Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Water for swimming pools is bad for the environment and climate change

Cycling to work this morning through Camberwell I happened upon these two trucks that were pumping water into a house, presumably to fill a swimming pool.



Melbourne water restrictions disallow filling pools from the mains water, so now people pay to have it trucked in from country Victoria.

The direct consequences of this are:
  • Depletion of acquifers (underground water) where this water is pumped from
  • Carbon emissions from pumping from the ground, truck transport, then pumping from the truck to the pool.
I think this practice is really inappropriate for these reasons. Perhaps the time has come to only allow the filling of pools from roof storm water, or to just ban them? Surely this is now a luxury that we cannot really afford, if we are serious about taking all available steps to combat climate change.

The average pool would only get used about 15 days in a year in any case.

1 comment:

Chervil said...

I think we need to ban them, it seems an extraordinary luxury in times of water crisis and climate change.