Save Water Alliance Inc. - The Government’s water policy

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The Government’s water policy

Sydney is running out of water and the NSW Government’s ‘panic’ plan to pump 15 billion litres of water from the Kangaloon Aquifer in the Southern Highlands to provide Sydney with a paltry 7 days supply is a last ditch attempt to allay fears among the urban population about water shortages before the election – the plan speaks volumes about the Government’s water planning and management over the last 12 years.

The Premier has promised the urban population that water from the Kangaloon Aquifer will be supplying Sydney early this year. In a previous statement he said that Sydney could be drought proofed because the Government had found ‘these lakes under the Southern Highlands’.

The water from Kangaloon will keep Sydney supplied for a trifling 7 days, which hardly fulfils the promise of drought proofing the urban population. Furthermore in its panic, the Government is flouting both State and Federal agreements in a project that can only be termed 'environmental vandalism.'

Flouting national water agreements

In the opinion of the SWA, Acts that are being flouted include – The Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC), the Inter-Governmental Agreement in relation to the National Water Initiative (NWI); the NSW Department of Natural Resources Act; the Water Management Act 2000 and on top of this the Premier has deemed the bore-field plan a ‘Project of State Significance’, which is an attempt to fast-track pumping and circumvent laws the Government is bound to uphold. It is more a case of a ‘Project of Significance to Labor’ to help get the Government re-elected.

So the Government’s water policy is clear, it has one simple objective and two strategies to achieve it – the first strategy is not to cut usage for the urban electorate before the election in case of a voter backlash, and the second is to manipulate dam level percentages in an attempt to paint a picture of a Government that has the city’s water supply under control – when all along the real objective is votes in Sydney in March.

And if this means postponing building the desalination plant and extracting excessive volumes of water to top up Sydney's dams from the Southern Highlands and the Shoalhaven and trashing the local environments in the process - and as a consequence abandoning these electorates to get Labor over the line, then that’s the price the Government thinks is worth paying.

We know that research confirmed earlier in 2006 that water was at the bottom of the list of concerns about city life; this 'mind set' was no doubt confirmed by Labor Party polling and the Government’s strategy has obviously been structured to play to this 'mind set'.

The spin from the Premier and Ministers Campbell and Debus has been clear for months; Sydney electors were falling for it for a while, or seemed to be; the intent being to lull the urban population into a false sense of complacency about their water supply in the lead up to the election.

A monumental fiction

The Government is claiming it has Sydney's water supply under control - it's a monumental fiction. Minister Campbell has said the Government will not wear the 'political pain' of imposing higher water restrictions on voters, which confirms Labor’s election strategy of not implementing any further restrictions before 24^th March. Just wait until the 25^thMarch if Labor scrapes into office.

Evidence is coming to the fore that the Sydney ‘mind set’ is changing and water is now at the top, or near the top of the list of concerns about living in Sydney. All the bad news about global warming, trending higher temperatures, a rainfall deficit, the third El Nino in a decade, and the Government’s election strategy is unravelling very fast indeed.

There are four main arguments the Government is using to reassure Sydney voters it can maintain Sydney's dam levels at the deemed critical 40% level (or close to it) and demonstrate it has the urban population's water supply under control:

Claims that the Metropolitan Water Plan will secure Sydney’s water future. Some of the demand side options will certainly improve water use efficiency, but there is a gaping hole in the supply side which will ensure that Sydney does not become fully self-sufficient in either its water supply or usage. Even by 2015, 90 per cent plus urban water will still be used once and flushed into the ocean – unlike other modern cities which have 21^st century supply systems, not a system that was in vogue in the 19^th century.

Access deep water in Sydney's dams - this water is undrinkable, or requires extensive processing to make it drinkable. The Government knew this before it was announced; it’s a fudge to artificially increase dam level percentages – Sydney’s dams are closer to 30% per cent capacity – or below it – than the 40% the Government is praying for.

