Today’s Courier Mail (pg 57) has a piece titled ‘Rainfall hits five-year low’ explaining how little rain has fallen in Brisbane while noting that the Gold Coast was deluged in June.
It goes on to explain that the Gold Coast City Council wants to lift some of its water restrictions but that Brisbane’s Lord Major is complaining this would jeopardize the increased water restrictions he has planned for Brisbane.
Given the Gold Coast and Brisbane draw their water from different dams, why can’t they have different levels of water restrictions?
The Queensland Premier has been talking up how bad it could be for Brisbane. He was reported in The Australian last week refering to absolute worst case scenarios including that modelling has shown that without rain and without water restrictions, Brisbane would be without water by December 2006. The water restrictions currently being promoted by Brisbane City Council would apparently push this date to February 2007. It hardly seems worth all the pain?
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.