Water is critical for sustaining life. As well as its use in everyday life for drinking, washing, swimming, it sustains the life of the plants and animals, and represents an important input into Australia's economy, particularly agriculture.
Long-term drought in many parts of Australia have led to water restrictions, changing habits and the way many Australians regard water. Becoming more efficient in our water use is necessary to ensure our resources are sustainable.
Let's investigate water use and how the consumption and costs vary across Australia.
Where to get the information
Finding data about water availability and usage can be difficult. For Australian data and statistics, there’s two extremely useful resources that you should familiarise yourself with:
The Australian Bureau of Statistics is the organisation that records key statistics on a range of indicators and issues. You can visit their website at www.abs.gov.au
The Bureau of Meteorology provides weather services to Australia and keeps track of important data such as rainfall. Analysis of this data over time allows us to see how rainfall patterns have changed and compare weather patterns across the country. You can visit their website at www.bom.gov.au
Water in Australia is supplied by state and local government operated utility companies. Visit the website for the company in your area and you should find important information on costs of water, restrictions in the area and water saving tips.
State water corporation websites can be found through the following links:
New South Wales, Queensland, ACT, Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia and Northern Territory.
Many of the states have companies that manage smaller regions, it is worth researching which company supplies water in your area.
Using the websites given above and any other useful references you can find, research the following:
There are many further investigations that can be carried out, such as comparing suburban water usage to city usage, comparing water used by different industries, where does your water come from, how does water quality compare in different areas, and so forth. Can you think of an interesting question to investigate?