water restrictions - thegoodwills.com

Resolution: we all want to save the world

resolution-save-world — Image: Southern Downs Regional Council water-wise pamphlet

Blame it not on the Bossa Nova but on the ancient Babylonians, who, 4,000 years ago, invented the dubious practice of making New Year resolutions.

The Babylonians were the first to hold New Year celebrations, although held in March (when crops were sown).

The Babylonians pledged to pay their debts and return any borrowed objects (thinks: whoever borrowed Murakami’s ‘IQ84’ and Cohen’s ‘Beautiful Losers’, give them back!).

An article in <history.com> cites these rituals as the forerunner of our New Year resolutions.

“If the Babylonians kept to their word, their (pagan) gods would bestow favour on them for the coming year. If not, they would fall out of the good books -a place no one wanted to be.”

Off and on for at least 60 years I have been making promises to no-one in particular that I would turn over a new leaf (an idiom derived from the days when a page in a book was known as a leaf), thus, to start afresh on a blank page.

Adolescent resolutions included promising to keep my room tidy and stop acting on naughty thoughts (less I go blind).

As decades passed, these resolutions turned to more weighty matters: to drink less, give up smoking, spend more time with the kids – that sort of thing.

The stalwart English clergyman John Wesley took the Babylonian resolution to another level, inventing the Covenant Renewal Service, commonly held on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day. Time has eroded the ritual’s religious overtones and these days making New Year resolutions is a secular activity that ranks alongside taking photos of your restaurant meal and posting it on Instagram.

If you have serious reasons for making an ethical promise to yourself to stop doing this or that or indeed to actively do something for the good of humanity, then go for it.

My three global resolutions for 2020, the first year of a new decade (although there are those who insist the first year of the new decade is 2021), are for the most part geared to survival (of the planet),

On Monday I was in the Warwick Council offices (handing in the paperwork for my seniors’ rates discount). There was a pamphlet on the desk explaining how to limit water use to 80 litres of water per day.

The limit was dropped from 100 litres per person a few weeks ago, given the parlous state of the region’s dams and lack of substantial rainfall.

Our existing 1,500 litre rainwater tank has but one ring left after (a) someone left the hose on or (b) someone sneaked in and stole it – an ever-increasing risk in this region. Next week we are having a 5,000 litre tank delivered. In so doing, we will have the entire cost of the tank deducted from our next rates bill. We have to pay for a handyman to build a base and also pay the plumber, but those are small prices to pay for water security. Mind you, it will take several decent falls of rain to make an impression on a combined 6,500 litre capacity.

Southern Downs Regional Council helpfully produced a pamphlet (above) which explains at a glance how you can get through 80 litres of water in a day.

The hard habit to break is flushing the toilet after every use (12 litres per flush). Most people in the region have a Mellow Yellow policy in place, which is what you think it is.

Living in an area which has seen no decent rainfall in two years quickly makes one mindful of how we routinely waste water. Now we aim to save and recycle every drop. Water left in a pot after steaming vegies, for example, once cooled is poured under a tree.

If you had wondered, yes, you could be fined for using more than your quota. The water meter reader will find you out. Not only will you get charged more pro rata for water use, if there is a leak in the system on your property, you are responsible for repairing (and paying) for it.

The second resolution is to ensure I generate as little waste as possible. As you’d know, moving house employs a lot of cardboard, paper, bubble wrap and rolls of packing tape which, at the other end, refuse to give up their grim hold.

Three trips to local transfer stations (dumps) later, I can see the urgency in re-thinking my attitude to household waste and packaging. When packing up, I picked up a few Styrofoam boxes (with lids) from the local supermarket. They made for sensible packing of fragile electronic components and the like.

But once you no longer have a use for Styrofoam or bubble wrap, what then? The local transfer station 15kms outside Warwick has a special container for polystyrene. As we found when getting lost looking for green waste, it also has a pit for asbestos and dead animals. (Ed: that’s what we call a non-sequitur)

We did donate a stack of flattened out storage boxes and a box full of plastic bubble wrap to a friend who is moving to our new town in January. A generous gesture, or did we just handball our waste problem to someone else?

Resolution number three is to reduce our personal carbon footprint – a hard thing to do when you live an hour’s drive from the nearest large city. When we were doing the green nomad thing driving around Australia, we worked out our carbon emissions and converted them into dollars. Then we donated an equivalent amount to a Landcare/tree planting organisation.

So while we are still driving a petrol-fuelled vehicle, we‘ll continue to do that. Once the height of summer has passed and hopefully some rain has fallen, we’ll plant as many trees and shrubs as this small suburban block can take. There’s a plan for a pergola on the western side, upon which we will grow grapes and other edible vines. This will hopefully mitigate our enslavement to the fossil-fuelled vehicle.

