Australia targets water thieves
Phil Mercer, Foreign Correspondent, Last Updated: December 06. 2009 7:47PM UAE / December 6. 2009 3:47PM GMT SYDNEY // Water thieves in Australia are to be targeted by tougher penalties as the authorities promise to protect declining supplies amid a long-standing drought and the threat of climate change. Officials have said vast that amounts of water have been pilfered by rural land owners who have interfered with meters that regulate usage or have diverted flows through prohibited irrigation channels or levees. “It is important to recognise the sort of volume we are talking about here. We are talking in terms of millions of litres, so it takes a fair bit of effort to steal water. It is generally a recognisable offence in that if you’ve got five farms that are dry and one that’s got some water on it, you wonder where it’s coming from,” said Andrew Gregson, the chief executive of the New South Wales Irrigators Council. “What happens if somebody steals that water, takes it or diverts it illegally is that they are actually taking it out of the shared resource pool and are taking it off other irrigators. You’re committing an offence against your neighbours and they are not going to take too kindly to that,” Mr Gregson added. … In the absence of a uniform scheme to gauge consumption, the hijacking of valuable resources continues. “In some of our river systems – one in particular, the Macquarie marshes [600km north-west of Sydney] – they [state officials] have recently found out that there have been over 1,000 kilometres of unregistered levees that divert water away from river channels,” said Martin Thoms, a professor of riverine ecosystems at the University of New England. …
