Drought Threatens Water Supply For One Million Australians
Up to a million people in Australia could face a shortage of drinking water if the country’s worst drought in over a century continues, a report on the state of the nation’s largest river system revealed Sunday.
The report said the situation was critical in the Murray-Darling system, which provides water to Australia’s “food bowl”, a vast expanse of land almost twice as big as France that runs down the continent’s east coast.
“We are in real trouble in the Murray-Darling basin,” Climate Change Minister Penny Wong told Channel Nine television.
“We’ve had very low inflows, we’ve had a very dry June and the focus absolutely has to be critical human needs, that is the needs of the million-plus people who rely on the basin for drinking water.