Of these three big resolutions for 2020, managing personal waste is the biggest challenge. We already started a compost bin. You can freeze and bury meat scraps, allowing decomposition and worms to work their natural miracles (Ed: if you have a dog, do not do this).

Avoiding packaging when you go shopping for groceries is harder. First thing: take your kete* with you. Fill it with unwashed fruit and vegetables straight from the bins. Check them out and put them back in the kete. Avoid prepacked fruit and vegetables, especially sealed packets of salad greens. Use paper bags if you have to, but be sure to compost them when they get wet and soggy.

On the outskirts of this town, young people are making a go of a small organic produce farm – hard to do in a drought. The ‘office’ is a small air conditioned shed with a couple of fridges, a bench with a set of scales and a pad on which to work out the total of your purchases. You then put the cash in an honesty box or arrange an EFTPOS transfer with the owner. It goes without saying you have to bring your own bag or box.

One can only hope that people do the right thing and that this brave little enterprise survives these arid times.

Happy New Year and please note, apart from the automatic distribution of this blog, I am having a break from social media through January. Thanks to those who subscribed to the cause.

*Kete is a woven flax basket traditionally used by the New Zealand Maori

Water shortages – here and there

When visiting friends in the water starved towns of Warwick and Stanthorpe, it does not take long for the local message to sink in – ‘If it’s yellow, let it mellow, if it’s brown, flush it down’.

This is a water-saving tip for times of drought – seemingly a more or less a permanent state of affairs in south-east Queensland.

Southern Downs residents are currently on a per capita water limit of 120 litres per day and there is talk of introducing emergency measures (90 litres per day). Given that modern toilets use between 6 and 10 litres every time you flush, you can see why mellow yellow is the gold standard. Likewise, a shower will use about 10 litres of water per minute. So a three-minute egg timer is a handy gadget to stick on the bathroom wall. The other common water-saving measure is to keep a bucket in the shower to collect water for the garden. Many people wash dishes in a plastic basin and use the grey water on the garden.

The lack of significant rainfall coupled with rapidly declining dam levels led to Warwick, Stanthorpe and outlying villages being placed on extreme water restrictions in mid-March. Stanthorpe and Warwick are the hardest hit by the ongoing drought and declining dam levels. Warwick’s Leslie Dam is down to 6.33% and its back-up water source, Connolly Dam, at 36.5%. Storm King Dam, Stanthorpe’s only source of water, is at 26.7% capacity.

Southern Downs Regional Council estimates that without rain, Stanthorpe will be out of water by December 2019/January 2020. Warwick has a 17–month buffer, to January 2021.

Mind you, they have been here before. In February 1995, the Leslie Dam was at 3% capacity. And how soon we forget what happens when it does rain! In early January 2011, South East Queensland had so much rain the Leslie Dam’s seven spillways were opened for the first time in 22 years.

SunWater’s decision to open the flood gates in 2011 and take pressure off the dam left motorists and residents stranded. Sandy Creek flooded, closing the Cunningham Highway between Warwick and Brisbane. SunWater responded to a request from then Warwick Mayor Ron Bellingham to reduce the rate of release and extend it over a longer period so the highways could re-open.

“I guess part of the issue may be that it’s been 22 years since Leslie Dam was last full and perhaps there is no one around who remembers how that was managed,” Cr Bellingham told the Warwick Daily News at the time.

Extreme water restrictions mean residents cannot wash vehicles, hose gardens or fill swimming pools. Hosing hard surfaces like driveways or hardstand (industrial) is an absolute no-no.

The upside of going through a water crisis is that water-conserving habits learned at the time tend to stick with you. When Brisbane residents had to deal with level 6 restrictions during the Millennium Drought, per capita water usage fell from the Australian daily average of 340 l/p/d to 140 l/p/d.

If you look at the global situation, in which 3 out of 10 people are without reliable access to potable water, Australia’s urban residents have relatively little to complain about.

The 2019 United Nations World Water report also states that only 4 out of 10 people have access to safely managed sanitation services.

World water use has been increasing at 1% a year since the 1980s, the UN report says. Increasing water use is being driven by a combination of population growth, socio-economic development and changing consumption patterns.

As you may have read about major cities like Chennai, Cairo, Tokyo, Mexico City and Cape Town, you can’t take abundant, safe running water for granted. This list of 10 cities at risk of running out of water includes Melbourne in 9^th place. Scary stuff.

