More Urgent Action Needs To Be Taken By The Australian People And All Levels Of Government To Preserve Australia’S Scarce Water Resources, Replenish Its Natural Aquifers And Promote Subsidies To Encourage Rain Water Tank Collection And Water Rec...
...action needs to be taken by the Australian people and all levels of government to preserve Australia’s scarce water resources, replenish its natural aquifers and promote subsidies to encourage rain water tank collection and water recycling.
Australia is in the thrall of the worst drought since the infamous Federation Drought of 1902, with all the country’s dams drying up rapidly, yet still is unprepared to manage this regular phenomenon. Since white man first arrived, this has been a land “of drought and flooding rains,” but the nation’s governments have never properly prepared to handle either contingency, have never planned to take advantage of the rains that cause those floods, to trap and store the sudden wealth of fresh water in the steadily depleting underground aquifers, whose water pressure is all that prevents the encroachment of salt water from the world’s steadily rising oceans, the ingress of which would be an irremediable ecological disaster.
Although this drought is reported to have started in 2002, it really began back in 1982 when Lake Burragorang dam levels sank to 45.5%, one of the lowest levels recorded at the time. In 1983 the drought led to Ash Wednesday which killed 74 people. This was followed by another severe drought in 1991; by 1994 the Condamine River had been reduced to a series of ponds, a part of the Darling River system collapsed, cotton farmers were given no water for irrigation and suffered major loss of production for this water-intensive crop, and 40% of Queensland was declared drought affected.
Australia’s leaders always claim to be surprised by the severity of the nation’s droughts, yet every schoolchild in this “sunburnt country” has learnt Dorothea McKeller’s iconic poem. The continuing devastating drought impact should have impelled the country’s leaders and citizens into preparing long-range plans insuring against...
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