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STORMWATER
The issue of stormwater harvesting is vital to supplying the future water needs of Australian cities, including Adelaide. Stormwater projects offer a great, relatively inexpensive and environmentally friendly way for major cities, as well as countless regional towns and communities, to wean themselves off river water, in turn easing the burden on our river systems.
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Currently, in an average year, Adelaide depends on the River Murray for approximately 80 gigalitres of water, which is roughly the same as the combined stormwater discharge of the Adelaide metropolitan area.
I believe that this provides considerable opportunity for the use of stormwater, through aquifer storage and recovery technology to relieve the demand for water from other sources. And it’s so much cheaper and less energy intensive than desalination projects. It needs to be fast tracked and encouraged.
For instance, the Salisbury Council, in my home state, has demonstrated how stormwater retention and treatment can be used to provide significant amounts of water, and I believe these sorts of programs should be rolled out around the country.
Recently, I successfully negotiated with the federal government to guarantee $200 million dollars in stormwater projects around Australia. In addition, the guidelines were changed to allow for the Federal Government to be involved in more community-level projects. I believe we should no longer allow valuable water to literally flow down the drain.
However, the challenge is leadership.
We need federal leadership in stormwater harvesting, just as we need federal leadership in saving the River Murray.
If we just leave it to the States, we will see responses like the one from the Victorian government to the Murray crisis, which is to build a north-south pipeline that will take out a further 75 gigalitres of water and divert it to Melbourne.
What Australia needs is leadership from the federal government to provide funding through local-state-federal government partnerships to develop a whole-of-city approach to stormwater recycling.
That is what I will be fighting for.
Supporting documentation
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