water there's more of this stuff on Earth than any other molecule but experts reckon Australia might not see much of it in the coming years and we need to prepare so what's going on well Australia holds the title for the driest inhabited continent on Earth and even though we've seen a lot of rain.
And flooding in the past couple of years Australia's Got a long history of drought leaving us high and very very dry many say the worst drought on record was the Millennium drought from 1997 to 2009 when Australia baked through its longest rainfall deficit since the start of the 20th century it affected almost every Capital City draining Supply dams.
And causing crucial river systems like the Murray darling Basin to dry up since 2001 the drought in the maray darling has caused a loss of about 200 cubic km of water and that's about eight Port Philip Bays or roughly 400 Sydney Harbors authorities across the country imposed strict water restrictions as native plants and animals suffered and.
Pressure on food producers mounted fast I believe this is a serious an issue we' faced in farming in Australia since Federation since then we've seen the devastating impacts of The Tinderbox drought from 2017 to 2019 and experts from the Australian.
National University reckon we need to start preparing for potential Mega droughts lasting 20 years or more thinking specifically about a 20year drought the recurrence or how frequently we could expect them ranged from 150 years which would mean that we due for one um very soon um but all the way up to almost a thousand years but any.
Future meaga as it stands currently will be far more severe far more impactful because it's occurring against the backdrop of climate change none of this drought history or potential future has stopped Aussies from splashing out though so to speak on average we use between 100 to 200 l of water per person per day and 80% of the.
Water we consume is only used once add a growing population to the mix and it spells a big problem for water security which is the availability of clean water for things like irrigation of Gardens and food crops to human consumption like drinking so what's the solution well there are a couple of options starting with.
This if you've ever been in the ocean though you'll know it's tastes terrible and you can't really do anything with it unless it's been through a place like this this is the Adelaide desalination plant it was opened to help relieve the water supply crisis of the Millennium drought and is still being used to boost Water Supplies today there's about 270.
Diesel plants across the country including six large scale ones like this so uh basically there are three steps one is uh filtration which is where we prepare the sea water to be desalinated the next one would be the desalination process itself in this plant we use reverse osmosis what we see here is the desalination plant itself so each one of.
Those white F we call them pressure vessels and they contain eight reverse osmosis membranes so we get sea water fed through the outer ring and that traverses the membrane that membrane only allows the water molecules to go through but not the salt they go spirally towards the center and it's in those little holes in the center tube.
That fresh water is collected the fresh water we have to postr it because it is too aggressive to put in the networ we need to stabilize it with carbon dioxide and line and then we add our fluoride chlorine and it's good to go to the network I'd say the two main challenges are one of them is is the electricity.
Cost and so this salination is an is an energy intensive process in an Ideal World if we're going to do de salination it should or must be powered by Renewables entirely the other one would be the fact that uh reversus Moses membranes they're not recyclable there's not much we can do with them so they end up going to landfill and if anybody has.
A good idea of what to do with the membranes uh there's surely a good business there but there is another option yeah treated sewage water is mostly used for watering non-f food props and things like sports grounds and public spaces but it can with a little extra.
Filtration be used for drinking if you think the idea is hard to swallow you're not alone when it was first pitched in to WBA in 2006 during the height of the Millennium drought 61% of residents couldn't stomach it and voted no at a referendum he forced the people to drink toilet water doesn't matter if the water is safe is coming.
From toilet every second person you talk to says oh who would want to drink that you know there's already been rumors of names that to's being called the Pooh City and pu wber and things like this nevertheless it's something that's being done in more than 35 cities across the globe today including here in Perth and Sydney recently announced it's.
Investigating the process for their City's Supply the treatment process shares some steps with the salination in the early stages but is then put through more thorough treatments like ultraviolet disinfection and actually turns out too clean it's not quite ready to drink yet we need to put back in some minerals.
Like calcium to make sure that when you drink that water it doesn't have any plus also that it doesn't start pulling some of those minerals from you wastewater treatment is much cheaper than desalination too but there are still challenges mainly getting rid of the stigma my ining is that that is an.
Avenue that could be more useful where we don't need like sort of hyper pure water but there are other changes that we need to make I think that can't be fixed by these sort of engineering or technological um supplements experts like Georgie reckon that the government have more to do to prepare and reduce the impacts of future.
Droughts including building more storage options like dams forming new strict Water Management plans and Community Support networks and crucially continuing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to lessen the blow of drought when it does happen I think it's particularly important for the government to support.
And fund more uh ambitious approaches so that's things like supporting farmers in transitioning to regenerative agriculture so stocks and crops that don't need as much water and of course we all have a part to play at home too things like turning off the TS and you don't need them short showers having native drought tolerant plants in your.
Gardens these are things we can do get into the habit of saving water of seeing it as an extremely precious resource which it is no matter if we're in or not
