Nearly every Australian city will have to find new water supplies over the next decade as climate change and population growth stretch the nation's already limited water resources, according to a study released yesterday.
The annual report by the Water Services Association of Australia found that after a decade of punishing drought, authorities in all of Australia's mainland capital cities will need to find new ways to provide water for residents, such as desalination and recycling, in the next five to 10 years. Hobart, the capital of the island state of Tasmania, is the exception and is expected to have sufficient water.
The association's chief executive, Ross Young, said the new infrastructure could cost up to A$30 billion (US$25 billion) over the next decade, which would likely be paid for by higher charges to consumers.
"The 10 years of below average rainfall and drought have been a wake-up call for urban Australia," Young said. "This will send a stronger price signal to consumers about conserving what is a very scarce resource."
In its report to urban water utilities, the association said water prices will rise steadily in cities to pay for new infrastructure in the driest continent in the world after Antarctica.
"Climate change, which is reducing inflows into storages, and rapid population growth present significant challenges to the Australian urban water industry," the report said.
"Experience over the last several summers indicates that ongoing harsh water restrictions will not be accepted by the community and the challenge is to develop reliable supplies of water for our growing cities in a sustainable manner," it added.
The report found that in the fiscal year that ended in June, rainfall in catchments serving towns and cities fell by as much as 80 percent below average.
The west coast city of Perth has become the first in Australia to build a large-scale desalination plant while recycled water will be piped into homes in the east coast city of Brisbane next year.
DISPUTED WATERS: The Philippines accused China of building an artificial island on Sabina Shoal, while Beijing said Manila was trying to mislead the global community The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) is committed to sustaining a presence in a disputed area of the South China Sea to ensure Beijing does not carry out reclamation activities at Sabina Shoal (Xianbin Reef), its spokesperson said yesterday. The PCG on Saturday said it had deployed a ship to Sabina Shoal, where it accused China of building an artificial island, amid an escalating maritime row, adding two other vessels were in rotational deployment in the area. Since the ship’s deployment in the middle of last month, the PCG said it had discovered piles of dead and crushed coral that had been dumped
Experts have long warned about the threat posed by artificial intelligence (AI) going rogue, but a new research paper suggests it is already happening. AI systems, designed to be honest, have developed a troubling skill for deception, from tricking human players in online games of world conquest to hiring humans to solve “prove-you’re-not-a-robot” tests, a team of researchers said in the journal Patterns on Friday. While such examples might appear trivial, the underlying issues they expose could soon carry serious real-world consequences, said first author Peter Park, a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology specializing in AI existential safety. “These
The most powerful solar storm in more than two decades struck Earth on Friday, triggering spectacular celestial light shows from Tasmania to the UK — and threatening possible disruptions to satellites and power grids as it persists into the weekend. The first of several coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — expulsions of plasma and magnetic fields from the sun — came just after 4pm GMT, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center. It was later upgraded to an “extreme” geomagnetic storm — the first since the “Halloween Storms” of October 2003 caused blackouts in Sweden and damaged
Using virtual-reality (VR) headsets, students at a Hong Kong university travel to a pavilion above the clouds to watch an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated Albert Einstein explain game theory. The students are part of a course at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) that is testing the use of “AI lecturers” as the AI revolution hits campuses around the world. The mass availability of tools such as ChatGPT has sparked optimism about new leaps in productivity and teaching, but also fears over cheating, plagiarism and the replacement of human instructors. Pan Hui (許彬), a professor of computer science who is leading