irrigator system operators, urban authorities, and environmental managers to ensure that all these players can cope better through periods of water scarcity, minimising the impacts of water scarcity as far as possible and reducing their vulnerability;
- The importance of the water market in enabling:
- all water entitlements holders to make choices and mitigate their own risk,
- the available water to move to its highest value use and maximise its value to the community;
- The need to pursue water-use efficiency in households, commercial, industrial, irrigation, and the environment, to lessen vulnerability to drought and build greater resilience for the future;
- The requirement for a diverse portfolio of water supplies, encompassing direct use, reuse and desalination options to ensure continuing water supply in a drier future;
- The need to understand community impacts and provide good communication and support to communities under stress to enable them to adapt to extreme conditions.
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