Front page in the Sydney Morning Herald today was the rather alarming statement that consumption of water in Australia was more than 1.2 million cubic metres per head population.
Fortunately there was a mistake. It should be 1.2 million cubic litres of water. (see Australian Bureau of Statistics www.abs.gov.au , search for water consumption).
By coincidence, we received our Sydney Water bill today. We are always somewhat self concious by our lack of participation in the water saving exercise being encouraged by right-minded people. We do not reuse our laundry water and do not have a water tank for our garden. A quick calculation revealed that our usage was 110 kilolitres per head last year, which turned out to be the average household water use.
Importantly, the figures show that household use is only 10% of the total water use. If the authorities want to get over the current serious drought, they should be looking elsewhere. Even if we can drastically cut down water usage in the households, we would make only a small dent in the total water consumption.
