Brisbane's Water Wastage Woes

By Lea Emery

Brisbanites should suck it up and stop their whining about current water restrictions.

Brisbane residents seem to forget that their rural counterparts have been living with the same water restrictions for the past ten years or more.

The difference is that rural Queenslanders only start to complain when the water gets so bad that they are starting to face the prospect of having to walk away from their entire livelihoods.

Why is it that rural Queenslanders can save water without a complaint but when asking city dwellers to do the same thing it becomes as painful as a pre-school drama production?

The answer is quite clear.

Rural Queenslanders can live without a spotlessly clean car, don’t need a garden to show affluence and have mastered the once a week wash rather than a half-load a night.

While water restrictions are not always imposed, the desperately low levels could have been avoided for longer if Brisbane residents were more careful with water when drought was not imminent.

If simple things like using a broom to clean the driveway instead of the hose and waiting for a full load before washing were all done when Brisbane actually had water its obvious that the water restrictions would be nowhere near as harsh.

Brisbane residents, however, do not seem to have grasped this fact, choosing instead to blame the politicians for not planning for a drought, an unforeseeable natural disaster.

Sure, the politicians should have realised earlier that Brisbane was going to struggle if the rain didn’t come, but the people of Brisbane need to take some responsibility for earlier water wastage.