The drought in Australia is bad alrighty

[Aquawind]

The Aussie drought is getting serious for them as well..

They are hoping for La Nina like 2000 they had the 2nd wettest year ever and still some places missed the rains.. Seems like drought always is releived by floods...rarely a slow refill of a basin unfortunately..

http://tinyurl.com/2j5ex4


Pictures

Not good when you have to cut the farmers off..

http://www.stratfor.com/products/premiu ... ?id=287464

[angelwing]

I got this in the mail otday:

Nation could run out of food
Lachlan Heywood
April 21, 2007 12:00am
Article from: The Courier-Mail, Brisbane
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/stor ... 52,00.html

AUSTRALIA could be forced to rely on overseas farmers to feed itself
as the nation's food bowl dries up.

Prime Minister John Howard yesterday warned of a national food
shortage amid gloomy predictions of a 500 per cent blowout in fruit
and vegie prices.
Despite unprecedented national prosperity and wealth, the
unrelenting drought is bringing one of the world's largest food
producers to its knees.

Mr Howard said Australia would need to import more food unless
farmers in the Murray Darling Basin received substantial rain.

"Now we hope that doesn't happen because we always like to see
ourselves as being capable of meeting our own food needs," he said.

"But it's a question of rain."

The basin accounts for 34 per cent of Australia's agricultural
production, including 75 per cent of irrigated crops and pastures.

Mr Howard announced on Thursday that farmers would be banned from
irrigating unless the dire situation quickly improved.

The drastic action, although needed to protect "critical urban water
supplies" such as Adelaide's, is likely to trigger a massive
increase in the cost of fruit, vegetables, wine and horticultural
products.

Treasurer Peter Costello said prices could jump as much as bananas
after Cyclone Larry in north Queensland last year – a four or five-
fold increase.

Shadow treasurer Wayne Swan said any price hikes in food prices
would be hard felt by Australian families, but Mr Costello said the
price increases were unlikely to result in higher interest rates.

Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran said extra assistance would be
considered for farmers if necessary.

[angelwing]

[web]http://media01.couriermail.com.au/multimedia/2007/03/070300-water/water01.html[/web]

[angelwing]

Water bores rob city supply
Chris Griffith and Chris Bartlett
May 02, 2007 12:10pm
Article from: The Courier-Mail, Brisbane

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/stor ... 02,00.html

RESIDENTS across Brisbane are sinking bores so they can fill their
swimming pools and water their lawns and gardens.

Drilling companies contacted by couriermail.com.au have so many
bookings for bores they are refusing to take new drilling business
or they are warning their customers of waiting lists of six months
or more.

The draining of the water table under the city has got to the stage
that Brisbane City Council wants the State Government to introduce a
moratorium on new bores in areas where the council itself is
drilling for water.

Council water committee chair John Campbell said the precious water
resources taken by individual residents could rob the city of
valuable underground water in selected areas the council was seeking
to make available in the drinking supply.

Cr Campbell said both the BCC and the South East Queensland Council
of Mayors had asked the Department of Natural Resources and Water to
rein in the practice in those selected areas.

He said the council's bores had typically found water around 20-30
metres underground in suburbs including Sunnybank, Algester,
Runcorn, Chandler, and the Forest Lake region.

"The State Government has asked us to find 20 megalitres per day and
we have drilled 150 test holes across Brisbane," Cr Campbell said.

He said the council's project to find, drill, tap, and treat bore
water to augment general supply was costing $75 million, with $28
million coming from the State Government.

The surge of interest by residents in using bore water to fill pools
and hose gardens is happening right across Brisbane.

In Brookfield, in the city's west, residents are typically paying
$10,000-$12,000 for a licenced driller to bore 60-80 metres
underground, where there is a supply of clean, clear water.

Homes in suburbs nearby the Brisbane River are prime locations for
bores: at Chelmer, water can be found 25-30 metres underground, but
the quality isn't so good.

Backyard drilling in the west also is common at Fig Tree Pocket,
Pine Mountain, Mt Crosby, and Pullenvale.

The subterranean water at Fig Tree Pocket is salty and it's
understood some residents with bores have installed small
desalination plants to treat it.

Brookfield Drilling Company owner Steve Kroechnert said many of the
companies licensed to drill backyards were "booked up".

Mr Kroechnert said owners were prepared to take the risk of losing
thousands of dollars if no water was found.

If drilling was successful, a resident might pay $10,000-$12,000 for
exploration and drilling and another $4,000-$6,000 for a pump.

He said it was possible a neighbour next door to a bore might find
no water -- they would pay $5,000-$6,000 for unsuccessful
exploration.

Mr Kroechnert said some residents contracted water deviners to
convince them reserves were available.

He said some bores were still providing water 5-10 years after they
were sunk.

Water could be pumped typically at 12,000 litres per hour; an
average swimming pool would take 15-16 hours to fill.

Cr Campbell said it was time to review whether bore water should be
available for domestic use particularly in the Sunnybank and Runcorn
areas where the council was drilling late this year "until it is
proven the water they (residents) took wouldn't deplete general
supply.

He confirmed the council itself had experienced difficulty finding
decent underground water.

"We've had to drill twice as many test bores, the water quality is
not as good as expected, and it will have to be treated."

[AussieMark]

Melbourne water supply has now fallen below 30% level

Level 4 water restrictions will be in effect soon I assume

[angelwing]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/aus ... 465960.ece

Australia's epic drought: The situation is grim
By Kathy Marks in Sydney
Published: 20 April 2007
Australia has warned that it will have to switch off the water supply to the continent's food bowl unless heavy rains break an epic drought - heralding what could be the first climate change-driven disaster to strike a developed nation.

