a local problem is a global wake-up call

The Adelaide Hills are experiencing severe water shortages. The root cause? A prolonged dry period and not enough water tankers to meet unprecedented demand from people not connected to the mains water supply.

Thousands of residents and farmers are hurting as dams, tanks and streams dry up. Water tankers are becoming a common sight, carting in desperately needed water. People are waiting weeks for expensive water deliveries.

The South Australian government has set up emergency water collection points to cope with the demand from off-grid families. More water tankers have been secured. But despite recent rain, the situation is far from over.

We found rainfall and flows into Adelaide’s reservoirs are at their lowest levels in 40 years. Reservoir levels have dropped to 44% – the lowest for more than 20 years.

Adelaide is not currently at risk of running out of water; the state government built a desalination plant after the Millennium Drought. Production at the desal plant is four to six times higher than usual to meet demand. Without the desal plant and water from the River Murray, the city would be under severe water restrictions.

But the crisis shows many off-grid families, farms and businesses need new options to plan for the future.

Global water stress

This is not the first time entire communities have run out of water.

Cape Town in South Africa nearly ran out of water in 2018. The city of nearly 4 million people was weeks away from “Day Zero”.

In Australia, several regional and rural country towns have hit their own Day Zero. Stanthorpe in Queensland officially ran out of water in January 2020. Truckloads of water were carted into town every day to meet residential demand.

Scientists have coined a new term, “hydroclimate whiplash”, to describe the rapid swings between intensely wet and dangerously dry weather currently occurring across the globe. This climate volatility amplifies natural hazards such as flash floods, wildfires, landslides and disease.

The January wildfires in Los Angeles happened when two wet winters were followed by an extremely dry autumn and winter, providing plenty of dry fuel for fire.

These aren’t isolated events. The global water crisis didn’t go away.

The bigger picture

What’s happening in the Adelaide Hills – and in other very dry places worldwide – demonstrates the need for careful, long-term water security planning.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 6 is to “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all”. Water stress already affects more than 2 billion people – more than a quarter of the world’s population.

By 2030, the UN predicts 2 billion people will still be living without safely managed drinking water, 3 billion without safely managed sanitation, and 1.4 billion without basic hygiene services.

For many, this is literally a life-or-death matter.

Investing in water security

CSIRO is collaborating with industry, government and research organisations on research to overcome drought and build resilience for regional Australia. Our researchers are testing how well each of these strategies might work in different regions during extended dry periods. We calculate how much water can be collected and stored during the driest periods on record.

Rainfall over Norfolk Island, a subtropical island in the Pacific Ocean roughly 1,500km southeast of Brisbane, has declined by 11% since 1970, with long runs of dry years in recent decades. The future is likely to be drier still.

Our Norfolk Island Water Resource Assessment explored ways to help the community determine how to adapt and build resilience to drought.

Since this project finished in 2020, residential and commercial rainwater tanks have been upgraded and a new seawater desalination plant installed. Other options to diversify water supplies included sharing groundwater bores, capturing runoff in gully dams, managing vegetation water use, and storing water underground.

Excess water from rainwater or recycled wastewater can sometimes be stored underground in natural reservoirs called aquifers for use during drought. This is called “water banking” or “managed aquifer recharge”. The technique has been developed over the past 20 years and used to safely store water underground across Australia and overseas.

Brackish (salty) groundwater is a potential water source that could be unlocked during drought. A National Water Grid funded project is investigating ways to use groundwater that would normally be too salty, along with renewable energy to power inland desalination plants. The project is investigating the prospect of using brackish groundwater across Western Australia for the first time.