Last week the Australian Prime Minister John Howard launched ‘A Nation Plan for Water Security’. It is a 10 point plan with a $10 billion budget to run for 10 years and it has generally been well received perhaps because many Australians feel there is a need for ‘water’ as an issue to be given a higher priority, for environmental flow issues and issues of over allocation to be sorted, and the provision of new water infrastructure fast tracked.
Most Australian live in a capital city and in almost every Australian capital city people have been inconvenienced by water restrictions. In Perth, Sydney and Brisbane city councils have even started reducing ‘water pressure in an attempt to ‘save’ more water as dam levels continue to drop.
I live in Brisbane and because of a failure by successive state governments to invest in infrastructure, a rapidly growing population and the drought, Level 4 water restrictions mean I can only water my garden with a bucket on particular days of the week between particular hours.
A planned plebiscite on the issue of drinking 'recycling sewerage' was cancelled yesterday with Premier Peter Beattie explaining that dams are so low we have no choice but to drink it.
A couple of thousand kilometers to the south in the Murray Valley irrigators who saved water late season by not growing a crop had half of this carry-over water taken from them by the New South Wales government just before Christmas after record low inflows in the upper catchment. Right now about 1,000 farms in this region are desperate for rain and running out of water for livestock for the first time since the beginning of irrigation in the region in the late 1930s.
Further south farmers are mopping up after a one in 50 year downpour flooded parts of South Australia and there was also good rain in central Australia and western Queensland earlier this month.
In the far north, where most of Australia’s rain has always fallen, there were good falls again last year and it could be argued that overall there has been a net increase in the amount of rain falling on the Australian landmass over the last 30 years.
But how useful is more rain in northern Australia, if water infrastructure and population are concentrated much further south?
The Prime Minister has suggested that there is a need for "a radical and permanent change in our water management practices" and that his 10 point plan will "improve water efficiency and address over-allocation of water in rural Australia".
Will this mean there is more water for our cities?
Will the $10 billion plan proposed by the Prime Minister go someway towards securing Australia's water future?
I plan to consider the 10 point plan, point by point through a series of blog posts.
Steve, I didn't make that quite clear.
Most of the shower heads sold in Oz are from Taiwan, [often made in China] designed & made for the USA market.
The Australian companies took advantage of the huge range of gear made for the USA market, at that time.
The USA manufacturers had the same problem as us, trying to compete with the price/quality comming out of Taiwan.
Hasbeen, the Australian water rating website
http://www.waterrating.gov.au shows that of the almost 2000 rated showerheads (all showerheads sold need a rating label as of dec 2006) less than 10 come from the USA. Most seem to come from China, and some from Europe and some locally produced. Maybe those 10 US designs have the market cornered ay?
Since there is such a focus on water saving now, most of the showerheads listed on that site are better than 9L/min or better, but there are still a few hundred that are worse. Only a couple hundred are less than 7.5L/min, and not all the USA ones achieve that.
But it has only been in the last decade that 9L/min or better showerheads have been required in new development across a lot of Australia, rather than individual council rebate programs.
I think the comment that anyone putting in a new showerhead in the last 25 years would have a low flow one is an exaggeration, but difficult to prove either way, without referring to a study or something.
In any case, its still ridiculous for Ian to dismiss showerhead replacement programs based on a sample of one.
Especially given that showers are one of the biggest water users in the home, and replacing an inefficient showerhead with an efficient one is cheap and pays for itself quickly in energy and water savings - a much more economical way for an individual to save water than a rainwater tank.
SteveM, I wouldn't bother googling Ian Mott on this blog, unless you want a concentrated hit of self-generated bull, and bullying. He is a very black pot indeed to be criticising anothers behaviour on this blog.
Steve Munn, google Ian Mott and read my stuff on urban water use, especially of storm water etc, you ignorant bozo.
Pinkslime expands my concerns about shower heads into an implied denial of all water saving methods so she can launch into another tirade. Most water savings have been from rain falling on gardens so they dont need to be watered and the persecution of gardeners. shower heads have done sweet FA.
But frankly, you have a serious set of behavioural problems that need attention. You leach the light out of every thread you appear on. Your attack on Jen, above, was totally unwarranted. Do us all a favour and go.
I was involved in marketing water, & energy saving equiptment, to health care, hospitality industries, & housing authorities from the mid 70s.
From the mid 80s, our company, & a number of others, were supplying nicely styled versions of the same stuff to the domestic market.
Not long after that, it became illegal to sell a shower using more than 9 liters/minute in the USA.
From that time the only people supplying water wasting showers, in Oz, were the large builders, who bought them in their thousands from asian suppliers.
Anyone who has replaced their shower head in the last 25 years will, most probably, have an imported, shower head, using less than 7.5 liters/minute, designed for the USA market. You would be hard pressed to find a shower using more than 9 L/M in any shop in Oz.
As far back as the early 90s, places like Lismore, were subsidising the purchase of these showers for water saving, & the Goss Government subsidised them, to help reduce electricity use.
Unfortunately, many low flow showers require above 40 PSI water presure to work properly, so presure reduction may be detrimental.
It takes at least a 9 L/P flow shower head to work with instantaneous gas hot water systems.
We overcame this, in a country area, where water was more precious than gas, by passing 3 liters per minute of hot water back to the water tank, & the rest to the shower. This increased flow, through the unit, keeps the gas turned on, & overcomes the hot/cold/hot problem experienced with these units.
oops
On the issue of deception, Jennifer has edited and deleted content of posts without declaring same and edited her own posts and then lied about it. She also tried to control posters and lied about that too. But we weren't getting personal right, we were discussing fraud, NGOs and then the IPA. Which corporate donors does jennifer and IPA deceitfully hide, bluff, cover-up, fake, pretence, ruse, sham, hoax, trick (even whilst advising the govt on the Murray)?
Corporate fraudsters go to gaol and sometimes jail because money rules our world in which the vested interests of the powerful are protected. If environmentalists get off lightly it means they haven't caused enough financial pain to anyone important enough to matter. Also note that in our system it's a lesser crime to commit physical assaults on a human than nick money from a company.
Nothing new in those points, so back to square 1: NGOs may be the lesser of these various evils. Isolated examples aside, how can you protest against organised citizens to balance organised business that pees in the pocket of political parties? And how much do you really care about Richard Ness or just using him to pointscore against NGOs (a headlining agenda of the IPA).