WaterOld, faulty bores jeopardize Australia's water
Australian homes, towns, cities, farmers, and miners will rely increasingly on underground water as the country’s population grows, surface water supplies dwindle, and as droughts multiply under a warming climate. Trouble is, the authorities in charge do not have a clear idea exactly how much groundwater there is, how rapidly it is recharged — or how quickly it is being depleted. What is known is based on data largely supplied by 23,000 monitoring bores spread across the continent — more than two thirds of which are now falling into disrepair.
Fifteen thousand collapsing bores, and a half-billion dollar repair bill, are endangering the future of Australia’s largest and most precious resource: its groundwater.
Australian homes, towns, cities, farmers, and miners will rely increasingly on underground water as the country’s population grows, surface water supplies dwindle, and as droughts multiply under a warming climate, the director of the National Center for Groundwater Research and Training (NCGRT), Professor Craig Simmons, said.
“Groundwater accounts for about 90 percent of Australia’s total fresh water reserves — only a fraction is in rivers, lakes and dams on the surface,” he says. “Currently it supplies 30 percent of our daily water needs — and will be called on a lot more in future.
It’s vital for water supplies, agriculture, industry, mining and the environment.”
A National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training (NCGRT) release reports that the problem in Australia is that the authorities in charge do not have a clear idea exactly how much groundwater there is, how rapidly it is recharged — or how quickly it is being depleted. What is known is based on data largely supplied by 23,000 monitoring bores spread across the continent — more than two thirds of which are now falling into disrepair, Prof. Simmons says.
“It’s an old saying: if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Well that is rapidly becoming the case for the one resource which all Australians are really going to need if we are to inhabit this continent in the long term: fresh water.”
Late last year, a report by the National Water Commission (NWC) documented the parlous state of the Australia’s groundwater infrastructure, finding that 68 per cent of the country’s 23,000 monitoring bores were more than twenty years old and at, or near, the end of their useful working lives.
The current replacement cost of inoperative monitoring sites was estimated at $318 million, rising to over half a billion dollars if governments continued to ignore the problem, the NWC report indicated.
Prof. Simmons says there has been a steady increase in use of groundwater by Australian cities, towns, and industries over the past twenty years, and especially during the Millennium Drought. “If we are unable to monitor what is going into or being taken out of our aquifers and how groundwater levels are changing, then some communities or industries may find they run out of water without warning,” he said.
“Groundwater is out-of-sight, out-of-mind for most
