Well, this was touched upon in another thread and it was suggested to start a new one to save the other one for it's intended subject.

South East Qld is in a major drought (as is most of the country) with dam water supplies falling, I think, below 21% of capacity overall. The state government is in the process of putting in infrastructure (pipelines) to connect all the states water collection areas so water can be moved to where it is needed from places of oversupply.

Last year when cyclone Larry hit the north coast, there was probably enough water dumped to fix our problems but there was no way to get it away to where it could be used.

There should be infrastructure and policy in place a long time ago so that this problem would not have gotten as bad as it is. Water restrictions are getting tighter all the time but they are hard to police. Money has to be taken away from the budget to pay for council workers to look into areas of wastage. Soon we are looking at not being able to do any watering outside and trying to get everyone down to 140l of water used per day. This has an added possible problem of turning urban areas into dust bowls causing health problems as well (and our health system is in enough trouble too).

I know this is not an easy fix but nothing has been done for too long and what little is being done is not enough. Putting in new dams and raising other dam levels won't work if there is no rain to fill them. Nothing seems to be being done about all the water runoff on our roads other than to let it go into creeks and rivers and it is only recently that new houses have to have water saving devices and tanks installed - good but way late.

I am sure there are plenty of other areas in Australia in as much trouble, so come on in and talk about it - maybe we can come up with viable solutions between us.

Brow

This definitely isn't an easy fix but something should have been put into action many years ago given our dry climate...it's not something new, we've been experiencing droughts since Adam was a boy.
Now the government/water companies should be building desalination plants and recycling water plants to cope with further droughts...we still have a lot of water going down the drain that I'm sure could be recycled and make a big difference.
We're really sh**ty about having to let our 2 year old garden go to the pack because of mismanagement. The fact that we can't water our garden...only with our grey water. We've had to pay for hoses to connect to laundry/bathroom outlets to try and save some of our plants with the grey water, but we can only do so much...we shouldn't have to do this.
We're in Geelong, Victoria...on stage 4 restrictions which means no hosing of gardens, no bucketing water for gardens or car washing. We've put in a water saver shower head and only have 1 - 2 minute showers anyway.
We're doing it hard but there are many others out in the country areas a h*ll of a lot worse off than we are.
We actually had rain last night (10 mil by our raingauge) and everything looks great at the moment, but that's the first rain we've had for ages and it will take a lot more to do any good for anyone.
Those in power need to get off their ar**s and get moving on some solutions PRONTO.
casper

I`m not a resident of Australia but I have to say for a modern country I`m very surprised by what I`m reading. A continuous water supply surely ought to be one the main priorites? Without water there`s no life.

Hey Team Player,
Surprised...not me.....mismanagement and no forward thinking by all government and water authorities.
We pay for whatever water we use [we're still being charged a service fee on our quarterly water bills but not getting much of a service] but our money isn't being spent where it should be....providing adequate water supplies for us and our kids and grandkids future use.
Don't worry, there's a lot of very angry people here but our voices just go on deaf ears.
We have too many bumbling idiots in power...what hope do we have?
casper