The millennium drought has broken but good water habits have persisted in Melbourne and Brisbane, where residents use about half the amount of water used by Perth residents.
Monash University researchers studying water consumption in water-sensitive cities over the past 14 years have found residents in Melbourne to be the country’s most prudent, while Perth has emerged as the most profligate.
The results will be presented this week at the Ecocity World Summit in Melbourne, an international forum headlined by former US vice-president Al Gore addressing issues relating to planning, cities and the environment.
Australia is considered to be at high risk of water scarcity, withdrawing 40 to 80 per cent of water relative to the available annual renewable supply.
“People saw quite a browning off of the suburbs … people couldn’t water lawns, and so that’s fed into the cultural imagination,” Dr Lindsay said of Melbourne and Brisbane during the drought from 2006 and 2010.
The study tested more than 5000 families and households and found Melbourne residents were still conscious of their water use after drought and accepted water-saving as part of city life.
“We live in the inner city and the drought didn’t really affect us, but now that we’ve got a garden we wanted something that would survive a drought,” Melbourne resident Susie Singh said from her largely paved garden in the heart of Melbourne.
“People just sink bores,” Dr Lindsay said.
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