Water Defiency Declaration

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Our Shire has officially been declared water deficient.
Farmers have recently completed surveys indicating what supplies they have and what is needed to keep their stock watered.

An online article about the Shire's declaration has been published on the Perth Now website.
Disturbingly, there are some derogatory comments aimed at farmers following the article. Many of these show terrible ignorance and discrimination.

The water situation is one that will not go away. It may be eased by rain and by the carting of water in to the Shire, but the fact remains that the infrastructure needs urgent attention.
The pipeline, built with volunteer labour from the local farmers, is now 20 years old. It wasn't large enough in the first place and this is the reason our shire is running out of water.
In times of low rainfall, more water is drawn from the pipeline as town dams run out. The pipeline simply can't cope with such demand, so we're running out of water.

Farming is an industry which uses water, just like any other industry. Farmers build dams to maximise their water resources, but if it doesn't rain, dams are useless.
Farmers provide food and export dollars for our nation. They need to be able to rely on proper services such as any other industry would expect.

The Department of Water along with the Water Corporation must start making some vital decisions to ensure the long term availability of this basic service. Our State Government must look at investing Royalties for Regions funding into building better water infrastructure. The provision of water is a basic right. If we were a Third World country, the government would be donating millions of dollars to improve water infrastructure.