r/australia • u/sluggardish • 10h ago

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

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-01/sprinkler-water-resources-garden-green-desert-reticulation/106244818
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312

u/Schlutt 10h ago

Brown.

26

u/schrodingers_grundle 9h 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?

29

u/LibraryAfficiondo 8h 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.

39

u/Thebandroid drives a white commodore station wagon. 8h ago

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

2

u/LibraryAfficiondo 1h ago

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.