The recent discovery of two freshwater lakes in Sydney has split me in two minds. One half is saying 'yay Mother Nature loves us! We're not going to die of thirst!', the other is rather sceptically declaring that we can't possibly look after these new water sources to the tune of doomsday music. So why the negativity?
For starters, despite the average citizen becoming a little more green-minded in the past few years, we still have a long way to go in terms of our resource consumption. The number of times I see reviews of plasma TVs just gives me the shudders because most consumers wouldn't even think to ask how much energy these entertainment beasts consume compared to your average cathode tube or even LCD or DLP technologies. But that's another story. To the average water consumer, the discovery of these lakes effectively gets us 'off the hook' temporarily. This is the last thing I want to happen because we lose the environmental pressure we've built up over the years and we lose momentum with regard to our water saving habits. There are certainly going to be short term-minded people who will resume their water-wasting ways with the belief that the lakes will save us from water shortage.
Secondly, apparently these lakes can sustain us for up to three years if our dams fail us, but they take five years to replenish. Replenish? From where? Wouldn't it be better to go to the source of this replenishment? And how do you know for sure that it can and will replenish? And I hate to point out that there's a two year gap between draining the lakes for our use and its full replenishment. Worst case scenario, we rape this source of water until it is unsustainable, unrenewable.
And finally, there needs to be a careful analysis of the lakes before we take any water from it. No natural water source exists alone; surely these lakes are a part of an ecosystem which needs careful examination before we can step in and claim our 'share' of water. Because even worse than that worst case scenario outlined above (okay, so I lied about it being the 'worst') is that we kill these water sources until it is unsustainable and unrenewable and we take down an entire ecosystem with it. An ecosystem which was probably very happy being hidden from human intervention and let's face it, human greed for resources.
All I can say is be careful, Sydney. You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.
1 comment:
It seems that water is one of the things that many people take for granted. In Finland we have water everywhere. The country is full of uber-clean groundwater. If you go to any sizable forest, you will have a good chance of finding groundwater springing from the very soil. And in many areas the surface-water is clean enough to drink as well, straight from the lake. And there's lots and lots of that surface-water. There's over 56.000 lakes larger than one hectare in Finland. That's a lot of lakes.
Experts have been telling that in the future, water will become a resource that wars will be fought over, like oil is today. And while Finns understand what they are saying, I think that they don't REALLY understand it, since we have abundance of clean water. I guess it's just difficult for some people to understand that some areas might actually run out of water. "It's water! How can you run out of water since it's everywhere?".
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