Where do Australian people get their water?

Answer 1

Good question. Drinking water is a bit of a problem in Australia at the best of times, but we are in the 15th year of a drought in the south eastern states.

Major cities have a system of large water catchment areas designed to catch water from very large "watersheds". The water is stored and released into a system of pipes for dispersement to the cities.

Smaller cities and towns often have the same thing on a smaller scale, or dams. Many cities and towns get their water from a nearby river.

A lot of outback towns and smaller population centres get their water from below the ground. Many areas west of the Great Dividing Range use the underground water from the Great Artesian Basin.

The Great Artesian Basin is a huge underground water storage that has accumulated over many thousands of years. Many people argue that we should be using this water for the big cities, but it is not an easily replenishable source of water, since it took thousands of years to accumulate, it will only take a few years to empty.

Most of the surface water away from the coastal regions is salt, in fact, most lakes visible on a map of Australia are salt, when they have water in them at all.

Sydney has recently introduced a desalination plant to convert sea water to drinking water, and Melbourne is about to follow.