Water-banking

Water Banking

[Music plays and image on screen is a flock of sheep in a field. There is a man with a blue shirt, jeans and cap in the foreground]

[Image on screen moves through the sheep running towards the back of the field, an image of Australia seen from above, a view of dry and cracked mud]

Declan Page:  If you live in Australia, you probably know that for a lot of people things are hotter and drier than ever. That's why our Drought Resilience mission is working to reduce drought impacts in our communities. 

[Image moves through shots from different angles of raging floodwaters and then a dark haired man in a white shirt and black jacket standing in front of trees. Text on screen: Dr Declan Page, Principal Research Scientist CSIRO]

So what if we could store excess water available during wet years and recover it in the future during dry years or a drought? My name is Declan Page. I'm a Principal Research Scientist in the Water Security program at CSIRO. 

[Image changes of Declan Page with text on screen: Managed Aquifer Recharge]

Underground storage or managed aquifer recharge has been used successfully in South Australia and Western Australia for over 20 years. It's an area of active research and growing opportunity for Australia. 

[Image changes to an animation showing a portion of land from mountains on the left to ocean on the right. The left has a river and farmland with trees. The right has a city with a lake or dam, buildings and a black cloud raining over it. Layers of earth are visible at the bottom of the image. The animation shows water running in a river from the cloud to the dam and then draining out of pipes below it to the layers below. Text on screen: Managed Aquifer Recharge]

Water banking involves a technique called managed aquifer recharge. Here, water is harvested during wet years and stored underground to recover again during dry years or a drought. 

[Image changes of a close up of the animation. This time the water in the layers below is being drawn up the pipes to the lake or dam and then being sent along pipes to various areas]

[Image changes to return to Declan Page]

Water banking and managed aquifer recharge have several advantages over surface water storage. 

[Image changes to show water in a dam. Text appears on screen: No evaporation, no algal blooms, no mosquitoes]

These include no loss of water to evaporation, no algal blooms, and no mosquito growth. 

[Image changes to move through an extended irrigation set up in a field, overhead shots of farmland and a lake or dam, water in a dam release, large sections of water in a dam]

This water is managed within an entitlement framework to meet competing demands. The water can be sourced from rainwater, river water dam releases or alternative water sources such as urban stormwater or recycled wastewater.

[Image changes to a woman with blonde shoulder length hair and glasses wearing a black shirt and jacket. She is standing outside, in front of trees. Text on screen: Carole Hammond, Executive Officer, Goulburn Valley Climate Alliance]

Carole Hammond:  Water is life in small communities, especially in the Goulburn-Murray region where it's a high producing agricultural community. 

[Image changes to overhead shot of dry earth and a dead tree and returns to Carole Hammond]

The impact of drought on these small rural and regional communities in the Goulburn-Murray region is absolutely devastating. It not only impacts on the economy at large because they're farmers, they're small farmers and, um, and farmers who are absolutely reliant on water

[Image changes to move through a shot of a dry and dusty road with a river bed to the right of shot with a truck is coming from the middle to the left with dust billowing out from under it as it moves, a close up of dry and cracked ground and returns to Carole Hammond]

but also for their social wellbeing because a drought doesn't discern, it destroys the playing fields that they they come together at and it also destroys their home life and their their economic well-being.

[Image changes to a shot from Google Earth that zooms in closer then changes to a man with short light hair wearing a black top and blue and black checked shirt over it. He stands in front of trees while outside. Text on screen: Prof. Kurt Schwabe, University of California Riverside]

Kurt Schwabe:  Groundwater banking has been used in California for over three decades as a management tool to increase resilience to and lower the costs of increasing drought frequency, intensity and climate change. Currently, there is around five million megalitres of water in storage in the California water banks, 

[Image changes to shots of land with rivers visible and text on screen: California Department of Water Resources before returning to Kurt Schwabe]

with the storage occurring primarily in the agriculturally intensive lower Central Valley and in Southern California, where there are over 20 million people and municipal water agencies really need a reliable water supply. 

[Image changes to an overhead shot showing fields laid out with a road running through the middle. Fields have crops or trees growing and they are very green. Mid section of the shot shows water storage dams in the middle of these fields. Text on screen: California Department of Water Resources]

Groundwater banking has been a successful strategy to deal with building resilience, and likely it's going to become more of an important strategy as we move forward. 

[Image changes to Kurt Schwabe]

An interesting element with the groundwater banks in California, and I think a measure of their success, is the collaboration that you've seen across partners from the northern, central and southern parts of the state working together 

[Image changes to pan across water storage dams surrounded by fields of crops. Text on screen: California Department of Water Resources]

[Image changes to show close ups of the pipes used in the dams and other equipment before returning to Kurt Schwabe]

and across sectors agricultural, environmental, municipal to develop a management strategy that accounts for and considers both the private and public benefits. It's a much better approach than what historically has been done in California, where there's been litigation as kind of the go to strategy to deal with conflict and water scarcity.

[Image changes to pan across water storage areas surrounded by green grass, trees and shrubs. Text on screen: California Department of Water Resources]

Constantin Seidl:  Managed aquifer recharge and water banking worked particularly well in the US 

[Image changes to show a man with short dark hair, glasses and a beard wearing a checked shirt under a blue jumper. He is standing outside in front of some trees. Text on screen: Dr Constantin Seidl, University of Adelaide]

because of the robust water accounting frameworks that are in place, which both track water quality and water volumes for injected and recovered water. They also protect the rights of stakeholders who have injected water into the groundwater aquifer against other water rights. This is not set up well in Australian water management and water accounting, and is a key barrier to implementation of managed aquifer recharge in Australia. Another barrier is the multitude of permits and approvals required.

[Image changes to overhead shot of wooded and grassed land with mountains in the background before moving to a shot of a man and woman walking along rows of crops]

Declan Page:  For water banking to be more widely implemented across Australia policy reform is required to give regulators confidence. 

[Image changes to move through images of mountains and land with clouds moving overhead, an outback area with scrubby grasses and a singular tree with clouds moving overhead, overhead shots of fields being plowed and a man standing in a field of crops with his back facing the camera]

Demonstration schemes are needed to inspire communities, followed by scale up to maximise the opportunity and create drought resilience.

[Image changes to Carole Hammond, standing outside in front of trees]

Carole Hammond:  Water banking offers us the opportunity to store and access water, life giving water, right now.

[Image changes to a white background and blue CSIRO logo with text: Australia’s National Science Agency]