Environment – Conservation of Water

ENVIRONMENT 

CONSERVATION OF WATER

Water is a vital to all of our country and we should value the water and as so much of the country is very dry we must learn how to conserve water well. There are times of flooding rains and times of prolonged droughts and we need to conserve water far better than we do. There are large consumers of water on some of our major inland rivers and we must find a better way to manage our water as we are finding that there are some without sufficient water and the rivers are not flowing well. A healthy river needs to be flowing to its mouth.

Policy:

  • Wherever possible dams should be constructed off river.

  • The deeper a dam is the less water is lost through evaporation, so new dams will need to be dugout rather than just flooding a valley.

  • Mining industry uses a lot of water and so mines will need to use recycled water and very little river or creek water.

  • The huge dam at Cubby station will need to be assessed as to how much water it ought to retain.

  • Rivers and wetlands need water and we must increase the river flows wherever possible.

  • During times of floods we need to retain what excess water we can for use in times of droughts.

  • Waste water, including storm water must be recovered for reuse for irrigration or recycling and not wasted via ocean and river outfalls. 

  • No coal seam gas drilling near or through ground water aquifers because of the potential danger of destroying the ground water.

  • The old mining voids may be able to assist in water storage by creating artificial sand beds in the rehabilitation process.

  • Natural desalination processes need to be examined for possible utilizing to desalinate water for river flow and other purposes. It seems that the replenishment of the Tomago Sandbed water may come from water naturally desalinated through the natural sandbeds at that site.