The Edge-iness of Rain

The rain continues to tumble. Sleeting down. Heavy. Fast. Thick. So much water has fallen in the past few weeks that the once much sought-after rain has also delivered floods, anxieties and severe loss to places that a such a short time ago were parched. The dams in SE Queensland that supply water to homes and industries are filling slowly, but even after all this rain, one of the major dams is still only 18.03 per cent full. The rivers are thirsty. They have a lot of catching up to do.

The Queensland Water Commission states: 'Understanding our water cycle is critical to ensuring that we manage our water resources.'

Knowledge of the intricacies of the water cycle needs to leap out of the primary school science lesson and into an imaginative and innovative campaign aimed at raising awareness and understanding of the beauty of the water system as the hilltop trees catch the rain and channel it through water-brimming rivers to the ocean, where through evaporation the water rises to the clouds, plumps them with watery greyness which sheds more life-bringing rain back into the system. Continuously. The movement of the water cycle connecting nature and human.

Evaporation. Transpiration. Respiration. Inspiration.

One place of inspiration where the water cycle plays centre stage is the Mt Cootha Botanical Gardens children's garden. We walked sheltered from the very light rain beneath the rainforest canopy and followed the interactive trail as it snaked its way along the rushing creek. Lizards darted out between the stones, water dripped from the overhead branches and signs painted on the pathway directed us to look harder, listen deeper, feel and wonder.

This magical trail was dotted with evocative artworks - the giant water dragon sculpture in the pond was surrounded by living water dragons, one perched on its big tail; a whimsical orange snake made from an old car muffler wound around a branch digesting its mufflery meal, and gloriously-crafted dragonflies adorned the bridge across the pond like exquisite sentinels.

Green was abundant. Flourishing. Bursting as if the plants were growing right before our eyes. And they were.

We watched as tiny native bees crafted their delicious-tasting honey in the knotty trunk of an old eucalypt and listened to the ringing of birdsong and the rhythms of cascading waters. The trees revelled in the rain. They understood intimately the significance of the water cycle of which they are a central feature. The sources of water are not only 'our water resources'. They are a shared resource between human and nature.

Water Rights

David Groenfeldt is the Executive Director of the Santa Fe Watershed Association in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Santa Fe River he cares for has recently been declared the most endangered river in the US.

When I first spoke to David Groenfelt he told me something amazing. It was a different way of seeing a river system and the relationship between humans and the water.

Humans believe they have rights to river water. For drinking, sewerage, irrigation, and recreation. They think this becuase they pay for access to water in the form of water rights. They have a right to the flowing stream's water or the meandering river's water. But what happens when their use rights drain the river and the surrounding ecosystem of its lifeblood? The outcome, a drying or dried up river and a paradox where the river has no rights, even to its own water.

Taking this outcome to its extreme - how much would a river pay for access rights to its own water? As can be seen in many areas across the globe, the river pays with its life.

Over the weekend the media reported two damaging river stories. The first in The Australian newspaper told the terrible story of how the parts of Murray River have turned to acid. The effect - an acid river that brings death to animals, birds, fish, frogs and insects that drink from and live in its hazardous waters. River Red Gums and other riverbank vegetation is also slowly dying. There is no relief in sight.

The acidic water is caused by the drought and over-irrigation taking the precious flow. The article says acid waters occur in areas that used to flood regularly but now these areas have become dry. The low river levels have allowed the iron pyrite in the soil (a by-product of decaying organic matter) to come into contact witih oxygen. This process acts like a chemical reaction forming sulphuric acid. The solution? Rain and stronger river flows.

The second media story focused on the Darling River. The ABC Landline journalist stood in the heart of the river, in sand and stones, sadly not flowing water, and spoke about its plight. Interviewees on the program not only mentioned the huge economic losses to the farming and tourism sectors, they also talked about the disappearance of water birds to the area. And their loss of place.

A dried up river, once the life-bringing waterway of inland Queensland and NSW, is suffering from an over-abundance of irrigation licences for inappropriate agriculture. One of the inteviewees put it this way:

'In the years before 2006 we had what I call the cotton drought. The irrigators upstream took so much water out of the river that we just didn't get the flows through that we should have got, and we didn't get the small floods through that are essential for the flood plains.' (Barney Stevens, Darling River Action Group, 2007).

Other farmer interviewees simply said the river is dying. A huge huge cost when humans do not recognise this simple need: that rivers need rights to their own water.

Reference
Wallace R, 2008, 'River of death where water turns into acid,' The Australian, Jan 12, 2008
Willacy M, 2007, 'Community rallies to save the Darling River,' ABCTV Landline, Jan 13, 2008, originally aired on June 17, 2007.