The tougher water restrictions announced today are an understandable step and industry is keen to play its part in continuing to drive water savings, says VECCI.
Level 3a restrictions announced today will ensure more water is saved while allowing commercial car washes to be able to continue to operate and the watering of gardens to continue in a more limited sense.
“Measures to ensure a requirement for the top 1500 industrial water users to develop individual water saving plans will be accepted by industry overall, which wants to build on its already substantial role in saving water“, says VECCI Chief Executive Officer Neil Coulson.
“Householders have done a terrific job in terms of changing their water use habits. So has industry - while residential water use has fallen by 8.7 percent, industry and institutional users have reduced their use by 18 percent since 1999-2000, or around 8,800 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of water.
“Industry is a relatively small user of water – it uses 10 percent of Victoria’s water, while agriculture uses 66 percent and households use 8 percent. Industry employs at least 80 percent of Victorian workers as well as producing all of our exports and most of our domestic goods and services.
“Being a big user of water does not necessarily mean you are an inefficient or wasteful one either. Alcoa, for example, has reduced water use by 60 percent since 1990, and is aiming to reduce it by a further 70 percent by 2010.
“Like all sectors of the community, industry is doing its bit in terms of saving water and is prepared to do more, and is a great adopter of the latest water-saving technologies.
“Deeper cuts in water usage will require meaningful and effective Government engagement of industry in programs to harvest water savings from firm-level efficiency measures, as well as large scale recycling, desalination and so forth.
“Government and the wider community has a major task in front of it to facilitate appropriate recycling infrastructure to make this possible, not to mention fixing up our ageing rural irrigation infrastructure, which is subject to leaking, seepage and evaporation.
“As with any crisis, tough community decisions need to be made - to achieve this, we have to pull together as a community as part of a balanced response and not create pariahs.
“Ultimately, at the end of the day, we all have to make a decision as to whether we are part of the problem or part of the solution”, says Mr Coulson. |
