Sports fields too hard to play on, gardens that have dried up and plumbing so bereft of water that every bathroom smells — this is the reality of drought in Goulburn, on track to be the first Australian city to die of thirst.
Four years into the country’s worst drought in 60 years, the historic township in inland New South Wales is now so dry that its water supply will only last about eight months, officials say.
”We have some real difficulties concerning use over the coming summer,” says Matthew O’Rourke, manager of Goulburn’s water services. ”Where we are now, there’s not much room for comfort.”
Although the hub for the lucrative merino sheep industry for more than a century, Goulburn officials cannot rule out having to transport water into the town via the railway line from Sydney.
The city, just north of the national capital, Canberra, has had water restrictions in force since September 2002 that prohibit its 23 000 residents from watering gardens or sports fields or washing their cars.
Local industry was also asked to cut water usage by a third, and as a result the town’s water use has fallen from 13 to 5,2 megalitres a day.
Without these restrictions, Goulburn would have run out of water last November, says O’Rourke.
”The social impacts of this experience are significant,” he says. ”I think everyone has been very critical of non-cooperation and everyone is very critical of perceived water waste.”
Residents talk about tap water so full of sediment it’s undrinkable, swimming pools that cannot be maintained and dirty cars.
”It impacts in strange ways,” says resident Sandy Billingham of the drought. ”I won’t change my bed as regularly because that’s another load of washing. You have a three-minute shower.”
”You can’t water your gardens, the gardens are all dead. The nurseries have closed,” says Janine Chapfield, who runs the newsagents in the centre of town.
”You can’t physically drink the water. It’s foul; it’s really got a horrible taste to it. You’ve got to purchase [bottled] water.”
To combat the water shortage, there are plans to tap an aquifer north of the town that should provide about five megalitres per day from September. However, this source will probably last less than a year.
The council will also build a 9km pipeline from a catchment area on a river system south of the city to one of its dams. This could provide six megalitres a day.
The town’s most ambitious plan is to build a new treatment plant to recycle all the town’s waste water, which could then be pumped through the new pipeline to a dam via artificial wetlands.
”The big question mark is whether the community would accept sewerage being treated and being daily water,” says O’Rourke of the project, which is still in the planning stages.
Meanwhile, farmers are struggling to feed their stock and irrigate crops.
”It’s been devastating because current capacity has dropped by 25% to 30%,” says livestock farmer Tony Morrison.
”It’s very demoralising. Especially when you can see no way to get through it without selling stock.
”The thing about this drought is that it has just been so relentless, so long.”
Other droughts have hit the region before, including a serious one in the early 1980s, but ”it’s worse now”, says Goulburn mayor Paul Stephenson.
”People who went through the depression here never forgot it. The people of Goulburn have been through water depression years and they are not going to forget it either,” he says.
For many, Goulburn’s plight is an extreme example of what could happen to other Australian cities and towns unless water usage changes.
Large areas of the eastern coastal states of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, as well as South Australia and the southern island of Tasmania, have been drought-affected for many months.
And despite significant rains in June, which eased the drought in many areas, months of above-average rainfall are needed to restore dams and reservoirs to comfortable levels, says climatologist Grant Beard.
”There’s been a lot of rain in June, followed up in July, which has been good for people growing crops,” says Beard, of the National Climate Centre. ”But there hasn’t been enough rain really to make a difference to water supplies.” — Sapa-AFP