Drought has California looking Downunder
California’s longest and sharpest drought on record has its increasingly desperate water stewards looking for solutions in Australia, the world’s driest inhabited continent.
Australia treats water as a commodity to be conserved and traded. The system also better measures what water is available, and efficiency programmes have cut average daily water use to 200 litres a day, compared with 400 in California.
The hard-earned lesson is that long droughts are here to stay, says drought-policy expert Linda Botterill of the University of Canberra.
“As a result, we need to develop strategies that are not knee-jerk responses, but that are planned riskmanagement strategies.”
That is why California water officials routinely cite Australia’s experience and why Felicia Marcus, who runs California’s Water Resources Control Board, can talk in detail about the stormwater-capture system watering Perth’s football fields.
But Californians may find Australia’s medicine tough to swallow.
“They’re dominated by a legalistic approach and dominated by rights, and we’ve got a much more publicpolicy approach,” said Daniel Connell, an environmental policy expert at the Australian National University. Whose water is it? Australia: Too many water entitlements had been allocated for Australia’s main river system, which winds across four states. Overuse and drought so depleted the MurrayDarling Basin that by 2002 the mouth of the Murray had to be dredged.
Australia responded by capping entitlements, cancelling inactive licences and buying back hundreds of billions of litres to restore rivers and sell to other users. Use is strictly metered and shares are bought and sold on a A$1.53 billion ($1.6 billion) a year water-trading market.
They’re dominated by a legalistic approach and dominated by rights.
Daniel Connell, Australian environmental policy expert
California: Governor Jerry Brown calls the state’s water rights system, which dates to the Gold Rush of the mid-1800s, “somewhat archaic”. It still follows the maxim “first in time, first in right”, which gives overarching priority to nearly 4000 so-called senior water rights holders who staked claims before 1914. In drought, authorities must completely deny water to most other claimants. Watching the flow Australia: Marcus says California should follow Australia’s example in measuring and publicly declaring how water is used. Thousands of gauges across Australia measure rainfall, streams and underground water. California: Legislation enacted last year requires California to gradually phase in monitoring. Roughly 250,000 Californian households and businesses still lack water meters and will not have any until 2025. Tightening the tap Australia: During the Millennium Drought, all major cities imposed limits or bans on watering lawns and washing cars. This reduced household water use from 320 litres a person a day in 2000, to 200 today. California: After some regions all but ignored calls for voluntary cutbacks, Brown ordered a statewide 25 per cent cut in water use by cities and towns, and ordered more farmers to stop pumping from rivers. California is still struggling with enforcement. Do more with less Australia: In 1995, Sydney’s water authority was ordered to slash per capita demand by 35 per cent by 2011, and met that target by reducing leaks, boosting water efficiency, and offering low-cost technologies, such as dual-flush toilets, low-flow showers and rainwater tanks. California: Communities across California offer rebates on droughtfriendly plumbing. But the rooftoprain collectors, stormwater cisterns and bathwater-recycling common in parts of Australia are rarities there. Miracles of technology Australia: Billions were spent on controversial desalination plants in major cities. Many are not operating because cheaper water is available. Supporters say they will protect the country in the next drought. California: Brown has pinned his drought focus on an ambitious and controversial US$17 billion ($23 billion) infrastructure and conservation plan to build 62km of tunnel to take northern California water to southern California’s bigger farmers. A planned San Diego desalination plant will be the biggest in the Western Hemisphere.