World Water Day - time to fund alternatives to Yarragadee

World Water Day - time to fund alternatives to Yarragadee
by Water Indy 2007-03-22 12:10 PM +0900
MARCH 22, 2007 - Senator Rachel Siewert has used the occasion of World Water Day to press for alternatives to the WA Government's proposal to draw 45 billion litres of water per year out of the South West Yarragadee aquifer...

YARRAGADEE RALLY
TUESDAY 27 MARCH
1PM PARLIAMENT HOUSE
11.30 ESPLANADE
"On the basis of the evidence, I do not agree with the recent 'Sustainability Assessment' Panel's findings that the Yarragadee project is sustainable - quite the opposite," said Senator Siewert.

"Why was the panel prevented from looking at alternatives?" asked Senator Siewert. "This proposal could devastate the environment of the south-west, and all it does is delay another desalination plant for a few years. Instead we need to look at why Perth's water consumption is so high."

"The report also used outdated rainfall figures which do not accurately reflect the serious decline in rainfall experienced in the South West. There is well established evidence that the Yarragadee proposal will be a repeat of the damage inflicted on Perth's northern wetlands by over abstraction from the Gnangara Mound," Senator Siewert said.

"The State Government sought $300 million in federal funding for the raid on the South West Yarragadee, which Federal Minister for Water Resources Malcolm Turnbull sensibly turned down."

"However, having been entirely overlooked in the Prime Minister's $10 billion Murray Darling plan, Western Australia should be demanding Malcolm Turnbull fund realistic water efficiency measures across the board."

"We don't need to go after the Yarragadee - we should instead be funding the kinds of measures outlined in the "Water Challenge" paper by Greens MLC Paul Llewellyn": http://www.mp.wa.gov.au/llewellyn/yarragadee.php

"The forests and wetlands of the South West Region may die so Perth's lawn may live."

YARRAGADEE RALLY
TUESDAY 27 MARCH
1PM PARLIAMENT HOUSE
11.30 ESPLANADE

The Western Australian State Government has tasked its Water Utility to ensure Perth, the capital city, will never have garden sprinkler restrictions. To do this the Water Corporation has embarked on a proposal to extract water from the distant south west of the State and pipe it to Perth.

This process has taken many years of geological, biological, social, aboriginal heritage and economic investigation, and still the people of the communities in the south west are implacably opposed to the inefficient use of water in the city as opposed to the maintenance of precious biodiversity across the south west, the preservation of threatened ecological communities and rare and endangered flora and fauna, and the creation of ecologically sustainable economies in the south west.

The South West Yarragadee proposal represents a massive change to the environment of the south west to maintain large expanses of lawns in Perth. Western Australia does not recycle water to any great extent, and we as a community should be looking towards sustainable watering schemes that value water and to begin the move towards a water ethic.

Perth is situated between desert and ocean, receives its freshwater from winter rains and must learn to subsist during the hot dry summers. Yet the design of our city and urban form is dominated by an urban aesthetic that privileges european landscape forms, or paradoxically the wet tropics. This artificiality of urban design must move towards xeriscaping, a land and water ethic that accepts water and rainfall as part of natural cycles, and values water for the life giving essence to all aspects of the ecology, not just merely a resource for human use and domination.

Perth's water crisis is not one of lack of supply but one of lack of imagination on behalf of short-sighted politicians and policy makers. The realisation that the continual search for water for unsustainable landscapes is a dead end resulting in a move towards collapse of ecosystems and economies.

Climate change has focussed government attention upon ways of living on the western edge of the 3rd planet's driest inhabited continent. To date this response has looked at increasing water supply for increasing human population. The search goes deeper underground, and further and further from population centres.

The South West Yarragadee aquifer underlies large areas of the biodiversity hotspot of the south west of Australia. This site is an attempt to provide information and education and a central point to coordinate the release of that information. Contributors are opposed to the Water Corporation proposal.

http://yarragadee.org/