As you probably now, South-East Queensland is in the midst of a water crisis, and is about to undergo level 5 restrictions in a couple of weeks. At least they are doing something about it now, by building a recycled water pipeline and desalination plant which will ease it by the end of 2008 (if things run to schedule and the water lasts until then). However, they seem as typical and incompetent as any other government in how this crisis developed.

This is a lesson in how to not manage a water crisis:

1) Commission a report on water usage which reports in 2000 and recommends a wide range of measures, and then ignore it.

2) Have a briefing by experts for State Ministers in 2003 urgently recommending new water infrastructure, and then ignore it.

3) Blindly deny that the problem is serious despite the Water Commission saying so.

4) Identify a number of households who are in flagrant violation of existing water restrictions, some of which are using of 10,000 litres of water per day, and ignore them, claiming that more evidence is needed before any investigation can take place.

5) Try to reduce water usage via price increases, but have a Residential Tenancies Act that requires a reasonable amount of water to be included as part of part of the normal rent, and all excess water must be charged on a fixed rate. As most tenancy agreements in Queensland are fixed term agreements, this means that any price increases can take 12 months to affect a large number of people.

Hopefully they'll manage to get their act together, and finish the water pipeline to the Gold Coast before the water runs out. In the meantime we are praying for rain.

Posted by Dave Bryant at 9:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)