Hope for the Future
Posted at 11:30 PM, Sunday, December 7, 2008
The Jewish community of Adelaide played host over the weekend to Benjy Maor, who is the Israel emissary for the Jewish National Fund of Australia. (Benjy pointed out that shaliach, the Hebrew term for emissary, is also the term for pizza delivery guy, so his appointment initially caused some confusion among his children.) Benjy kindly volunteered to lead half a dozen programs during his four-day stay, so we were able to keep him very busy. The culmination of his visit was the hour-long lecture he presented Sunday evening on the topic "How Israel is solving the world's water problems." I found this evening to be tremendously inspiring, and it left me hope that perhaps Australia can figure its way out of its water challenges after all.
My "ahah!" moment came with the last question of the evening: Does Israel have any plans to limit its population growth so that it can guarantee an adequate supply of water? The answer was a resounding "no." Israel is the Jewish homeland, and it has an ethical responsibility to accept all Jews who are seeking safe refuge and the opportunity to make a new life in the Jewish state. The population of Israel has ballooned from 600,000 at the time of its establishment sixty years to more than seven million today. What is necessary for Israel's continued prosperity and security, Benjy stated, is for it to find increasingly sophisticated ways to make use of every drop of water it possibly can. I was struck by Israel's confidence that it can solve its water problems with a population only one-third that of Australia with a mere 1/350th the space. If Israel is so sure of itself, then surely Australia can find a way to a brighter future as well. All that is necessary is courageous leadership and cooperation among all parties.
Unfortunately, both of these elements are currently lacking, especially here in the drought-plagued state of South Australia. We read over the weekend that water resources minister Karlene Maywald has spent $14 million to purchase water to guarantee supplies for critical human needs next year. Does this sound scary to you? It sure alarms me. And yet, Adelaide continues to enjoy restrictions on our water use that are much more relaxed than in other parts of the country. We can still use our hoses to water our gardens three hours each week, and there are absolutely no restrictions on how much water we can use inside the house. By contrast, residents of the Melbourne area have been asked to voluntarily restrict their total water use to 155 liters per day, and Brisbane residents have been asked to use only 170 liters of water per day. A discouraging article in The Australian over the weekend noted that when Brisbane's water supply hit emergency levels severals years back, the region embarked on a concerted effort to boost supplies by building more reservoirs and seeking other ways to capture rainwater. South Australia has done none of that. I have the strange feeling that our state government is quietly rearranging the chairs on the Titanic and may get around to notifying us how serious the situation really is shortly before we run out of water entirely.
I learned over the weekend that Israel recycles 75% of its water and is likely to recycle close to 100% of its water within ten year. Australia recycles 9% of its water. Israel is now able to cultivate large swaths of the Negev Desert by using recycled waste water pumped in from the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. Farmers in Australia still compete for the same potable water that we drink in our homes, and that supply is shrinking with each passing dry day.
Will the endless bickering between the states and within the states come to an end so that we can seriously confront the enormity of this problem? Or will we wait until it really is too late?