The Murray-Darling basin in south-eastern Australia yields 40 per cent of the country's agricultural produce. But the two rivers that feed the region are so pitifully low that there will soon be only enough water for drinking supplies. Australia is in the grip of its worst drought on record, the victim of changing weather patterns attributed to global warming and a government that is only just starting to wake up to the severity of the position.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, a hardened climate-change sceptic, delivered dire tidings to the nation's farmers yesterday. Unless there is significant rainfall in the next six to eight weeks, irrigation will be banned in the principal agricultural area. Crops such as rice, cotton and wine grapes will fail, citrus, olive and almond trees will die, along with livestock.

A ban on irrigation, which would remain in place until May next year, spells possible ruin for thousands of farmers, already debt-laden and in despair after six straight years of drought.

Lovers of the Australian landscape often cite the poet Dorothea Mackellar who in 1904 penned the classic lines: "I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains." But the land that was Mackellar's muse is now cracked and parched, and its mighty rivers have shrivelled to sluggish brown streams. With paddocks reduced to dust bowls, graziers have been forced to sell off sheep and cows at rock-bottom prices or buy in feed at great expense. Some have already given up, abandoning pastoral properties that have been in their families for generations. The rural suicide rate has soared.

Mr Howard acknowledged that the measures are drastic. He said the prolonged dry spell was "unprecedentedly dangerous" for farmers, and for the economy as a whole. Releasing a new report on the state of the Murray and Darling, Mr Howard said: "It is a grim situation, and there is no point in pretending to Australia otherwise. We must all hope and pray there is rain."

But prayer may not suffice, and many people are asking why crippling water shortages in the world's driest inhabited continent are only now being addressed with any sense of urgency.

The causes of the current drought, which began in 2002 but has been felt most acutely over the past six months, are complex. But few scientists dispute the part played by climate change, which is making Australia hotter and drier.

Environmentalists point to the increasing frequency and severity of drought-causing El Niño weather patterns, blamed on global warming. They also note Australia's role in poisoning the Earth's atmosphere. Australians are among the world's biggest per-capita energy consumers, and among the top producers of carbon dioxide emissions. Despite that, the country is one of only two industrialised nations - the United States being the other - that have refused to ratify the 1997 Kyoto protocol. The governments argue that to do so would harm their economies.

Until a few months ago, Mr Howard and his ministers pooh-poohed the climate-change doomsayers. The Prime Minister refused to meet Al Gore when he visited Australia to promote his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. He was lukewarm about the landmark report by the British economist Sir Nicholas Stern, which warned that large swaths of Australia's farming land would become unproductive if global temperatures rose by an average of four degrees.

Faced with criticism from even conservative sections of the media, Mr Howard realised that he had misread the public mood - grave faux pas in an election year. Last month's report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted more frequent and intense bushfires, tropical cyclones, and catastrophic damage to the Great Barrier Reef. The report also said there would be up to 20 per cent more droughts by 2030. And it said the annual flow in the Murray-Darling basin was likely to fall by 10-25 per cent by 2050. The basin, the size of France and Spain combined, provides 85 per cent of the water used nationally for irrigation.

While the government is determined to protect Australia's coal industry, the drought is expected to shave 1 per cent off annual growth this year. The farming sector of a country that once "rode the sheep's back" to prosperity is in desperate straits. With dams and reservoirs drying up, many cities and towns have been forced to introduce severe water restrictions.

Mr Howard has softened his rhetoric of late, and says that he now broadly accepts the science behind climate change. He has tried to regain the political initiative, announcing measures including a plan to take over regulatory control of the Murray-Darling river system from state governments.

He has declared nuclear power the way forward, and is even considering the merits of joining an international scheme to "trade" carbon dioxide emissions - an idea he opposed in the past.

Mr Howard's conservative coalition will face an opposition Labour Party revitalised by a popular new leader, Kevin Rudd, and offering a climate change policy that appears to be more credible than his. Ben Fargher, the head of the National Farmers' Federation, said that if fruit and olive trees died, that could mean "five to six years of lost production". Food producers also warned of major food price rises.

Mr Howard acknowledged that an irrigation ban would have a "potentially devastating" impact. But "this is very much in the lap of the gods", he said.

How UN warned Australia and New Zealand

Excerpts from UN's IPCC report on the threat of global warming to Australia and New Zealand:

"As a result of reduced precipitation and increased evaporation, water security problems are projected to intensify by 2030 in south and east Australia and, in New Zealand, in Northland and eastern regions."

* "Significant loss of biodiversity is projected to occur by 2020 in some ecologically rich sites, including the Great Barrier Reef and Queensland's tropics. Other sites at risk include the Kakadu wetlands ... and the alpine areas of both countries."

* "Ongoing coastal development and population growth in areas such as Cairns and south-east Queensland (Australia) and Northland to Bay of Plenty (New Zealand) are projected to exacerbate risks from sea-level rise and increases in the severity and frequency of storms and coastal flooding by 2050."

* "Production from agriculture and forestry by 2030 is projected to decline over much of southern and eastern Australia, and over parts of eastern New Zealand, due to increases in droughts and fires."

* "The region has substantial adaptive capacity due to well-developed economies and scientific and technical capabilities, but there are considerable constraints to implementation ... Natural systems have limited adaptive capacity."