Dear Government, here’s what we want for the future of water in Australia

Each one of us has day dreamed about it – ‘If I ruled the world, things would be different, things would be better’. Well your dreams have come true.

Apologies, I’m not writing to say that you have been elected as the new leader of the world, or even Australia, but I do come bearing some rare and very good news. The Government has opened its ears to your advice. Will you take the opportunity to give it?

For those of us working in the water sector, it’s pretty rare that our musings can attract the attention of a neighbour, not to mention the government – what seems so exciting and complex to us, is often difficult to translate into headline news. But the spotlight is shining on the water sector right now and a Senate Inquiry has been launched into stormwater resources in Australia. If you haven’t started preparing a submission, get going because the due date for submissions to the inquiry is this Friday, 24th April 2015.

So what will you do with this once in a lifetime opportunity to have your voice heard on this topic? Now that someone is asking, what are your recommendations for changing the way things work for the better? Whatever your thoughts may be, we would encourage you to share them – and be bold and direct in doing so. As the saying goes… if you don’t ask, you don’t get.

What are we asking for?

We’ve asked ourselves the question at E2Designlab - what would we like to ask of the Federal Government? For us, it boils down to three things:

1. Stormwater should be recognised as a problem and an opportunity

Imagine if you could build a huge concrete bowl that would capture rainfall then supply that water to a population nearby. That’s pretty much what a city could be. It’s just that it wasn’t the focus of the original design brief.

We have done the first part really well – cities successfully capture rainwater and create a huge amount of stormwater, but then we have haplessly pushed it out of our cities via sensitive creeks and bays, leaving destruction in its wake. If we re-design our cities to a revised brief, with measures to treat, store and utilise stormwater as a local water supply we can take advantage of this happy accident in urban design.

The opportunity lies in the fact that runoff generated from the impervious surfaces of an urbanised catchment is a predictable high yield water resource.  In temperate Australia, urban stormwater runoff from cities typically equals or just exceeds post millennium drought potable water demands.  What a lucky match!

To take hold of this opportunity, we need all our ducks in a row. Current policy to drive the uptake of improved stormwater management is ad hoc and inconsistently applied across the states and Territories of Australia.  The establishment of a national over-arching framework to drive consistent policy application is required, which recognises the need to both clean up past mistakes and protect our environment but also to recognise stormwater as a major water supply opportunity to be harnessed.

Dear Government, please instil consistent legislative drivers across Australia which require improvement in stormwater management for environmental protection and for utilisation of stormwater as an essential water supply.

2. Half the problem is in the question itself

You will note that this is an inquiry into stormwater, and just stormwater. As noted above, stormwater is both a core risk to our environment and a valuable and largely unharnessed water resource. We whole heartedly want better stormwater management, but stormwater is just one part of the water cycle, and one part of our urban water challenges. By having an exclusive conversation about stormwater, we are guilty of reinforcing the silos that we have been trying to break down through our moves towards integrated water management and the creation of water sensitive cities. Let’s not undo our good work by focussing only on stormwater, and not recognising the potential integration with recycled wastewater and existing water supply investments.

Dear Government, please make this an Inquiry into the whole urban water cycle.

3. There is no such thing as a free lunch

If someone knocked on your door and offered you a whole range of new and exciting benefits, but at no additional cost, you would be asking ‘what’s the catch?’. There are some very talented people in the Australian water sector, but they aren’t magicians. At the moment, government policy is giving mixed messages – on one hand the industry is being asked for improved water management and enhanced liveability in our cities while on the other hand water utilities and councils are being asked to freeze or lower costs. Competition policy and treasury and finance settings are currently geared to drive down water pricing and operating costs of water businesses, and this is having the effect of reinforcing traditional management silos. These traditional silos focus on optimisation of single purpose solutions rather than delivering the full suite of economic benefits of an integrated approach.  Creating industry efficiency is clearly desirable.  However, re-fashioning the current siloed water supply, sewerage, and drainage industries into effective delivery bodies for Integrated Water Cycle Management will need investment – it won’t be free. We need to invest in Australia’s water future in order to reap the benefits we want.

Dear Government, please review current governance and funding arrangements in the water sector to encourage investment in an integrated water management approach which enables the delivery of broader economic benefits.

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Celeste Morgan and Peter Breen

E2Designlab