NSW towns including Dubbo and Tamworth face water emergency within months

Towns in western and central New South Wales, including Dubbo, Nyngan, Cobar, Walgett and Tamworth, are facing a crisis in their water supplies within a few months unless it rains, prompting emergency planning by water authorities.

 NSW water authorities are carrying out emergency planning,
  as dams, including those servicing the towns of Menindee,
Dubbo, Nyngan, Cobar and Tamworth run critically low. 

And on properties throughout the Murray-Darling basin, irrigators are bracing for their water entitlements to be reduced to around 10% of their usual allocations, which will severely constrain agricultural production.

A week before the election, the Murray–Darling Basin Authority issued a “sobering assessment” of the outlook for the Murray Darling river system in the communique from its monthly meeting.

“Since July 2018, inflows to the River Murray System have remained in the driest 7% of records, the head of River Management,” the executive director, Andrew Reynolds, told the board.

Read the story from The Guardian by Anne Davis - “NSW towns including Dubbo and Tamworth face water emergency within months.”

NSW water woes worsen with river to dry up as tomato town faces crisis

The drought gripping much of NSW is tightening, forcing authorities to prepare to cut flows along a major river in the north-west, while job losses loom as towns in the Northern Tablelands start to dry.

Steven Gibbs walks in a dry section of Lake Burrendong
in western NSW as plunging reservoir levels trigger limited
water flows along the Macquarie River.

WaterNSW on Monday will announce that unless conditions improve, regulated flows along the Macquarie River below the town of Warren will cease from early spring to prioritise water supplies for towns and key users.

Even those users - such as the Western Plains Zoo, Cobar mines and Dubbo's abattoirs and golf club - are "at risk of having reduced access to water" without fresh inflows.

Pressure is likely to mount on Dubbo to introduce water restrictions as the main dam supplying the regional centre of about 40,000 sinks to just 6 per cent full.

Read the story from The Sydney Morning Herald by Peter Hannam - “NSW water woes worsen with river to dry up as tomato town faces crisis.”

150,000 students strike for climate action around Australia.

15 March 2019: An estimated 150,000 students and adult supporters across Australia joined massive, vibrant, nationwide climate strikes today, in over 60 cities and towns across the nation, demanding immediate and urgent leadership from Australian politicians to tackle climate change. Internationally, students in over 100 countries also took action. 

The Sydney School Strike at Town Hall - one of over 60 - March 15.

Next steps: Students are discussing further strikes if they don’t see the action they need from politicians. Other plans include #ClimateElection KickStart meetings at the end of March to make plans to pressure politicians to show climate leadership, and local climate change candidate forums where candidates will be challenged by school students to commit to stop Adani and act on climate change. 

Read the School Strike for Climate Action, Australia - “150,000 students strike for climate action around Australia.”

Urban sprawl equally troubles regional towns and cities worsening emissions

U

rban sprawl troubles cities the world over and it is equally troubling for most of Australia’s regional town and cities.

Sometimes it feels like this even in
 relatively tiny Shepparton.

That same sprawl produces much of the carbon dioxide simply because those towns and cities are inefficient and force people into carbon-rich lifestyles.

Generally, the infrastructure is such that people have little option but to use their carbon dioxide producing cars for almost everything.

Subsequently, as Climate Central reports - “Urban Sprawl, Cars Hamper Cities’ Best Efforts on CO2”.

Some are responding, while the Federal Government just walks away

Institutions, both State and Federal, are preparing to engage with difficulties arising from climate change and although our Federal Government claims recognition of the science, it appears to be doing little.

The Victorian Country Fire Authority
 believes fires such as those experienced
in New South Wales will become
more common in Australia.

Actually, it is doing something – it is walking away from confrontation with the reality.

It is one thing to acknowledge something, quite another to actually face it, particularly when “facing it” threatens the superstructure of ideologies upon which your life has been assembled.

The mantra of most every government in the world, of whatever stripe, is growth, but the adaptation to and mitigation of climate change hinges on the abandonment of those values; principles upon which the modern Western world urgently depend.

We must reshape those values, concentrating our efforts and energies on ensuring that our neighbourhoods, communities, towns and cities will sufficiently resilient and resourceful enough to endure the complications of the next few decades in which our changed atmosphere will produce weather quite different from what we are accustomed to and the resources upon which we depend will begin to disappear.

The Victorian Country Fire Authority has acknowledged the emerging difficulties associated with climate change and a story in today’s Melbourne Age headed: “Climate change means more severe fires: CFA” discusses its preparations.

Another story in yesterday’s Age headed: “Climate change raising fire risk” discusses the probability of increasing extreme fire risk.

It seems most people acknowledge human induced climate change, but there is, obviously, a vast gulf between saying “Yes, it is happening” and “Yes, let’s limit our wants, reduce our energy demands and give the world a chance to recover from 300 years of human assault”.

A world in which we build resilience will be dramatically different from one which is driven by the mantra of growth.