Page 4474 - Week 10 - Thursday, 23 September 2010
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projects would deliver water security for before we reached what is described as a system failure—that is, in what year would the various projects no longer be able to guarantee reliability of supply for no more than 10 per cent of time in restrictions? The table used population forecasts of 500,000 by 2050 and took into account water that would be saved through demand-side measures—25 per cent by 2023.
With these figures put into the model, the two options that the government and Actew ended up choosing—the extended Cotter Dam and the M2G pipeline—appear to deliver security of supply out to 2034, which is only 24 years away. This is, I should note, in some contrast to the view of the ICRC. In its review of the Cotter Dam, it actually indicated that perhaps the building of the Cotter Dam was somewhat of an overkill response. Either way, at some stage in the future managing water supply and demand is likely to raise its head again.
Water is a long-term problem in our city and our region that we need to consider in our public policy planning. I think that this means we need to be a community that understands the value of water and how not to waste it. We need to be as focused on demand-side management as we are about ensuring security of supply. There is no room for complacency.
This is probably something that we all agree on. However, there has been a small undercurrent that now we have the Cotter Dam on the way, and we have had a wet year, we can relax. I would suggest that we can relax this year perhaps, but, as a community, we cannot relax if we want to be planning for the future.
The Canberra community has done a pretty good job of reducing water consumption over the past decade or so. In 1997-98 our water consumption peaked at around 78 gigalitres. By 2007-08, we had got that consumption down to 43.5 gigalitres. This is an impressive effort. It has come as a result of some quite considerable change in thinking as a result of a number of strategies implemented by the government and by Actew. But it has also come at some costs—our urban amenity, our sporting fields and our gardens.
Water obviously holds different value to different people. While some may value clean windows, some value their gardens, some value washing their cars, some value hosing down their decks, some value their backyard pools and some value their vegetable patches. The Greens this year certainly expressed that we valued the watering of a valuable community space. The one that I refer to is Green Square in Kingston. It was one of the areas we thought was important to water. We cannot ever assume that people value water in the same way.
Indeed, water is an issue on which we receive constant communication from constituents—people concerned about construction companies using water carelessly or complaining about car washing companies that are not recycling water. When the restrictions were lifted this time around, we received emails from people both against and in favour.
The Greens are comfortable that Actew have made a prudent decision in relaxing restrictions to stage 2. I would encourage them to make an equally prudent and timely
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