The citizens of Sydney are not dying of thirst in the streets, nor are we killing each other in knife fights over a 10 litre container at a communal standpipe, yet.
And after the news this weekend there is the slimmest of chances that the wide brown land of Australia might not end its days as the Somalia of the South Seas. The reason is that at some fundamental level of understanding, those of us who live on this small chain of fertile islands surrounded by seas of water and sand, actually get it about water.
How do I know? In yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald ran this story, Householders the big water savers.
THE battle to solve Sydney's water shortage is being won in its backyards, with gardeners and car owners conserving more water in a year than could be delivered by desalination and groundwater combined.
Since restrictions began in October 2003, Sydneysiders have saved 185 billion litres of water. Simple measures such as watering gardens less often and using buckets of water, not hoses, to wash cars have helped cut annual water consumption by 13 per cent, or 78 billion litres.
That compares with 45 billion litres a year that would have been provided by the Government's shelved $1.3 billion desalination plant, and about 30 billion litres a year for only three years from groundwater.
The problems with this great achievement are twofold; it occurred in an economic rationalist economy and it cost nothing to implement.
The first problem is that, in voluntarily reducing their water use, Sydneysiders have also reduced the income of Sydney Water, the corporation that supplies the water services. I'm not sure what the total might be, but since I am charged $1.013 per kilolitre (1,000 .litres) its not a big hop to see that Sydney Water is now OUT of pocket by about $78 million bucks.
The problem there is that we need Sydney water to have plenty of money because there is so much that needs doing; like maintaining reticulation systems that piddle water away by the truckload, like building and maintaining water recycling schemes instead of cheerfully conducting the fresh rain water into the nearest waterway and out to sea.
Unfortunately, economic rationalism doesn't work with scarcity of essentials such as water, nor can the market create profitable incentives for voluntary restraint and conservation. The more of the message we get, the less money our water management system will have to meet our needs, that's screwed up now and, in the longer run, could lead to the nasty picture I drew at the beginning as the economic rationalist basis for the system fails and the "business" goes bankrupt.
The other problem is that government, at all levels, is principally about feeding public money to large corporations. We know that is true because that is mostly what governments actually do; this is especially so in countries like mine where private industry is automatically assumed to be more competent, capable and less costly than publicly owned enterprises.
Although after the fiasco of the Public private Partnership on the London underground and our state premier last week calling the CEO of the privately owned road tunnel under the city, a fuckwit, maybe that is changing.
However, the reality is that governments come up $1.3 billion desalination plants, not because they are good ideas, but because they have to be seen to operate on scales that justify their existence; and for the cynical among us, to funnel (or tunnel) public money into the hands of large, corporate donors.
What is needed in fact is a networked solution to this problem, $1.3 billion spent on waterproofing Sydney, providing low cost loans for people to install optimal rainwater and greywater systems and composting toilets would leave them with nothing to put on their power point slides except boring numbers, no ribbons to cut and pretty well no post political directorships to scoop up.
They would, however, provide many small businesses such as plumbers and fabrication workshops with a lifetime's opportunity for useful work, hundreds, if not thousands of permanent jobs, distributed prosperity and workable water management.
In the process it would also create a genuine public private partnership, one that we could all have a role in, and build the model that we will desperately need as we start dealing with the long term effects of climate change, oil depletion and their economic effects.
We have shown that with the right information, we CAN act in our own, long term, best interests, all it takes is the right, clear message. The burning question is whether our political leadership has the nous to grasp those information tools, or whether they are going to be dragged along in our wake.
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