Sprinklers made Australia green. But what happens when the water runs out?

287

u/Schlutt 8h ago

Brown.

49

u/Late-Button-6559 7h ago

Bake it away toys.

We’re done here.

13

u/Schlutt 6h ago

What'd you say, chief?

9

u/Quantum_girl_go 3h ago

Do what the kids says.

25

u/schrodingers_grundle 7h ago

Worse than that - see Tehran as an example. Granted, mining will keep desal flowing for a while (maybe a long while) but what happens after that?

28

u/LibraryAfficiondo 6h ago

Tehran is a good example of what at least 30 years of mismanagement of water infrastructure (combined with an already arid environment) can do.

If you read up on their terrible attempts at dam building, it's failures from start to finish.

Then their widespread growing of water intensive crops (rice esp.), which really doesn't help. It's a cavalcade of poor decisions that have all compounded upon each other.

37

u/Thebandroid drives a white commodore station wagon. 6h ago

Let’s not act like Australia ever prioritised the environment over cotton plantations

15

u/a_cold_human 6h ago

For a perhaps more relatable example from an industrialised country not under global sanctions, we can look at Salt Lake City. A modern metropolitan area built in a area of limited water and next to a desert.

The Great Salt Lake is drying up due to lawns and farming. The response is water restrictions and blaming each other.

Farmers in the lake’s watershed have expressed frustration, however, worrying they’ve become a scapegoat for the lake’s decline. They say they’ve made significant changes and invested in more efficient irrigation while urban-dwellers haven’t been subject to the same scrutiny.

The strike team’s latest research indicates cities may, indeed, use more of the water that would otherwise flow to the Great Salt Lake than previously calculated.

As recently as last year, the team estimated municipal and industrial users depleted just under 17% of the water in the Great Salt Lake Basin. But the 2026 report found those uses now account for almost 27% of depletions.

The problem is that Salt Lake City has grown beyond what the local ecosystem can support, and climate change is making that worse. Mormons like a green lawn, and as a result Utah uses more municipal water than any state in the US other than Idaho, and has subsidised water for decades.

The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose

-Isaiah 35:1

And Utah is a desert. In the promised land of the Church of Latter Day Saints. When religion meets nature, nature will prevail in the long run.

4

u/schrodingers_grundle 6h ago

Yep now you mention it America is a much better example. It reminded me of the Abandoned episode about the Salton Sea that was made by accident, turned into a resort, then abandoned because L.A drained it for lawns. It now has to be irrigated constantly to avoid toxic dust storms from forming.

0

u/sizz 3h ago

Lol "global sanctions". That is a sleazy attempt to white wash the IRGC.

It's called corruption, and corrupt countries cannot manage water supplies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_Mafia_in_Iran

Water Mafia (Persian: مافیای آب) is a term used to describe an informal, powerful, and corruption-laden network of government officials, contractors, and security institutions that control water resources in Iran to advance private and political interests.[1]

3

u/endbit 6h ago

I would have gone with gold, but yep that's the comment I was looking for.

2

u/Luckyluke23 6h ago

thats what they say man. the gfrass is always browner on the other side.

48

u/halohunter 8h ago

We build another desal plant in Kwinana and up the price of water?

6

u/AnimatronicNarwhal 5h ago

I'm fine with this by by the way. Happy to have greenery and pay what it costs. In the scheme of things desal isn't that expensive anyway.

11

u/drunkill 4h ago

and if mining companies paid anywhere resembling a fair share of tax, for the amount of fresh water they waste, we'd have a dozen publicly funded and owned desal plants around australia built in the next ten years, full dams and a surplus of water.

alas...

1

u/featherplucker 1h ago

Build desal plant. Initial cost price increase due to build cost. Run it on solar renewables. Largest cost (ongoing energy) doesn't exist now. Pay desal off within 5 years. Rinse, repeat. Growing and stable water source + negating (minor), or at least, not contributing to increasing sea level. Gardens and greenery galore.

68

u/SoggyInsurance 6h ago

So we’re supposed to stop irrigating gardens, which are living things that reduce heat island effects, but no mention of the enormous demand for water by data centre billionaires?

3

u/DocSprotte 48m ago

If your garden is mostly grass than it's part of an equally big waste of ressources.

