'Water police' crack down in an ever-drier Australia

Profligate shower-takers may find their water supply cut to a trickle as country endures a long drought made worse by global warming.

from the April 5, 2007 edition

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Western Australia, the country's biggest state, has flirted with the idea of building a 2,300 mile long pipeline or canal to carry water from the rain-soaked Kimberley wilderness region. The A$2 billion project has been criticized as impractical. "It's a romantic idea, but it would be incredibly costly because the distances are so great, and you'd have to pump the water all that way," Ms. Nancarrow says..

A failure to adapt to less rainfall could have profound implications for Australia's beach and barbecue lifestyle. But Greg Miller says he has come up with an innovation that will at least ensure that Australians can continue to enjoy verdant lawns.

As head of the Turf Growers Association of New South Wales, he is busy promoting a new type of grass that thrives on seawater. Known as seashore or sea isle paspalum, it was developed by scientists at the University of Georgia in the US. Mr. Miller is convinced that it is superbly suited to drought-stricken Australia.

"It's the most salt-resistant grass out there. It can be watered with salt water as long as you flush it with rainwater or gray water one time out of four."

It may be only a small part of a very large jigsaw puzzle, but it shows that Australians are thinking about how to adapt to what could be a very different future.

Peter Cullen, one of the country's foremost water experts, told a recent conference that the attitude held by many Australians used to be "let's hope it rains."

"That hasn't turned out to be a grand strategy," Dr. Cullen said. "The climate is changing. It would be prudent for us to assume we are going to get less rainfall."

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