Extract excessive and unsustainable volumes of water from the Tallowa Dam. At times the Shoalhaven has provided Sydney with 81% of its water and the river, particularly the lower reaches are suffering.

By far the most destructive strategy the Premier has authorised is the extraction of 45 billion litres of water over 3 years from the Kangaloon Aquifer. The decision to flout State and Federal Acts to provide Sydney with only 7 days supply of water demonstrates the lengths the Government is prepared to go to avoid introducing more sever water restrictions on Sydney before the election.

The Metropolitan Water Plan categorises three sources of water supply that are termed ‘independent of rainfall’ – deep water, desalination and ‘groundwater’ (aquifers). Categorising ‘groundwater’ as being independent of rainfall is stretching credibility even for David Campbell, the Utilities Minister; it is also in conflict with water management practices specified under the National Water Initiative – an Inter-Governmental Agreement.

There is an alternative aquifer solution. While draining the Kangaloon Aquifer will only provide Sydney with only 7 days water (see Fact Sheets: "Only 7 days water supply"), it could take 7 years for the aquifer to recharge. The Botany aquifer, which is closer to users, would supply more water because less would be lost through wastage and it could be recharged with stormwater and recycled effluent in days.

"No recycled effluent. . . "

Minister Campbell has rejected this proposal on the grounds that Sydneysiders are not prepared to drink recycled effluent, when the Minister is well aware and has failed to inform the urban population that they are already drinking recycled sewage from a treatment plant in Bowral which in turn flows into Warragamba Dam – yet another example of Iemma Ministers being loose with the truth about things.

Pumping 45 billion litres of water over 3 years from an aquifer with geological characteristics of fractured sandstone, as is the case in the Upper Nepean, has never been attempted with so little scientific study. Minister Debus and the SCA are getting into uncharted territory and are cutting corners to fulfil the Premier’s promise to Sydneysiders that Highland water will be flowing into Sydney’s dams early this year.

After this miracle discovery of a ‘magic pudding of underground lakes’, several months later Minister Debus set up the Upper Nepean Community Reference Group (CRG) in a supposed consultative process; it was given six weeks to prepare a submission; and taking scientific advice it called for a five-year moratorium on all pumping in the Kangaloon bore-field so that a proper scientific baseline study could be conducted. A chorus of groundwater scientists support this proposal but the Government in its panic is ignoring any attempts to inject sanity into the debate.

Before Minister Debus even formed the CRG, the 4000 strong International Association of Hydogeologists (IAH) warned the Government about the potential risks in the Kangaloon borefield plan, in fact they rejected the proposal outright. In line with what seems to be a Government culture of not telling the truth about things, Minister Debus did not inform the CRG of the IAH recommendation, they found out after their submission had been sent to the Minister. Only at the beginning of this year did the CRG discover that the Minister has rejected its proposal outright.

Inadequate supply preparations

Apart from fiddling at the edges on the demand side and identifying the so called ‘non rain dependent’ supply side options, the NSW Governments water policy for the best part of 12 years has been to 'pray for rain'. Bob Carr's 'no new dams' speech in Oct 2004 confirmed this policy; in it there were no 'big ideas' to secure Sydney's supply side water future. The Government is well aware that Sydney's dams were constructed to supply 3.1 million people, Sydney's current population is 4.2 million, is projected to increase to 5 million, and the plans to supply the extra 2 million people have gone missing.

Not only has the Government not prepared adequate supply programs for an expanding urban population, it has failed to plan for drought which is a permanent feature of Australian weather patterns. A 125 megalitre desalination plant that will only supply 350,000 people and the Premier’s promise of ‘massive recycling plants to secure Sydney’s water future’ that only apply to Greenfield and industrial sites are hardly the ‘big ticket’ programs likely to make Sydney self-sufficient in its water supply and usage.