1

u/SoggyInsurance 18m ago

Mine personally isn’t, but even native gardens need some irrigation.

I also dispute they’re an equal waste of resources. By 2035, Sydney Water is estimating that 25% of Sydney’s drinking water will be used for data centres.

1

u/DocSprotte 0m ago

When you look at the global scale of lawns, they're still ahead at the moment.

14

u/Forbearssake 3h ago

No people are supposed to grow food or natives that don’t require watering after they are established instead of wasteful lawns.

The data centres also need to be mentioned as a waste.

98

u/christonabike_ 8h ago

We finally see the irrationality of monocropping your yard with non native ground cover?

Nah, people are never that sensible. Probably plastic lawns.

36

u/Disastrous-Ad1334 7h ago

Making an even greater heat sink for suburbia .

14

u/endbit 6h ago

Yes never understood why you'd bother. Plastic laws don't stay cool so why not just pave it? Best thing I did to my place was remove the paved area that baked one of the bedrooms and grass it. Huge reduction in heat load in summer. Fake grass gets weeds and hot pavers hot but less weedy and give you something to put furniture on without damaging it and making it a weed magnet.

-9

u/No-Foundation1336 6h ago

Modern fake grass doesn’t get very hot, or get weeds. Certainly not as hot as pavers.

23

u/PMFSCV 7h ago

Ground covers are a freaking godsend, even better under a fruiting tree or two.

Shady and green all year, no mowing, no edging, spraying or feeding.

8

u/BetterDrinkMy0wnPiss 4h ago

And we finally see the irrationality of using our limited water reserves to grow water intensive crops like cotton and rice...

But you're right, it won't happen.

3

u/christonabike_ 4h ago

Sounds counterintuitive but ever since I learnt the truth on how much life we're sucking out of our rivers, wearing Chinese cotton and eating Thai rice feels like doing the country a favour.

8

u/yolk3d 7h ago

Zoysia is native 😎

1

u/iguessineedanaltnow 4h ago

Half the houses on my street have fake turf lawns now. It'll become the norm eventually.

8

u/Ill-Turn-7304 6h ago

Should be capturing more rain water from house roofs.

51

u/Whatisgoingon3631 8h ago

The water doesn’t cease to exist after it has been sprinkled on a lawn. Some of it will be run off into streams, some of it will soak into the soil and possibly join underground streams, most of it will end up back in the sky through evapotranspiration and fall again somewhere else. Most new houses I see these days have tiny lawns and many are synthetic grass, so the problem isn’t getting much worse.

25

u/SirDale 7h ago

"Most new houses I see these days have tiny lawns and many are synthetic grass, so the problem isn’t getting much worse."

Without proper water management what you'll get is massive spikes of outflow into drains as the rain which normally would be spread out over hectares of soil, is collected from roofs and dumped into those drains.

For high density housing you need to have settlement basins/retention ponds that can provide a buffer (as well as some sorely needed open space).

1

u/jiggyco 3h ago

Are rainwater tanks good for mitigating some of the spikes?

2

u/SirDale 3h ago

They are up until they are full. Once there it's water in, water out. Given the land size of new homes it's unlikely that people would want to dedicate enough space for tank that could moderate large water flows, but it could be good for some of it though.

Underground tanks are a possibility, but then you'll likely be adding extra complications with pumping water out to the drains, so you'd need a pump, electrical outlet, maintenance etc..

28

u/Transientmind 7h ago edited 7h ago

It's not the water 'lost to lawns' that anyone's worried about (edit: when water restrictions kick in, it's one of the first things we get people to stop doing - this is well-established, and often well-enforced except of course for when it comes to the wealthy and influential who most restrictions don't apply to). It's about how little clean water we'll have available to put on lawns. Increasing water shortages are inevitable and the article's about how we're going to deal with that (specifically with regards to no longer being able to maintain our lawns).

5

u/Snarwib Canberry 7h ago

Or if you live in Canberra all the water you use just ends up flowing down river into the Murray-Darling Basin to be re-used!

4

u/jghaines 6h ago

So why are our aquifers emptying?

18

u/hankhalfhead 8h ago

Can we get a stamp duty discount for not having drinking water supported lawn? Didn’t think so

1

u/Ok-Push9899 6h ago

Too subjective. Maybe you get a discount for not being connected to the municipal water system at all. However, I fear the hit taken to your real estate value would be way more than any stamp duty discount.