The seven million inhabitants of Chennai in southern India (it was Madras until 1996), are so short of water residents have to line up every day for a truck-delivered allocation. As reported in the Pacific Standard, the four reservoirs that provide the majority of the city’s water supply have dried up. Restaurants, businesses and schools have been forced to close and residents wait hours in queues to draw water from municipal tankers. As always, wealthy residents can afford to pay the premiums for water from private tankers. The calamity in Chennai can be blamed largely on domestic and industrial over-use which has depleted ground water.

Don’t think it can’t happen here. According to a report in The Australian this week, up to a dozen towns across regional New South Wales and southern Queensland are confronting a crisis that’s been dubbed “day zero”.

Local Government NSW president Linda Scott told The Australian some regional cities and towns, including Armidale, Dubbo, Stanthorpe, Tenterfield and Tamworth are preparing for a day zero that’s less than 12 months away.

SDRC Mayor Tracy Dobie told Steve Austin on ABC Drive on Monday that if there was no inflow into Storm King Dam, Council could have to cart water from Warwick to Stanthorpe as early as December.

“Warwick is a different situation. We will have to set up a network of bores if there is no inflow into Leslie Dam,” she said.

Cr Dobie said that normally Leslie Dam has three years’ supply of water; Storm King Dam holds two years’ supply.

“That may have been OK a couple of decades ago, but climatic conditions are changing and we need bigger and longer-term water facilities in our region.”

Cr Dobie told Austin there had been “no rain in our region since March 2017” by which she means sufficient falls to filter into dams.

Data kept by farmsonlineweather.com.au shows that Warwick had a total of 130.4mm between January 1 and July 18 2019 (the long-term average for this period is 405mm).

Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was not alone in taking the view that Australia needs alternative sources of water. Several Australian States have developed desalination plants, with varying degrees of success. But as can be seen by the Murray-Darling Basin fiasco, there is no reliable, long-term water security plan.

Farmers and residents of outback Australia rely on steady rain to replenish rivers, creeks, dams and water tanks. The normally dusty red landscape north of Cunnamulla in far western Queensland is displaying a sea of green not seen in the outback for eight years. Heavy rain and floods in April has left this part of the west with full dams and green grass on both sides of the road (although in reality, it is a ‘green drought’, in which the country looks good, but the green cover will soon become parched through frosts and lack of follow-up rain).

You have to be watchful when traversing these often unfenced roads. As this photo shows, cattle are often left to forage for themselves, although She Who Drives Most of the Time said they seemed intent upon grazing.

After spending 10 days in the outback, I can but offer but this observation from a remote outback town: three large caravans queued up to fill their tanks at a public water outlet (that’s about 240 litres just there).

Fair crack of the whip, fellas. Go to the supermarket and buy your drinking water. We do.

More reading: FOMM back pages

Update: While Cape Town’s dire water crisis is over, authorities are wisely sticking to the 50 l/p/d limit set in 2018.

And…

Cape Town water crisis a stark reminder for drought-prone Australia

water-crisis-drought — Water stress map: www.wri.org creative commons licence

Cape Town’s water crisis is making news around the world, but nowhere should it be ringing alarm bells more than in our neck of the woods – South East Queensland. It’s not that long ago since the Millenium Drought (2001-2009) reached a dramatic point in late 2007. Brisbane became the first Australian capital to endure Level 6 water restrictions at a time when the region’s main reservoir, Lake Wivenhoe, dropped to 15% capacity.

In Cape Town, South Africa, the town water crisis is so parlous that taps were to have been turned off on April 16, but conservation efforts by the city’s 4 million people has pushed this out to June 4. Cape Town introduced Level 6 restrictions last month. Reports from the South African capital sound a bit like conditions in South East Queensland, circa 2007-2008.

The so-called ‘Day Zero’ – when water in Cape Town’s six reservoirs drops to 13.5% – means taps will be turned off and residents will have to queue at standpipes for daily rations. (Think dystopian movies like Young Ones or The Worthy).

A news report this week described a sudden sharp shower in Cape Town (10mm or so). People were said to have rushed out of restaurants, bars and shops just to feel the rain on their faces.

Residents are being encouraged not only to limit their showers but also to have baby baths over the shower outlet to collect the grey water for recycling. As was the case in Brisbane, Cape Town residents are being discouraged from washing their cars and flushing toilets (unless really necessary).

According to our local utility, SEQWater, during our own water crisis in 2007-2008, Brisbane residents successfully halved daily water consumption to 140 litres per person under Level 6 restrictions, which included a ban on filling pools. Gardens could only be watered with buckets (with water collected from those three-minute showers). The motto, ‘if it’s yellow let it mellow’ was nailed to many a dunny door.

