Australia in worst drought for 1000 years

AUSTRALIA might be facing the worst drought in one thousand years, prompting urgent action to secure the drinking water of Adelaide and rural towns. Speaking at the conclusion of an emergency water summit in Canberra, South Australian Premier Mike Rann said that experts from the Murray Darling Basin Commission feared that the drought may be even worse than a one-in-one-hundred-year event. Prime Minister John Howard said the assessment was sobering, but added it was an observation at the end of a formal report rather than a scientific conclusion. But premiers were adamant that the figure had been raised and it pointed again to the urgency of dealing with global warming. The meeting decided that contingency planning would begin to secure drinking water if there were insufficient autumn rains in 2007. The science agency, CSIRO, will conduct an urgent audit of water to locate where vital supplies could be extracted if the crisis worsened. Permanent, cross-border water trading will also start in Victoria, NSW and South Australia to provide a way of rationing water.