The wrong type of rain?

You may or may not know that Australia has a pretty big water problem at the moment in the sense that a lot of regions are suffering restrictions and shortages because of "the worst drought in 100 years" that's been going on for about five years.

A lot of the farmers are going mad, Brisbane is practically bone dry and Lee Hopkins, an Australian who I know through work posted a blog entry today about Adelaide reportedly being on its last 40 days of water (so says a local scientist, but a local politician rejects here claims and so the squabbling goes on). The thing is, this is completely bonkers. It's been raining in Sydney for the last 48 hours solid and coupled with that last freak storm we had, parts of Sydney have had two years worth of water in the last couple of weeks. Unfortunately, it seems none of it falls in the right place. Doh!

Here's the comment I posted to Lee's blog:

What I find ridiculous, Lee, is that we’re now on our third day of rain in Sydney, up to 100mm already where I live in the Eastern Suburbs, and still the news is saying “nothing in the catchment areas, it’s raining in the wrong place.”

Wrong place? Why isn’t there a catchment area in another place too, then? This sounds like the morons at home in England who say it’s “the wrong type of snow for the trains to work efficiently.”

I had to walk through a river to get to my front gate on Sunday night, my jeans were soaked up to the knee because water was gushing down the hill and there was so much of it the storm drain covers had been pushed a foot upwards out of the road.

I find it incomprehensible that the so-called “catchment area” never catches anything and it’s completely out of town where it never rains! It’s the same story in Brisbane. Although they get much less rain, it’s never in the catchment area when it does rain.

Seems to be a major disconnect somewhere along the line and all the talk of desalination plants would be better served by spending the money on free, or practically free individual or community area water tanks so there are lots of catchment areas and they do actually catch something. At the moment all the rain is going nowhere useful and all the scientists and politicians are fighting each other about it.

Anyway, I hope for your sake this scientist is wrong and the politician is right!

So that was about as close to a rant as I get on here, but seriously it does defy belief. What also defies belief is that in a country with no water coming down (in the right places) they grow vast quantities of rice, which is a crop that requires gallons of water and is far more suited to places like China than it is here.
Madness.

But, with a level of administration so poor that nobody has acted with any authority in five years in order to solve the problem (i.e. more catchment areas, however that may work), then I guess there's not much point going on about it any further.

Comments

[narcheska]

Did you know, that Warragamba Dam is Sydney's largest dam? I think it has the capacity to service 70% of Sydney's water supply. Did you know that (%-age wise) it catches less water than some of the other dams as it is inland? Who the hell thought it was a good idea to build a dam there?

Supposedly there is a massive underground tank system somewhere around (under) Centennial park that is no longer in use since Warragamba was built. Even though the Sydney city area has quite a high level of rainfall, it is completely wasted.

Sad, isn't it?

[Alex]

If that's true about the tank system under Centennial Park then that's truly shocking. It's been raining pretty hard over there.

I was talking with someone the other day about dams and their effectiveness. Apparently the ecological change (damage?) that happens through building a dam, to both the local environment and the surrounding air currents, often results in far less water and rainfall than there was when there was no dam in place. Something to do with solar reflection of large areas of water or something. Apparently again, this is why the Warragamba dam in Sydney has been a complete waste of time and money.

Needs investigating of course but you can believe it as the sort of thing that would happen.