News 2009
Lessons from Australia - Article on an interview with Paul Dalby
Lessons From Australia: Drought Can Help Georgia Economy
Written by David Beasley, Atlanta, Feb 2, 2009
Paul Dalby of Australia discusses his country's experiences with severe drought
Paul Dalby traveled to Atlanta from Australia with stories of a drought so severe that rivers stop flowing, lakes turn toxic and farmers abandon their land in frustration. Dr. Dalby’s message, delivered as metro Atlanta struggles to map strategies for coping with severe water shortages, focused on his country’s past and America’s future.
“Australia is where America could be in a few years,” said Dr. Dalby, a consultant with an Australian-funded institute, the International Center of Excellence in Water Resource Management.
Yet he offered hope for Atlanta. Droughts might be drastic. However, Australia’s experience proves that less water can spark innovation, new companies and products and even more profit for some farmers, said Dr. Dalby.
In a recent interview at the Australian Consulate General in Atlanta, Dr. Dalby told the story of the Murray River and what happened when Australia drained too much water out of it for human consumption. It is a story that may resonate in metro Atlanta, where the waters of the Chattahoochee River are at the center of a long-ranging federal court fight between Georgia, Alabama and Florida, involving an array of competing business, government and environmental interests.
“In 2002, really before we had the major effects of the big drought, the Murray River stopped flowing at its terminal point,” Dr. Dalby said. “The mouth of the river closed up. “
Before it reaches the Southern Ocean, the Murray drains into two large lakes that are surrounded by wetlands.
“Those systems (the lakes and the wetlands) were becoming a little bit salty because there was no freshwater flushing them,” said Dr. Dalby.
Salt kills freshwater lakes.
“So they had to dredge the river to keep it open ,” Dr. Dalby continued. “The dredging was supposed to last a year until the next flow came down. Then we had the drought, a very serious drought.”
The drought started in 2004 and has not relented, said Dr. Dalby.
"We had the driest years on record in that basin consecutively,” he said. “The water in the lower lakes is evaporating. There are some walls holding back the ocean from these lower lakes. But the water in the lakes is evaporating and is now a meter (3.2 feet) below sea level.”
Further drops could turn the lakes toxic.
“If they evaporate any further, the soil and the mud system below the water is going to be exposed to the air,” Dr. Dalby said. “It’s going to then acidify. It’s going to release sulfuric acid. It’s going to release a whole range of heavy metals. So those lower lake systems will essentially become a toxic swamp which will never be able to be recovered.”
Officials are seriously considering flooding the lakes with seawater to prevent acidification, but the destruction of freshwater lakes and wetlands would harm the migratory birds that nest there each year. And the seawater will evaporate, leaving behind a heavy salt residue.
“It will end up being a dead sea,” said Dr. Dalby. “Their options are: toxic swamp, dead sea or pray for rain.”
On his trip to the United States, Dr. Dalby tried to instill in Americans how quickly climate can change and how drastic the effects can be. In Australia, he said, the debate over climate change is essentially over. Citizens have demanded government action and are getting it.
“Every state government and the federal government is developing a strategy to adapt to climate change as well as to reduce greenhouse emissions,” he said.
There are, of course, major differences between Australia and Georgia. Some areas of Australia get less than 12 inches of rain a year. Atlanta in 2008 recorded 41.43 inches.
However, rainfall amounts in Atlanta have been dropping in recent years, said Georgia’s climatologist David Stooksbury. From 1979-1993, rainfall at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport averaged 50.6 inches per year. From 1994-2008, the average was 46.69 inches, said Dr. Stooksbury.
In 2007, a particularly dry year, Atlanta received only 31.85 inches. In the fall of that year, Georgia environmental officials warned that metro Atlanta only had a 90-day supply of water left. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers later reduced the amount of water it released from Lake Lanier for downstream users.
“The average rainfall in Atlanta is starting to drop, particularly in the last 15 years,” said Dr. Stooksbury. “What’s causing that, it’s hard to say.”
Dr. Dalby emphasized Australia’s hard lesson: climate change can happen quickly before a region has time to adequately prepare.
“Climate change is not necessarily a slow and gradual process,” he said. "You can be forewarned and forearmed about how to deal with the issue before it arrives and perhaps not go through so much of the pain that we had to go through.”
The pain eventually fostered innovation and even profit for some sectors of the Australian economy.
Although some farmers did not have the resources to survive the drought, others persevered. They covered their crops with mulch and installed underground irrigation to reduce evaporation. But most importantly, Australia developed a water trading system for farmers.
Farmers are given allocations that change based on weather conditions. For example, the current drought in Australia has forced the government to restrict irrigators to 18 percent of their allocation in some areas.
Under the trading system, farmers can buy water allotments from other users. That allows the water to be used in the most cost-efficient way. Farmers can buy more water for profitable crops. Growers with marginal crops may make more money by selling their water allotment than by farming. Even in severe drought, farmers can make a profit by selling their water allocation because the market price of the water increases as supply drops. Georgia does not have a similar trading system.
Some growers in Australia’s wine industry, which annually exports product worth nearly $1 billion, have managed to maintain a profit even with much less water.
“The innovation in that area is extraordinary,” said Dr. Dalby. “For some of the vines, they are cutting all the leaves off and wrapping them with bandages to keep them alive and putting very minimal water on them with subsurface irrigation just to keep them alive.”
Water is reserved for the older vines, which produce pricier grapes. And the drought has increased grape prices overall because supply has dropped, wiping out a glut of product that had been keeping prices low.
“In some ways, it’s been a blessing in disguise for the wine industry,” said Dr. Dalby.
Australia is also turning to the sea for more water. Perth, Australia, which is now getting a third less rainfall than it did 30 years ago, has constructed one desalination plant and has plans for another. All other major cities in Australia are either building or planning to build desalination plants.
Start-up companies have been launched throughout Australia offering new water-saving products and technologies. And they are exporting. In June, eight Australian companies stopped in Atlanta on a trade mission to promote their water-saving products. Mr. Dalby was accompanied on his recent trip to the United States by Joe Flynn, head of the Water Industry Alliance in Australia. Mr. Flynn was also in Atlanta on the June trip. Dr. Dalby and Mr. Flynn met with Amanda Hodges, Australia’s trade commissioner and consul general for Atlanta.
“We’ve made a lot of mistakes,” said Dr. Dalby. “But we’ve done some things very well. There’s a lot to learn from Australia.”
To contact Dr. Dalby, click here
To see interview, click here
