World Environment Day: A reality check for Australia's thirsty cities
04 Jun 2005
The theme of 'Green Cities', this Sunday's World Environment Day focuses on the sustainability of urban centres around the world - and Australia's cities are not stacking up, according to WWF-Australia.
"Water shortages in Australian cities are evidence that our urban centres are on borrowed time," WWF-Australia Director for Conservation, Dr Ray Nias, says.
New tougher water restrictions and dams at record-low levels show exactly how our cities are now running on empty.
"On World Environment Day city-dwellers are being urged to do everything they can to look after the rivers, aquifers and wetlands that sustain them.
"There are two ways people can help - use less water and make sure their governments don't cut environmental flows in these rivers.
"Stealing from the environment to maintain our outdated and wasteful water use in the cities is really stupid," says Dr Nias.
In a desperate bid to service Sydney's water needs, flows in the Hawkesbury Nepean River will now be cut by a further 50 per cent - a disaster for the river's already stressed ecosystem.
"It's a precedent that other thirsty cities may follow.
"For the cities in the world's driest habitable continent to waste so much water and then cut the life-giving flows to rivers by half is a disaster," says Dr Nias.
Australian urbanites use the world's highest quality drinking water to flush toilets and grow lawns. More than 30 per cent of a typical urban household's water quota is put on the garden while 20 per cent goes down the loo."
Dr Nias says: "Killing rivers by cutting flows and wasting water with old-fashioned methods means we run out of water and there is no going back. Simple as that."
For further information
Dr Ray Nias, WWF-Australia Director of Conservation
Mobile: 0414 917 297
Jacqueline McArthur, WWF-Australia Communications Manager - Media
Phone: (02) 9281 5515
Mobile: 0408 626 780
Email: jmcarthur@wwf.org.au
