WESTERN AUSTRALIA: MANAGING WATER
MANAGING WESTERN AUSTRALIA’S WATER
Managing domestic, commercial and industrial water needs in Western Australia is an ongoing challenge, given it is one of the driest parts of one of the driest continents on earth. The Minister for Water and Forestry in the Australian state describes the measures that have not only helped manage existing water resources, but also have increased the availability and accessibility for development, industry and agriculture to enable Western Australia to compete in the global market.
Hon. Mia Davies, MLA, and members of her office team Ms Davies is the Minister for Water; Forestry. She made history in 2013 as the first female to be appointed as the Deputy Leader of the National Party of Australia. Prior to entering Parliament, Ms Davies worked as a policy advisor for the Leader of the Parliamentary National Party and as an executive officer at the Chamber of Minerals and Energy.
At the beginning
The drive of Western Australians to overcome and adapt to water challenges is in our blood. When gold was discovered in Coolgardie in 1892 and in Kalgoorlie in 1893 the gold rush saw the State’s population go from 50,000 to 200,000 in just 10 years. With most of this population growth in the Goldfields almost 500 kilometres east of Perth with little rainfall and with no major local potable water sources, the need for water demanded an innovative water solution.
In 1895 engineer Charles Yelverton O’Connor was asked to come up with a plan to get water to the Goldfields, and he designed a system to capture and store water in dams in the Darling ranges, and then pump the water via pipeline to Coolgardie. This system, known today as the Kalgoorlie pipeline, took five years to build and like the gold rush, it became a driver for employment migration. When it was completed in 1903 it had cost around $5 million to
166 | The Parliamentarian | 2014: Issue Three
Hon. Mia Davies, MLA
$1.5 billion in today’s money. Apart from the engineering aspects of the pipeline itself, the design of the Kalgoorlie pipeline solution was based on O’Connor’s reliance on an understanding of the hydrology of the Darling ranges and the Goldfields.1
His examination of
the, albeit limited, rainfall data for the Coolgardie district and the more substantial records for the Perth and the Greenmount ranges, underpinned his solution, and helped the government make the right decision.2
Considered at its time to be one of the most ambitious and biggest engineering projects in the world, it continues today to keep water flowing to the Goldfields, and has established itself as the benchmark for water supply vision in the State.3 Unfortunately, a hundred years on and the dams O’Connor used to trap the State’s water supply are no longer reliable. Were O’Connor alive today, he would have most likely encouraged the use of water information and science combined with engineering and technical innovation, to fulfil a vision of Western Australia as a climate independent State that maximizes the value of every drop of water.
One of the challenges of a drying climate worldwide is its impact on agriculture and thus the food supply. How to feed the ever-growing world population expected to reach 9.55 billion people by 2050 is a constant challenge for the government. It is little wonder that food security is at the forefront of national policy and
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