Conditions are tougher in Cape Town, where residents are limited to 50 litres each per day. The Guardian reported that Cape Town’s water crisis was accelerated by a drought so severe it was not expected for another 384 years. Plans to diversify with more boreholes and desalination plants are not scheduled until after 2020. The city’s biggest reservoir, Theewaterskloof Dam, has mostly evaporated or been sucked dry since the drought began in 2015. The shoreline is receding at the rate of 1.2 metres per week, The Guardian reported.

Tucked away in its two-page feature on Cape Town’s water crisis was the colourful but completely unhelpful statement from an un-named homophobic pastor who blamed the drought on gays and lesbians.

Back home, South East Queensland’s water crisis in 2007-2008 ushered in a new era of water management, resulting in the SEQ Water Strategy, which set a water consumption target of 200 litres per day.

SEQWater spokesman Mike Foster says the biggest single change since the Millenium Drought was construction of a 600 km reverse flow pipeline network that allows treated water to be moved around the region. The utility also now has a ‘drought-ready’ strategy which is triggered when storage falls to 70%. Currently the region’s dam levels overall are at 75.9%, so nobody is losing sleep over the average per capita daily water consumption of 184 litres.

water-crisis-dams — Baroon Pocket Dam spillway January 2011, image by Bob Wilson

FOMM wrote in March that water levels at our local dam, Baroon Pocket, had dropped to 46%. SEQWater supplemented the Sunshine Coast through an extended dry spell in 2017. Baroon Pocket Dam is now back to 78% (this photo of the spillway (January 2011) shows what can happen when 750mm falls in one month.

Blame it on climate change if you like, but the Sunshine Coast region has recorded below average annual rainfall in three of the last six years. What really did the damage was an eight-month stretch from July 2016 to February 2017 with an average rainfall per month of only 43mm. Source: Bureau of Meteorology monthly rainfall.

The South East Queensland Water Strategy aims to maintain regional water security into the future through management and operation of a water grid including a recycling facility and a desalination plant.

SEQWater owns and operates 26 dams, 51 weirs, and two borefields, including 12 key dams which supply as much as 90% of the region’s drinking water. Foster says SEQWater is now planning for far worse events than the Millenium Drought.

“Cape Town never thought they would experience more than two failed wet seasons in a row. South East Queenslanders never thought we would experience two failed wet season in a row either.

“But we went through the Millenium Drought and nearly a decade of failed wet seasons.”

Foster says that if SEQ was again faced with a Millenium Drought scenario, the strategies put in place would allow water supply to be maintained with medium level restrictions.

Meanwhile, in far more parched countries

You might feel relieved to learn that Australia was not one of 33 countries identified by the World Resources Institute as facing extreme water stress by 2040. However, Australia is one of six regions facing increased water stress, water demand, water supply, and seasonal variability over the next 22 years.

The top 11 water-stressed countries in 2040, each considered extremely highly stressed with a score of 5.0 out of 5.0, are projected to be Bahrain, Kuwait, Palestine, Qatar, San Marino, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Lebanon.

The 2015 report forecasts rapid increases in water stress across regions including eastern Australia, western Asia, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, the North American West, northern China, and Chile.

Nothing focuses the mind on the need to conserve water more than a summer camping holiday in a water-scarce national park. At the Bunya Mountains national park, east of Dalby, bore water is available in the national park camp ground. But it is labelled ‘non-potable’ and visitors are advised to boil and/or sterilise the water before using. We have a 60 litre tank under our caravan and we also take two 10-litre containers as back-up. Even so, after five days the van tank was less than half full and by the time we drove home on a stinking hot Sunday, we were sharing the last few mouthfuls from a water bottle.

Fine, just walk into the Kilcoy IGA and buy some bottled water, right? Maybe not. In Cape Town, supermarkets were forced to introduce a per customer limit after a big run on bottled water.

You may recall I was enthralled a while ago by Ben H Winters’ series, The Last Policeman. This cli-fi trilogy depicts the urban chaos developing as the population wait for the cataclysmic arrival of an asteroid which will destroy the planet.

Winters expertly conjured up underlying tensions between survivalists, conspiracy theorists or escapists who have “gone bucket list” or found easy ways to do themselves in. Then there are those with no particular moral code. As of the policemen in Winters’ second book says: “Just you wait until the water runs out…”

More reading: The 11 cities most likely to run out of water

http://bobwords.com.au/doesnt-rain-soon-mate/

http://bobwords.com.au/dont-drink-the-water/