Australia's urban water supply: 'Crisis…. what crisis?'

So, in 2019 during the current drought, what should you expect from our water suppliers and governments. Just the same again i.e. a bigger desalination plant for our cities or maybe desalination plants to feed irrigation to the MDB? Perhaps a more sustainable approach that, adopting a more diverse sustainable approach (including planned potable recycling) with a range of water sources that can be applied more effectively across urban, industrial, rural and environmental sectors?

In NSW, negotiations are underway to double the capacity of privately operated Kurnell desalination plant, and unbelievably, the government owned NSW Water (a non-commercial statutory authority of government) is investigating even more desalination plants to service Western Sydney using existing reservoirs supplied by a desalination plant located on Sydney's Northern Shores. As for water recycling and urban water harvesting…. absolutely nothing. So Groundhog Day is here again, and our government is resorting to the short-term, energy consuming solution of desalination to deal with Sydney's growing population.

In 1972, the government knew that demand would outstrip supply by 2000. They did nothing. The Government is not telling us of their current forecasts, probably because even with the existing desalination plant, their plans for Sydney's future water supply are poorly developed. Consequently, we are facing an increasing reliance on more 25+ year contracts with international operators running desalination plants to meet our water needs. International investors now dominate our rural water markets, before long they will control our urban water supplies and the opportunities to have sustainable, reliable water supplies involving efficient urban harvesting and recycling will be locked out.

"Crisis, what crisis?" Is it a crisis of water, politics, media, education or just political and bureaucratic mismanagement, compounded by our own complacency?