Abandoning Babylonian principles to rebuild our irrigation infrastructure (journal article)
by Iven Mareels
from ATSE Focus, August/September 2009
"The world's present water management is ... considered unsustainable because of the observed ecological deterioration of most of our natural water systems, but actually estimating the water resource that is readily and sustainably available for human activity is difficult. It is severely hampered by the paucity of quality data. Groundwater data in particular are scantily available. Australia reflects the world water situation well. Australia's water is already recognised as an activity-limiting resource that is further challenged by population growth and climate change: most of our urban communities are used to water restrictions; our farmers are subject to vastly reduced irrigation allocations; and our main river system, the Murray Darling, suffers severe environmental stress. In spite of this, our water infrastructure (like the rest of the world) is still largely fixated in the Deakin era, and our operational practices are definitely Sumerian/Babylonian in nature (although admittedly no longer temple-based) and suffer from low efficiency. This does not augur well for the future. "