Many water authorities around the world are urging households to use less of the precious liquid and are using imaginative ways to drive the point home of the challenges in maintaining reservoir levels.

This is a particularly pressing issue in Australia where much of the country is in drought – it seems we’re increasingly having rain “events” rather than traditional rainfall patterns.

In Ballarat, a small city of some 85,000 people in the state of Victoria, the current local reservoir storage levels are at an incredible 11.3% at the time of writing. That is terribly low, especially when you take into consideration that the last few percent of water in reservoirs is usually very difficult to treat because of sediment and pathogens.

Central Highlands Water, the local water authority has come up with a very interesting way to alert local people as to how quickly water is being consumed – a water storage countdown meter.

Just sitting there watching the numbers reel off made my mind spin at how much water we collectively consume; even in a relatively small population operating under Stage 4 restrictions.

If you live in a region where water supplies are under threat, consider pointing your water authority to the CHW site – that application wouldn’t have been difficult to program.

The CHW folks are a rather enterprising group :). Aside from recently achieving waste wise certification, the management and staff at Central Highlands Water are trying to do their bit in other environmental related issues too.

I had a brief email conversation today with one of their administrators who’s researching other little things they can do within their offices to reduce impact – such as switching from white to brown sugar and double sided printing. It’s great hearing about these sorts of initiatives – the little things when multiplied do make a big difference!

What about where you work – are your employers or colleagues implementing strategies to reduce impact within the workplace? Let me know, I’d love to hear about it!

By the way, you can pick up some simple water saving tips here

Aussies who are interested in monitoring water reservoir levels in each state capital city can do so here (updated daily). I noticed that Brisbane, one of Australia’s fastest growing cities and with a population of over 1.7 million is down to under 17% – youch.