About in the early 90s Bendigo region (and almost half of Victoria region in the north west) experienced long dry and caused drought. It is believed that "Climate Change" was the suspect of this problem. The level of rain was reduced dramatically especially in winter, bush and land became dusty and brown colored like dessert and the reservoir in the Lake Eppalock were run out of water. Many farmer closed their farms as they can not sustain the crops productivity and the region suddenly loss employment opportunity and economic prosperity in grain and wheat farms, cattle and livestock (sheep, lamb and cow). The other impacts are this region loss population since the out migration of young people and farmers to other states, and the closure of public facilities (such as hospitals and schools) by state and federal government because of the lack of costumers.
Nowadays, the authority of water management such as Coliban Water issues water restriction to residents every day. Therefore, they could maintain the usage of water in the long period and find solution in water resources. People can not consume water freely, spesifically if they want to wash their cars, watering the gardens and even to take a bath. This authority has control in every households' pipe so that they can give punishment to the disobeyers like fines.
Differently, in my country every people have better access to the water resources. Eventhough Indonesia also hitted by Climate Change, but so far there is no government policy to look after that. Every households can bore their own water wells and people also can use the river as long as they need. Eventhough we have government body in water enterprise (Perusahaan Air Minum/PAM) but its role only to provide pure water to drinking and bathing. However, this company can not ensure good services to the community. Occasionally, they still struggle in certain issues of water theft and blake, worst quality of drinking water and misscalculation of customers' usage.
Anyway, Indonesia is not familiar with drought so far.
(Except maybe in dry areas like East Nusa Tenggara and Mount Kidul Yogyakarta)
Sources : http://www.coliban.com.au/
3 comments:
fiuh.. drought was horrible.. but it happens might be it caused by humanbeing faults also.. global warming.. hmm.. so let's GO GREEN..
Honestly, Australian doesn't have to struggle with drought. This country is a far more wealthy and stable in economy compare with Indonesia. Australian can buy and built a technology to solve this problem.
I understand Bendigo has about 18 months water supply remaining at the current stage 4 water restrictions. I hope for some rain to fill the water catchments. Bendigo is a great town, great architecture and family friendly. J
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