If Australia is in the worst drought on record surely the rain of the past few days will help alleviate the problem. As I returned home this evening I was shocked to see the Parramatta river had burst its banks in the CBD section which runs for 200 metres or so. This is the view looking East towards Sydney.
That may not be the most startling flood picture you’ve seen but if only you had seen the river all but a few days ago. You guessed it – there was no river! The once mighty Parramatta river had shrunk into a trickle between the two retaining walls that mark each end of the city. Okay, so the river didn’t really dry up completely but at least a few million litres of it had. Notice those temporary fences on either side, they’re not there to stop people from entering the flood waters but rather were erected last week to stop people from walking down the embankment and straight onto the dry river bed. This is the view to the West…
So for all the talk about droughts, water conservation, and even desalination, why on Earth are we letting billions, yes billions, of litres of fresh water run directly back into the ocean every year. Over the past thirty years most areas (including regional) across Australia have seen multiple flooding rains. We need to get serious about harvesting the water to ensure we do everything possible to secure it. There will always be extremes in the weather but how well we cope with those extremes is solely dependant upon our foresight and capacity planning.
Let’s hope the politicians share that sentiment after the next election.
Mainly because flowing rivers are a healthy thing. And floods to flush out the crap are also healthy. It is our desire to tame and exploit rivers that leads them to their current state — witness the Murray/Darling, and how you can take so much water out that the mouth closes up, the darling dries out below the wiers, and the rest fills up with blue-green algae.