Water our most important commodity
Adam Kerezsy writes in The Conversation (1.12.14) that ‘The Great Artesian Basin Sustainability Initiative – in which free-flowing bores have been piped and capped – has been one of the big success stories of Australia’s recent environmental policy history. A lot of water that used to hit the arid ground and evaporate was redirected to troughs and tanks – while the rest stayed underground. Cockies were happy and so were governments.
Everybody realises – especially in Australia’s interior – that water is our most important commodity, and that water management is crucial to the sustainability of communities. The new [Queensland] legislation seems to disregard these concerns and fails to heed the lessons from the past. Collectively, and more than ever, we must measure twice and cut once when planning and managing our most precious resource: water in an arid environment.’