Residents are up in arms over an application to extract 30 million litres of groundwater a year from a Perth Hills property.
The owner of an orchard in Pickering Brook has lodged an application with the City of Kalamunda to extract 30,000 kilolitres of water from a bore on their property, with a view to selling it to a bottled water company.
It has sparked concern and protest from members of the local community, which is already concerned about the use of groundwater by bottling companies.
The application is currently open for public comment and Kalamunda Mayor Margaret Thomas told ABC Radio Perth’s Nadia Mitsopoulos she had already been made aware of residents’ concerns.
Mayor of Kalamunda Margaret Thomas says many in the community are opposed to extraction for bottled water. (Supplied)
“The property is located in the Darling Range, which is an unproclaimed groundwater area under the Rights in Water and Irrigation Act,” Ms Thomas said.
“Historically the property operated as a 20-hectare orchard using an estimated 120,000 to 150,000 kilolitres of water annually.
“I guess the applicant thinks this will be less use of water than that and they have put in their application that the water will be sold to bottling companies to help fund redevelopment of the orchard.
“So I guess that’s how the applicant sees it, but that is not how the public sees it.”
The application includes a plan for monitoring groundwater levels and specifies the “plan will also include more frequent monitoring of groundwater levels in extended dry seasons”.
Ms Thomas said the chief concern she was hearing from residents is that they view the use of water for bottling differently to its use by orchardists.
“I think the issue for council is the fact that the public are of the view that the water was for the orchard. This is what a lot of people have told me out there,” she said.
“Now the orchard is smaller, so that water shouldn’t be used for something else — that’s how the public sees it.”
Widespread concern over bottled water
The extraction of groundwater has been a hot button issue in the Perth hills since the extent of extraction and lack of monitoring was revealed last year.
Steve Gates from the Nature Reserves Preservation Group of Kalamunda said the group was particularly concerned about the impact of water extraction on bushland, particularly in light of Perth’s record dry season last summer.
“Last year we had massive tree die-offs and vegetation dry-offs throughout the South-West of the state, including Kalamunda,” Mr Gates said.
“And this draw of water, while it may be less than what was allocated originally, things have changed since those allocations may have been made.
“As our climate patterns are getting displaced southward as the planet warms up, our rainfall is decreasing and our temperatures are going up.”
He said he was concerned that no hydrological studies had been done to show the impact on groundwater of the proposed extraction..
Another local resident, who did not with to be named and who lives close to the applicant, said the bore water levels on his property had already dropped.
“We’ve seen our bore levels drop over the 40 years that our family’s been on that property.
“We used to be able to get really good flow from our bores.
“They now will probably only run five minutes at a time now, just because the water levels dropped so much.
“And speaking to all of our neighbours, they’re also very concerned about the impact this is going to have to all the other families that are in the area.”
Fruit orchards in Perth Hills. (ABC News: Emma Wynne)
Meg Travers from the Save Perth Hill Water group said companies that wanted to sell bottled water should use desalinated water rather than groundwater from food growing areas.
“The use of water for food production seems like a reasonable thing to me,” Ms Travers said.
“Bottled water producers don’t actually produce water. All they do is produce plastic bottles.
“So that doesn’t seem like a useful use of our precious resource.”
Kalamunda Council will consider the application after staff have completed their assessments at a meeting in the coming months.
