Drought in Australia by Matt Taylor
Australia’s worst drought on record got tougher on Thursday when the prime minister announced there won’t be enough water to allow irrigation along the country’s largest river system, unless there’s significant rainfall over the next month.
John Howard said ‘if it doesn’t rain soon, irrigation will be cut to the nation’s “food bowl”’. According to the Australian prime minister, the current dry spell was ‘unprecedentedly dangerous’ for Australian farmers and the economy as a whole. It is said to be the worst drought in 100 years.
The Murray Darling Basin is the main irrigation area of Australia, and covers an area the size of France and Spain. If it doesn’t rain in sufficient volume over the next six to eight weeks, there will be no water allocations for irrigation purposes in the basin until May 2008.
The prolonged drought has reduced many of the rivers to a trickle, crippling Australia’s farming sector and forcing many cities and towns to enact drastic water restrictions as reservoirs dry up.
Meanwhile the first half of April has been exceptionally dry across many parts of the United Kingdom. Apart from the far northwest of Scotland most places have had less than 5 percent of what you would normally expect at this point in the month.
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