richard swinton
Mr , ex NSW department of Primary Industries
- 24 Ryces drive
- CLUNES, Australian Capital Territory
- Australia
Topics
1 Comment
-
re looking for research on water restrictions
2006-01-12 20:04:15 UTC
Hi all
It seems to me that the issue of agriculture vs industry vs domestic use is a bit of a furphy - it depends on which audience you are addressing. Obviously in the overall picture, addressing the major users (Ag) will achieve the best results overall. But this won't help a major town who's water is used by industry and domestic. So obviously we need to address the relevant users. There is also an issue of equity (if such a value still exists in the modern Australian political scene) and even though the savings of the urban dripping tap might be small compared to increasing irrigation efficiency, it can help support a sense of we're all in this together and we're all doing our bit. At the AWA conference on urban water use efficiency held in Sydney last year, Dr Peter Coombes pointed out that current regulations prevent the use of rainwater in urban areas for hotwater systems, but that his research showed that; a. using rainwater through the hotwater system as well was safe from a health perspective (farmers have known that for years!) and, b. it yielded a much higher return in water savings than any other scenario. (see AWA journal 'Water' vol 32 no 2 Mar 2005 - also some other excellent articles on demand management) Yet our public health rules make the use of RW in hotwater systems illegal! Perhaps it is time to review many of our regulations that were developed at a time that water was seen as an infinite resource to see if they are still appropriate. Making people more self sufficient for water will also hopefully make them more responsive to the realities of climate variability and change - you don't find farmers wasting domestic water because they know where it comes from! It seems to me that some of our woes come from the centralisation of infrastructure and the transfer of responsibility to a bureaucracy. This results in the distancing of responsibility from the end user. Self sufficient country people have for generations demonstrated that if people look after their own water supply, they are not condemned to plague. Certainly, in a densely populated city we need protection from bad practice, but people can take much more responsibility for them selves without threatening the system (except perhaps the powerbase of the bureaucrats!). On a separate note - an issue that needs to be addressed in urban water use efficiency is the issue of rental housing. How can we encourage uptake of improved water efficiency when many of the solutions proposed are capital in nature, and the renter can't 'adapt' the house?
Cheers
Richard Swinton
Resource Management Officer NSW
DPI Wollongbar Agricultural Institute
1243 Bruxner Highway Wollongbar, 2477
Phone 02 6626 1362
Mobile 0427 201 942
Fax 02 6628 1744
[email protected]
0 Recommends
You haven't saved any recommendations.
Messaging 0 colleagues