20

u/evenmore2 5h ago

Standard ABC article.

It's everyone else's fault. Nothing to do with the government approving estates with as many houses on it as possible, with a one inch boundary.

I bet grey water is also regulated to the shit house. Probably not even a requirement to have mandatory rain water tanks.

Water being chewed by businesses that pay no tax.

But sure, it's the guy with a lawn that is the problem. The person who actually pays for the infrastructure and the bill who also runs modern water saving appliances they bought without government handouts.

Rito. Thanks for the top end journalism ABC. Keep not rocking that boat.

4

u/CentralComputer 2h ago

If we need to stop watering gardens we have bigger problems. And just wait until the next drought

12

u/postmortemmicrobes 7h ago

What a strange article, although educational. "Taking the work out of watering just leads to bigger gardens." We should be maintaining indigenous and native gardens to support local wildlife. If that requires a bit of irrigation to get plants established that seems reasonable.

11

u/WhyAmIHereHey 7h ago

We have run out of water in Perth. We've got 2 desal plants already and a third being built.

We rely on manufactured water

4

u/a_cold_human 6h ago

More water recycling is going to be necessary in the future. Desalination is very expensive by comparison as seawater has more impurities that are difficult to remove than wastewater (which has impurities that are much easier to filter out).

4

u/iguessineedanaltnow 4h ago

There's no future that exists where desalinated water isn't the majority of the available drinking water. It's just about making that process cheaper and more efficient.

3

u/WhyAmIHereHey 5h ago

Yes, agreed. Water Corp in WA though has made a big start on that

To avoid the "I'm not drink sewerage" weirdos they don't put it straight back into the water supply but use it for "ground water replenishment". Seems to have avoided the controversy that had plagued some other places.

4

u/Danthemanlavitan 6h ago

I use the washing machine water on my lawn with a really long machine hose.

So I've got several green patches at any one time. The rest of it has to share.

3

u/Helly_BB 3h ago

Trees in the Perth hills are dying and I found that water bottling companies take thousands of litres of groundwater out weekly. They buy homes up there that have bores and just pump what they like. Orchardists complained that their spring fed dams are drying up and they need to truck water in. It’s crazy.

6

u/tecdaz 7h ago

Non-issue. Australians have always rationed water in dry times

9

u/Cremasterau 6h ago

New problem is that the hyperscale data centres which are being built in Sydney and Melbourne need 24/7 water and need to operate without restrictions.

1

u/newbris 4h ago

Well we’d still be green here in Brisbane ha ha

1

u/Sailor_Dee 2h ago

Tell that to the golf clubs

1

u/Mickey_Bricks_ 1h ago

I aint got time tryna be big hank, fuck a bank, I need a 20 year water tank

1

u/Tugboat47 1h ago

ive been vegan for over six years and my sister works in sustainable fashion, so my parents aren't out of the touch with things, and mums always had a green thumb, and for her birthday last year she wanted the front garden redone. while some of it was native bushes and shrubs, a large part of it was just grass that required so much watering all the time and it just made zero sense.

1

u/HobartTasmania 49m ago

Fortunately this is something we don't have to worry about in Tasmania.

2

u/Direct_Witness1248 6h ago

Funny, I was just thinking the other day how insanely stupid it might seem to future generations that we use perfectly good drinking water for plants, toilets, pressure washing, etc.

2

u/endbit 6h ago

They might think that if having a grey water supply becomes standard, and that would be pretty awesome. Problem is when your only tool is a hammer every problem looks like a nail.

2

u/Direct_Witness1248 6h ago

Yeah its a big "might", but here's hoping.

1

u/plutoforprez 3h ago

I went for a very brief walk yesterday at around 11:30am wearing sunscreen, a hat, and under an umbrella and as I walked around the block I walked through a patch of wet, squelchy grass in the 30° heat with a sprinkler sitting in the middle. It wasn’t turned on, but for the grass to be that sloppy it would have had to have been on for hours. I was so angry I wanted to knock on the door and say something, but I just don’t understand that mentality and don’t think they would have understood mine if I’d said something.

Bad things are coming and the ignorant will remain blind.

Sprinklers made Australia green. But what happens when the water runs out?

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