Water crisis ‘ignorance’

CLOSE to two-thirds of Sydneysiders are unaware of the city’s current drought conditions, according to Sydney Water.

Despite Sydney’s dam levels hovering at 55 per cent, many of the people living in the city don’t realise how dire the situation is, Sydney Water’s executive drought lead Catherine Port said.

More than 60 per cent of 1000 Sydneysiders surveyed were not aware of current drought conditions while almost 50 per cent didn’t believe the city was in drought at all.

“It is understandable that people don’t realise we’re in drought in Sydney because some of our surrounds are quite green from the intermittent rain,” Ms Port said.

“We’re seeing the lowest level of inflows into our dams that we’ve seen in decades.”

Ms Port said Sydney in the past 18 months had seen some of the lowest inflows into dam catchments since the 1940s.

Almost 20 per cent of respondents to the Sydney Water survey believe drought is only an issue that affects regional areas.

The same number don’t think their water-saving efforts will make any difference, but Ms Port said small individual savings made a big cumulative change. “We all need to do our bit to save water – water shouldn’t be wasted,” she said.