Page 3168 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 17 October 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
discipline on us that the coastal cities, the other large cities of Australia, perhaps have not faced as forcefully or as bluntly as inland cities have been forced to face.
In any debate or consideration around attitudes to water, attitudes to recycling and the value of water, it is the inland cities that perhaps are more confronted and historically have always been more confronted by the significance and the value of water as a resource. In that context, it is interesting that Mr Mulcahy—it may have been Dr Foskey—pointed to those reasons for the establishment of Canberra in this place. Certainly, the defining criterion was the catchment and the capacity of the catchment to supply the city into the future.
It is quite interesting to look at that catchment and look at the ACT government’s governance or management of the catchment and of water within this region. The fact is that the ACT has a water resource capacity of some 386 gigalitres in a normal year flowing into it from New South Wales via the Murrumbidgee. On average, historically, 386 gigalitres have entered the ACT from New South Wales and 386 gigalitres have passed down the Murrumbidgee, left the ACT and returned to New South Wales untouched. The ACT, as a catchment on its own, generates 494 gigalitres of rainfall annually, on average. Of that 494 gigalitres which falls as rain within the ACT, 55 per cent, or 272 gigalitres, is set aside for environmental flows to guarantee the health of rivers, most notably the Murrumbidgee River.
Of the remainder, the 222 gigalitres of rain which falls within the territory that is available for consumption, the ACT historically takes 65 gigalitres gross for urban water supply. Of that 65 gigalitres of a total in excess of 800 that is available within the territory, we return over 30 gigalitres to the Murrumbidgee through the lower Molonglo water control centre. In short, when one does the sums, of the total amount of water potentially available to Canberra, we take three per cent. We take three per cent of the water that flows into the ACT or the water that falls onto the ACT. Indeed, we take only seven per cent of the water that falls within our catchment, our water. Of our water, excluding the water that flows in from the Murrumbidgee, we take just seven per cent.
It is relevant that we return to the system over 55 per cent of all the water that we use. In other words, when one looks at the issue of our use of water and the extent to which we do value this resource, we recycle over 50 per cent of all the water which we take, the most significant recycling effort of any place in Australia. We need to look at it in the context of the catchment as a whole. We need to look at the fact that we are recycling in toto over half of all the water that we take and returning it in very good order, essentially potable, to the Murray-Darling Basin system—and rightly so, as a good citizen of the catchment and the major city within the catchment.
We are a good corporate citizen through the water policy which we have established and which we are implementing, “Think water, act water”. We have set targets of a 13 per cent reduction by 2013 and of 25 per cent by 2023 and we do have in place a raft of policies and positions to ensure that we do meet the targets that we have set. We have adopted water sensitive urban design. We are committed to environmental flows. We are undertaking research to better understand and better plan for groundwater use in an environment in which we have imposed a moratorium to ensure that we do that. We have moved to the equitable allocation of available groundwater. We are committed to ensuring that the water which we take leaves the territory of a quality that it enters, that
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .