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| CSIRO | SOLVE | Issue 1 Nov 04 | |
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WATER
Solving our water headache
By Tony Kaye
Australia is short of water and the situation is getting worse. What is needed is a whole new approach to how we think. The problem with water is that it’s 'invisible': like air, we need it, but take it for granted. It’s when our cities start running out that we realise just how primitive our water infrastructure is – and how much society has to change to modernise it. That’s the task being tackled by one of CSIRO’s National Research Flagships into Australia’s use, distribution and generation of water.The ambitious cross-disciplinary program, dubbed “Water for a Healthy Country”, is developing long term solutions for Australia’s water problems.
That’s a shortage greater than Sydney’s current use. The shortage is due to a combination of city growth – three million more people by 2030, climate change and the need to provide more water to our rivers and estuaries. The Flagship seeks to completely overhaul the way we use – and even think – about water. It draws upon the expertise of CSIRO, experts in water authorities, private corporations and research partners in universities and Cooperative Research Centres. It will require smart science – with many initiatives already underway - and it will require communication to bring the community and industry into the picture in terms of the way water use is likely to change. Underpinning the initial science is the concept of water benefits – trade-offs between uses. “If we better understand the benefits and opportunities we will make better trade offs for the benefit of the Australian community,” says Carol Howe, leader of the Flagship’s Urban Water project. “For example, the balancing of energy costs required to treat and reuse water, with the environmental costs of releasing nutrient-rich water into our rivers and estuaries.” Examples of these trade offs are clearly seen in the four regions which represent the major water management challenges confronting Australia, and the Flagship.These are the catchments of the Great Barrier Reef with it’s water quality issues and burgeoning industries, south-west Western Australia which produces more than half the Australian wheat crop, but is facing a well documented salinity crisis, the River Murray region and its balancing of irrigation and the environment needs, and a major urban water resource program initially focused on Sydney, Perth and Melbourne. “What’s driving our research in cities and beyond is a lack of water and our belief that science and smart management can deliver the answers we need,” says Howe. “We’ve got a shortfall, so we need to be creative. Better predictions, demand management, reuse and recycling, smarter technologies and desalination can all be part of the response.” The outlook for Australia’s future water resource is also tied up with climate change, which is now morphing from a debating topic into something that’s going to affect the bottom line. It is becoming something every prudent corporation is preparing for, evaluating and seeking to anticipate its impacts on viability and operations. Insurance companies are reassessing their risks. High industrial water users and government are auditing their operations and seeking both efficiencies and ‘water fit for purpose’, such as reused water at a lower cost and quality than drinking water. “We’ve reached a limit to water availability,” says Howe. “Luckily, it’s happened at a time when innovative technology and science can help us cope. We’ve got the capability to do something about it. “The water infrastructure we have now is not what we’ll have in 10 years, and certainly nothing like what we’ll have in the future,” she adds. “In 20 years we can expect packaged systems, virtually closed water cycle systems in apartment blocks and eventually whole suburbs. All this means more choices for consumers.” All this is also going to be tied in with the way water is administered and paid for. The National Competition Council, for example, has already signaled moves towards opening urban water infrastructure to private enterprise through public/private partnerships and competitive urban water systems. Water is likely to soon have different pricing arrangements (such as with electricity) for peak use, and ‘type’ – such as lower quality garden water versus high-quality more expensive, drinking water. Research into the application of sensors and smartmetering technologies are already enabling this transition to begin. The end result is that consumers will have more choice about when and what type of water they use in their homes and gardens. To address the wholesale change required, the Flagship has broken the problem down into three discrete groupings: smarter water systems in the cities, recovering and recycling water now being discarded, and repairing the links in the natural chain that makes water available in the first place. The most radical program is Wealth from Waste: it seeks to ‘reverse the rivers’ of waste water in our cities, and better utilise what they currently dispose of in massive quantities. Creating new technologies and coordinating the inputs and outputs of different industries, it aims to boost the amount of water recycled by 30 percent compared to less than five percent now. But it also involves minimising liquid and solid wastes produced by cities, and decrease by 50 percent the load on the environment through improved waste stream management. All of these initiatives are expected to foster new technologies, new industries and even new communities around the ‘eco-efficient’ use of wastewater. There’s plenty of scope for improvement: in Melbourne alone, some 820 megalitres a day of water is piped out to sea as effluent discharge, most of it treated to a secondary stage. That’s a big number: equivalent to more than 27,000 petrol tankers per day dumping wastewater at sea. There are 125 ocean outfalls across Australia. The magnitude of the change, the business potential and the water reuse opportunities are all substantial. If that water was treated and recycled, it could be put to a host of non-drinking uses, from metal manufacturing to gardening that would take enormous pressure off existing supplies. The Flagship’s scientists and engineers are studying how people use water in our major cities, how the environment interacts with these uses and future needs and how these might be met. This is likely to mean many different 'grades' of water depending on the use. Some of that thinking – looking at a city’s water as an interconnected system – is novel in the world of urban water management. Even waste and stormwater are treated as completely different networks in most cities, rather than as two arms of a closed system. The systems approach means looking at everything from land use and demographic patterns of a local water ecosystem and the likely local impact of climate change, to customer water demands, propensity for flooding and the cost of water. It also means extending beyond water to understanding the links between energy, lifestyle and environment – indeed how a whole city functions. ... consumers will have more choice about when and what type of water they use in their homes and gardens. One of the first fruits of the Flagship is an interactive software package that allows engineers, urban planners and consumers to make better decisions about their water usage. The consumer version is called House Water Expert, and is being offered to water utilities and other organisations for tailoring further to local conditions and distribution to consumers. The software allows people to customise their water usage according to their needs. They enter into the program data about their home consumption: do they have a pool? A garden? If so, how big and how often does it need to be watered? Do they wash their car or cars? Do they have their own water tank? Right down to the water-efficiency ratings of household appliances, the software brings all of the data together and spits out estimates of usage – during different times of the year, different weather, and suggests solutions and alternative water resources, even the impact on the local environment. Consumers can then see how reducing usage in one area can have an impact in others. To follow are other tailored (and more complex) versions: Development Planner being created over the next two years will help urban planners better plan for biodiversity and micro-climates while incorporating better water efficiency and usage and new treatment technologies into their design of new suburbs. City Planner will help us understand water availability and use throughout regions and how the options chosen affect not only water but regional and National economies. “The system has been invisible to date – the catchments are far away, the pipes are underground, everything happens remotely,” said Howe.“What we need to make possible is localised solutions for local needs and conditions, matching and optimising water supply with need, so there’s less waste and more efficiency. For further information contact:
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The Water Services Association of Australia predicts that Australia’s major urban areas will have a water shortage of over 800 gigalitres
a year by 2030 even if we have recycling in one-quarter of new developments and
all consumers reduce their water use by 10 per cent. 
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