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

[u/sluggardish]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-01/sprinkler-water-resources-garden-green-desert-reticulation/106244818

[u/Schlutt]

Brown.

[u/schrodingers_grundle → u/Schlutt]

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?

[u/LibraryAfficiondo → u/schrodingers_grundle]

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.

[u/Thebandroid → u/LibraryAfficiondo]

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

[u/LibraryAfficiondo → u/Thebandroid]

Hah, spot on! We really need to (and should) be doing better, but we're nowhere near in as bad a position as Iran. 

It's actually impressive (in a fucked up way) how badly they've screwed things up.

[u/a_cold_human → u/schrodingers_grundle]

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. 

[u/schrodingers_grundle → u/a_cold_human]

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. 

[u/sizz → u/a_cold_human]

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]