The Nationalisation of Our Water Supply.
The increasing aridity of our country has become our everlasting enemy because of the lack of a sense of history that goes with the shortsightedness of our politicians. Unlike other countries faced with natural adversities like Holland/the Netherlands, Australia since Federation in 1901 has not learned to turn what it gets from mother nature to enrich its environment into an asset, to secure the future of its inhabitants. Over a span of well over 100 years, our politicians have not considered any plan on a national basis for the security water-wise of the future Qenerations of Australia.
Australia can be inspired by the experience of the Netherlands/Holland. The history of Holland (Pas Bas) is also the struggle over 12 centuries against the worth Sea. Although the Dutch people eventually won the fight, they are still on guard as the might of the sea that in the past drowned many lives, continues today to attack their numerous dykes. As far back as 400 B.C., the inhabitants knew that the climate was cyclical. So instead of blaming `climate change' for the toll taken on their homes and lives, they realized around 300 B.C. that a long-range
plan had to be put in place to harness the fury of their worst and ever-present enemy to their advantage. So generation after generation of the Dutch farmers started to dredge, drain and reclaim the coastline. This continued systematically for some 12 centuries until their low-lying country was at last secured from the ravages of their arch enemy, the North Sea. The work involved was planned and carried out by the Dutch people at the grassroots so one might attribute it all to the will of the people. What is remarkable is that the saga of possibly the largest and longest civil project on the planet was accomplished without the aid of mechanical equipment for many centuries.
The Dutch Fresians who were not required to serve in the army beyond their frontiers, had an old saying: Dyke or depart. For many there was no voluntary departing. In December 1287, for example, it estimated that 50,000 people were drowned in the coastal district between Stravoren and the Ems. There were serious breaches in the dykes up to as recently as 1916.
The Dutch suffered from a surfeit of water. A Dutch poet once asked, "Is there any man better than a farmer?" We can certainly say the same of our Australian farmers, who continually struggle against an environment at the other extreme: lack of water. The Dutch grew willow trees for making willow mattresses that form the base of the dyke. William the Silent was more than a great leader in war
and diplomacy in that he was also the maker of new land. His family learned to coax the North Sea to give up land and then reclaimed it by planting the Spartina. First there was the reclamation, then came industrialization.
The early Dutch combined patience with the constructive use of time n harnessing the forces of nature .This combination is also that is least observed by
the governments in Australia. Since then the Dutch hydrologists have built upon what was done 450 years avo for constructing dams and dykes, working with the law of action and reaction as applied to wind and water. Wind mills were used for water pumping stations apart from grinding corn
From 1730 a national disaster arose in the shape of the sea«-orn,, which began eating up the timber defence's outside the dykes Even today the word Lirnnoria is still around, eager to bore through an %- wood except tropical hardwood. So a stone defence was built instead -with the stones having to be brought in from remote lands.
The rivers brought down sand from the hinterlands. The silting of harbour's, sandbars across river mouths, and ice dams in winter made shipping hazardous. The lack of depth in their harbour's could spell disaster to a trading nation like the Dutch_ which since 1600 became the greatest maritime nation in the world. In 1613 for example, the Dutch had 20,000 sea-going vessels. The steam dredger came to the rescue after 1860. The dredgers made the port of Rotterdam the gateway to Europe. Even today Rotterdam in terms of the shipping handled is surpassed only by one or two other ports in the world.
When the heavier salt water meets the river water, there is a reaction in that the speed of a ship falls when it comes in contact with salt water. The `devil' of the underflood holds the ship by its keel while it may draw the ship into the river much more quickly than the captain expects. The underflood also brings from the sea into the rivers much sand which never goes out again except by dredging. We in Australia have a similar problem with our rivers. Holland would be a poorer country today but for that most important of machines, the dredger. Through the port of Rotterdam, the River Rhine has become the greatest inland shipping route of the world with vessels going upriver as far as Basle in Switzerland.
Just as dredges built Holland/the Netherlands, they can build the new Australia ... if and when our hitherto inept governments become more mature. A well qualified hydrologist in Australia can visualize only too well the vast wealth that can be made through, apart from the pumping stations, transportation by planning years ahead via dredging canals through our desert hinterlands.
Australia has recently experienced the worst floods (in Queensland) and the worst bushfires (in Victoria) in its history. Quite apart from the heavy loss of human lives and damage to properties, transport of every kind comes to a standstill
during both catastrophes,. A canal system throughout Australia would have saved billions of dollars in properties, services and countless lives with the likelihood of floods and bushfires drastically reduced. In Holland, a single tug can easily tow 10,000 tons of goods, a performance equal to that of 20-25 locomotives.
According to the CSIRO, Australia cannot sustain water-wise a population greater than 18,000,000. Therefore, water conservation on a national scale must be our first priority. The capacity to hold on land more of that rain water that now empties into the sea will secure Australia's future as that will make available to our farmers more arable land.