The Business Council of Australia says that 'water scarcity is a myth' and that the water crisis is a 'man-made problem that can be fixed' - for Sydney it's a man made NSW Government problem. The Australian on 18^th Dec said the only reason Sydney is not on level four water restrictions is because Premier Iemma faces an election. Twelve years of Labor has seen no appreciable investment in water infrastructure, unlike Perth which has bitten the bullet on desalination and Adelaide where recycling is an established part of the city’s water strategy. Instead the Carr and Iemma Administrations have waxed fat on water utility dividends; squandered these dividends as well as GST and State taxes on extra recurrent spending and growing the public payroll.

Unsustainable usage

Sydney is living on borrowed time, and the Government’s pre-election attempts dupe the urban population into believing they are doing the right thing in regard to water usage is just another piece of spin to avoid a voter backlash if the truth about the Governments bungling water management becomes widely known. ‘It's a case of hope we won’t get found out until after the election.

Current usage in Sydney is unsustainable and will continue to be unsustainable until 'big ticket' supply side projects come on stream and world class demand side programs become operational. Praying for rain won't work any more.

One of the more important statistics about Sydney's water consumption that is not being addressed is per capita usage. An average consumer drinks about 5 litres of water a day in various forms, Europeans get through about 150 litres a day; the average Australian manages to push this to about 343* to 350 litres a head (in August Sydney people were doing better than this and using 403** litres a day). Goulburn is down to 150 litres a day, as is the Central Coast and many country towns are facing a similar fate.

* New Directions released in Nov 2000 **NSW Government Shoalhaven report Aug 2006

In the Premier’s ‘A New Direction for NSW’, it states the demand for water has dropped from 506 to 343 litres per person per day. The implication being that this is a recent occurrence, there is no reference to the fact that it took 15 years to cut usage from 506 litres in 1991 to 403 litres in August 2006 and yet the claim is being made that usage has dropped by 60 litres per head between August (Shoalhaven report) and Oct/Nov (New Directions) this year i.e. in 2 or three months! There will no doubt be a drop due to water restrictions, but current restrictions only target external household usage, but it is internal personal water usage in Sydney that is way too high with dam levels diminishing by the week.

Take just personal showering which makes up 33 per cent of personal water usage. Energy Australia research shows that the average time taken in a shower by females is 7.27 minutes and 6.99 minutes for men. At weekends this rises to 8.08 minutes for women and 7.34 minutes for men. The top activity is by women who spend 10.47 minutes showering and shaving their legs.

Country people living on tank water and taking a shower, turn the water on and off while they soap and rinse and would have the ‘shower on with the water running’ for 1.30 to 2 minutes. If 4.2 million people in Sydney even cut their shower time to 3 minutes, adopted country water usage habits and learnt how to conserve water, there would be no need for the Government’s bungling attempt to bolster supplies for only 7 days from the Kangaloon Aquifer and over-extract water from the Shoalhaven River.

Paying the price for inept planning

The Labor candidate for Goulburn Robert Parker opposes extracting water from the Kangaloon Aquifer: ‘Not one drop of water should leave that aquifer until Sydney residents are on the same water restrictions as Goulburn – i.e. 150 litres a day or a per capita cut in Sydney of 193 litres from the current 343 litres. Parker’s solution maybe a bit harsh and no doubt he has been told not to embarrass Minister Campbell again with such logic.

After the election, no amount of Kangaloon Aquifer water or water diverted from the Shoalhaven River will allow 4.2 million Sydneysiders to continue to use 343 litres a day, 5 litres of which will be drunk and 338 litres flushed into the ocean – unless the Government’s prayers come true and it rains!

Sydney faces a critical water crisis, 92.8 per cent of the State is in drought and contrary to NSW Government spin; Sydneysiders can't be cocooned from the harsh realities of water shortages. This crisis is not of the urban population's making; it is of the NSW Government's making, and Sydeysiders and their country cousins are being made to pay the price for 12 years of inept Government water planning and management.