Recycled Water Irrigation in Australia - Environmental Sustainability: Role of Green Technologies - page 38

water consumption throughout the country over
the period of the drought (from 24,909 GL in
2000-2001 to 14,101 GL in 2008-2009), irri-
gators are still challenged with ongoing reduc-
tions in water allocations (ABS 2010b ). In the
face of these shortages, water reclaimed from
wastewater is being increasingly recognised as
an important resource which provides benefi ts
for the community and the environment by
increasing available water resources, returning
critical environmental fl ows to failing water-
ways and decreasing nutrient and contaminant
loads to surface and coastal waters.
“Treated” sewage water (commonly known as
wastewater, recycled water or reclaimed water)
has been underutilised in Australia, although
increases in its reuse have been seen since the
mid-1990s (Anderson and Davis 2006 ). There
has been a steady increase in the volume of water
reuse in agriculture, and currently around 11.5 %
of total wastewater generated is reused (ABS
2010b ). Although agriculture uses the largest
amount of recycled water (103 GL/year), this
represents only 1 % of the total volume of water
used by the agricultural sector (ABS 2010b ).
Figure 1 shows both the distribution of reuse
water consumption throughout the agricultural

1 Introduction

In Australia, the agricultural sector occupies
approximately 54 % of the land and is the largest
consumer of water. In 2008-2009, the total water
use by the agricultural sector was 6,696 GL,
47 % of the total for Australia. In the northern
regions where rainfall is more reliable, the pre-
dominant enterprises are beef cattle grazing,
sugar and tropical fruit farming. In the south
where summers are generally dry, dry land cereal
farming, sheep grazing and dairy farming (in
areas of higher rainfall) predominate (ABS
2010a ). Whilst the gross value of irrigated agri-
cultural production in 2006-2007 was 34 % of
the total gross value of agricultural production,
irrigated farmland represents only 1 % of the
total land used for agriculture; most of this land is
within the confi nes of the Murray-Darling Basin
(ABS 2010a ).
Policy changes to return environmental
fl ows to the rivers, coupled with 8-10 years of
drought, have seen water allocations decline,
placing increasing pressure on irrigators.
Despite water conservation steps across several
states which have seen a 43 % reduction in

Volume of reuse water(GL) Volume of reuse water as a percentage of total water use

25 50

45

40

20

35

15 30

25

10 20

15

5 10

5

0 0

Nursery
and
floriculture

Mushroom
and
vegetable
growing

Fruit and
tree nut
growing

Sheep,
beef cattle
and grain
farming

Other crop
growing

Dairy
cattle
farming

Poultry
farming

Deer
farming

Other
livestock
farming

F i g . 1 Reuse water consumption within the Australian agricultural sector and as a percentage of total water consump-
tion (From ABS 2010b )