Each of our capital cities is notorious for discharging possibly more than 50% of its rainfall into the sea. In the Netherlands, when the Zuider Zee plan was first mooted in 1886 to coax from the sea a massive area of land. It was said in parliament that such a plan was mere fata morgana. The same could be said today about the way the Australian federal government is turning a blind eye towards any proposed lona-term national water-conservation scheme. It took 30 years from 1887 to 1917 for the Zuiderzee Dam to be approved by the national government. It was only in May 1932 that the 20 mile-long dyke was actually closed with Stage I having taken 15 years to construct. The complete project, including reclamation of land from the sea, took 75 years. The democratically elected governments of Australia have been notorious to this day for promoting tactical short term moves that improve the prospects of being re-elected at the expiry of their current term in office at the expense of long-term projects so vital to « ell being of the people as a whole. One exception is the Snowy River Hydro Scheme which took 25 years to complete.* It was only 17 years after the its long-term plan was first seriously discussed in 1932 before the required bill was passed in 1949. The Snowy scheme remains in Australian political history as the largest civil engineering project ever undertaken in the country.
One does not have to be a visionary to realize that Australia cannot claim to be a smart country until our Federal Government passes a bill for a national water conservation plan. Such a plan may well take 50 years to fully implement, but the great capital so invested in such a long-term infra-structural project will yield greater returns over an even longer period. We already have the land; all we need is water, that is, natural fresh water, not artificially treated water from a desalination plant that has a salt content still too high for drinking and for most crops. Ignorance about the desalination of sea-water can be very expensive. Salt in situ is a dangerous poison as far as most crops are concerned. The Dutch learned earlier on that the salt laden peat strata could be burnt until the salt was left which could then be sold.
Wheat is the most important crop in the world in terms of yield per acre. What has dogged the farmers in Australia since wheat was first grown here some 200 years ago is not soil erosion, but dry seasons and salinity. The Dutch on their man-made land coaxed from the sea left the rest of the world behind yield-wise. For example, in 1949:
Netherlands 1750 kg/acre (61.2 bushels/acre)
United Kingdom 1150 kg/acre (41.9 bushels/acre)
France 780 kg/acre (28.5 bushels/acre)
United States 405 kg/acre (14.4 bushels/acre)
To achieve that level of yield. the Dutch has successfully combined their peculiar trade of
making dams with technical know-how to reduce the salt content of land reclaimed from the sea to a minimum. The Dutch hydrologists probably learned the art of making dams and harbours from nature's civil engineers. To this day, the beavers, which used to be plentiful on the river-banks of Europe, still construct dams with the trees they gnaw down and the branches they collect with which to build their lodges
Governments all over Australia can learn from simple preventive measures taken by resourceful individuals. There was, for example, the remarkable story on the SBS 6.30 evening-news on 11 May, 2009, of a certain Mrs Jans of Marysville. She was interviewed in front outside her house, still standing intact in the midst of the skeletons of trees burned up and the ashes to which the other houses all around had been reduced in Victoria's worst bushfire. She survived with her timber-house slightly singed in holocaust of 7 February, thanks to a watersprinkling system she had installed which could rain on the guttering and fascia timber on demand. A petrol-driven generator with a pump attached to a large water tank pumps water through a sprinkler pipe under the roof guttering. Local governments should promote such effective preventive initiatives at the grassroots level instead now adding to the total costs of those residents who return to rebuild their homes by requiring them to use expensive, non-combustible building material.
Local councils can also help to kick off a long-term water conservation plan by introducing a positive program for all home and building owners to retain all the required rainwater that falls on their properties and to allow the excess to flow onto adjoining properties. Would it not make more economic sense to prevent at the grassroots in the first place all this fresh water from draining into the sea than
to pay a third party in the form of some private company a fortune later on to pump the now `adulterated' water back from the sea into a desalination plant for treatment? Common sense dictates that the perennial flavour for a country like Australia should `Not to deliberately waste water'. Yet local councils throughout the country have hydraulic codes that compel property owners to pump at great expense much of this rainwater out from their properties to the street gutters.
The people of what is today the Netherlands have distilled from their collective struggle since the 9th century to cope with the fury of the North Sea, a motto that will go down the ages: A country that is alive builds for its future. The words mean to say that a nation which does not improve its land is not fully alive. Doing something for the future is a sure sign of living because it is growth. Improving one's land is a duty for the nation, a symptom of national health. It
should be a tradition.
It is of interest to note here that T. Boone Pickens, an oil-man worth US$3,000,000,000, was quoted recently as saying, "Water is the new oil." It is high time for the Federal Government to reorder its priorities. It should provide leadership in water conservation by redirecting all the attention, time and resources it has used in promoting 'climate change' as Public Issue number 1. This is the same government which is apparently prepared to spend $43,000,000,000 on rolling out a broadband network for Australia, that has put water conservation on the back burner. So unless our federal politicians stopped `sitting on their hands', it is almost inevitable that Australia will slip into oblivion. We in Australia must secure the future for our farmers_ our grand children and the national security of the country with a national plan for the conservation of water.
H. C. Jagers