Water restrictions: how can you avoid being fined and cut your consumption?

Despite a week of rainy days, from Sunday residents in Sydney, the Blue Mountains and Illawarra will be fined $220 for turning on their sprinklers, watering their gardens between 10am and 4pm or leaving their hoses running unattended. For businesses, that fine goes up to $550. While the Sydney region has been under water restrictions since late May, fines for non-compliance will be issued on 1 September onward.

The Cataract Dam, the oldest dam in Sydney’s water
 supply system, which is currently sitting at just 29% of capacity.

In Australia, the average household uses 900 litres of drinking water every day – 18 times more than the 50-litre-a-day water rations placed on Cape Town residents when the South African city’s dam levels ran perilously low in 2018, and close to three times the 321-litre daily usage of households in drought-stricken California.

On 22 August, Sydney’s dam water levels dropped below 50% for the first time since 2004 and on 29 August verified water storage levels were still below 50%. If water levels fall below 40%, as a dry weather outlook for spring suggests they may, the city could experience stage two water restrictions for the first time in 15 years. 

Read the story from The Guardian by Emma Joyce - “Water restrictions: how can you avoid being fined and cut your consumption?”