The small NSW city that is dying of thirst

Goulburn has pegged back water use to half what it was. Picture / Reuters

This is a strange drought. Rain is pounding from plum-dark skies, cascading off hills and turning farms to mud. But the New South Wales city of Goulburn, where gutters overflow on to roads, is dying of thirst.

Unless the rain continues at levels beyond most forecasts for the next few months, the gracious inland community that was the last in the old British Empire to be named a city by Royal Letters Patent will be facing disaster.

To continue at the lowest possible point of survival if the skies clear, Goulburn would have to bring in a trainload of water a day, at a cost of A$1 million ($1.11 million) a week. This would be enough to provide drinking water and to flush toilets for the city's 23,000 people. None would be left to keep alive an economy in which the 10 largest water users employ 2000 people.

"There would not be enough for industry or commercial activities," says city official Matthew O'Rourke. "That would obviously have devastating effects."

As the city nervously considers this grim prospect, an even more unsettling suspicion is taking shape: rather than facing merely the worst drought in a century, Goulburn - and the rest of Australia - may in fact be sliding out of an unusually wet cycle and returning to a more normal, much drier, long-term weather pattern.

Reliable rainfall records extend back to only the late 19th century, when Goulburn was maturing out of its origins as a garrison town into a prosperous agricultural centre. These show average annual rainfall of 650mm since 1870, with 40 years of below-average falls.

"This is a relatively short period of records," O'Rourke says. "They are not sufficient to give reliable long-term average figures. If they cover a relatively wet period, then what we are seeing now might in fact be normal. And if we can expect years, or decades, of lower rainfall, then we're in a lot of trouble."

Even when it does rain, Goulburn frequently misses out. Locals talk with frustration of weather maps that show rain clouds parting at the Great Dividing Range, the low mountains to the east of the city, and showering land to the north and south.

The heavy rain that has fallen this month has greened surrounding farms, but has put barely a dribble into Goulburn's dams. The largest, the 9000 megalitre Pejar Dam, is at only 6 per cent of capacity and still declining. It's not known how much of the trickle that remains can be recovered.

Five years of drought have been too much for anything but months of steady rain to overcome. At South Raeburn, a property southwest of Goulburn, farmer Tony Morrison tells of his amazement when he watched a thunderstorm dump heavy rain on to a nearby range of hills, seeing water flooding down the slopes into gullies that would normally have become raging conduits for his dams.

"It just disappeared into the soil," he says. "I've never seen anything like it before. The ground is so dry it's like a sponge ... That's the thing about this drought. It's been so relentless, for so long."

BUT Goulburn is not about to lie down and die. The city has already taken tough - and painful - measures that have kept it in business. Without them, water supplies would have evaporated last November. Two emergency supply plans are also under way, and Mayor Paul Stephenson met State authorities last week in a bid to win their support for a A$32 million ($35.6 million) plan to drought-proof the city and make it a model of self-sufficiency for other, similar, communities in one of the world's most fragile environments.

Stephenson has also been enlisting the nation's most powerful media to arm-twist state and federal politicians: "We're out for maximum publicity so politicians can't say 'never heard of you'. We've been polite up until now, but if we don't get what we want it'll be a different story."

Stephenson's problem is that Goulburn is small fry compared with the massive problems looming for Sydney, which is facing endemic and increasing water shortages. Goulburn wants a relatively paltry sum for a down-to-earth solution that reeks of country commonsense; NSW Premier Bob Carr's focus is on a A$2 billion ($2.23 billion) desalination plant already under furious political and environmental fire.

Goulburn's strategy is based on the premise that the city should thrive, not just survive. It was hammered by the loss of about 1000 state government jobs 10-15 years ago, but bounced back. It was by-passed by the high-speed Hume Highway running from Sydney to Melbourne, but defied predictions of decline.

It lost its abattoir but attracted another one that employs up to 650 people at peak periods, lured a French-owned wool scourer, is home to companies such as Richard James Imports whose clothing lines are distributed nationwide and in New Zealand, and has been shortlisted for a massive new Coles department store distribution centre.

A high-security jail and the state police academy are major contributors to the economy. Clean and low water-using industries are moving down from western Sydney. The new 2000-block Mary's Mount housing estate has defied expectations, with one-third under construction and prospects of 200 new homes a year.

HOWEVER, the fundamental key remains water - and that has been steadily drying up for five years, hurried by pitiless blue skies and searing winds. Basic services such as the sewerage system have suffered from lack of flushing, the elegant double-brick federation-era homes that give the city much of its grace are cracking as foundations shift, and major 19th-century landmark buildings have gaps so large you can insert a hand in them.

And in one of the quirks that mark this drought, the big dry has not saved historic homes and buildings from rising damp: any bit of moisture is sucked into lime-based renders and mortars, while outside lawns and gardens turn to cement.

Sporting fields and facilities have done the same. The first to be hit by water bans after domestic gardens were football fields and cricket pitches, virtually ending many competitions as rock-hard grounds raised serious injury and insurance risks.

The public swimming pool followed backyard pools into extinction. School swimming teams left town at 5am, drove one hour to Canberra for training, and returned for lessons by 9am.

The social impact, says city community development manager Jim Styles, has been huge.

Business and industry voluntarily cut back water usage by 30 per cent, avoiding restrictions, but have evolved a new ethos of water-saving that Stephenson believes will outlast the drought and offer business opportunities through intellectual property. The wool scour has already patented its developments.

Residents, unable to use any clean water outside, have turned to water-saving devices such as low-use showerheads, and save grey water for gardens. Many have installed rainwater tanks.

So has the city council. All its major buildings supply their own health and service requirements with rainwater, and a row of tanks at the public pool complex is used to top up levels. All new homes on housing developments must include a 45,000-litre water tank.

Average daily domestic water use has plummeted from 300 litres a home to just 120 litres, well below the 268 litres used daily by Sydney households, or the sinful 400 litres consumed by Canberrans. In total, Goulburn's daily water consumption has fallen from 13 megalitres a day to a breadline 5.2 megalitres.

The bigger picture is more complex. Goulburn has two major dams - the Pejar, fed by the Wollondilly River, and the smaller Sooley - and the Rossi weir, downstream of both. In all, without further solid rain, there is enough water for only a few more months.

Emergency measures are underway, including new bores and an aquifer in limestone country above the town that tests suggest could sustain the town at minimum usage levels through the summer.

But the big hope is now the closed cycle proposed by the city council: a new, high-quality sewage treatment system almost completely reclaiming grey water linked to the Wollondilly River, with water from both pumped to a new wetlands to be created above the Sooley dam.

As well as a storage and filtration system in its own right, the new wetlands is expected to recharge the limestone aquifier and to provide runoff to the lakes behind the major dams. In theory at least, Goulburn would be fully self-sufficient in water come what may.

But this is several years away at least. In the meantime, all eyes remain on the sky.