Sydney facing water emergency as dams plummet

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It’s winter. The desalination plant is running full throttle. Sydneysiders are consuming less water. And yet Sydney’s dam levels have fallen below 50% – the lowest reading since 2004 when the Millennium drought was raging – with worse to come:

The dams serving metropolitan Sydney will sink below 50 per cent full for the first time in 15 years by the weekend, with long-range weather forecasts suggesting the slide could accelerate…

According to a WaterNSW spokesman, the rate of the present slide in storage levels continues to exceed the pace of that dry spell more than a decade ago.

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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.