Lessons not learnt: Cities warned of water shortages, soaring bills
August 13, 2019
Brisbane Times
The supply of water to the nation's major cities faces repeating the mistakes that drove up power costs, Infrastructure Australia has warned, with fears of soaring bills and a lack of supply to the fastest-growing parts of Australia.
Releasing a report on the nation's infrastructure needs, the agency said it appeared the lessons of the Millennium Drought had been ignored or forgotten, just as much of the country faced growing risks from drought and wide-scale water shortages.
Despite the country having the highest per-capita surface water storage capacity in the world, Infrastructure Australia said poor pricing policies, a failure to plan for surging population growth, ageing pipes and climate change were all putting at risk the supply of water to urban areas.
Infrastructure Australia has warned of soaring water costs and supply pressures ahead.
Both Sydney and Melbourne have been forced to boost supplies from their desalination plants this year due to the drought across eastern Australia. The Bureau of Meteorology this month revealed the dry hitting the Murray-Darling basin is the worst since the 1900-02 drought.
Infrastructure Australia said the drought highlighted the failure of authorities across the country to learn from previous dry periods.
"Despite undergoing an extended period of drought at the beginning of the century, known as the Millennium Drought, Australia’s urban water sector has largely failed to embed the lessons from this experience into planning and decision-making frameworks," the agency said.
"With large parts of the country drought-declared and the onset of another El-Nino phase, this presents major issues for governments and utilities to manage over coming years."
The Bureau of Meteorology explains the impacts and situations surrounding drought in Australia.
Water consumption per person dropped 16 per cent in the immediate wake of the Millennium Drought, but improvements in water efficiency "tapered off" as public interest and awareness waned.
There are also large differences in water usage and prices between cities. Sydney households use almost 50 per cent more water than those in Melbourne, while the cost of filling a swimming pool in Brisbane is 70 per cent more than in Perth.
The agency said the shift to desalination plants in recent years had been expensive and difficult to justify when there were other, cheaper ways to manage urban water supplies.
These included much greater use of water recycling and preventative maintenance, which was needed given much of the nation's water pipes had been installed between 1900 and 1975.
Upgrading water systems was likely to be expensive and could lift prices 50 per cent within a decade – the same sort of cost increases inflicted on households due to changes in the electricity sector.
"The combined impacts of climate change, population growth, rising community expectations and ageing networks mean that costs of providing services are likely to put upward pressure on household budgets over coming years," the agency said.
It also noted that risks to water were not confined to the nation's major cities. It found rural communities with moderate or small populations would also run into financial troubles as they sought to upgrade or replace ageing infrastructure.
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