Water Supply and Use in Aboriginal Communities in South Australia is based on a detailed survey of the water supply and use in 18 remote and rural communities, which linked historical information with current perceptions, and technical detail on infrastructure and water quality parameters with the results of community consultation.
Three Flinders staff - Dr Eileen Willis from the Faculty of Health Sciences and Dr Meryl Pearce and Mr Tom Jenkin from the School of Geography, Environmental and Population Management - contributed to the report. Simon Wurst from the Department for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation assisted them with technical data.
Consultation took the form of focus groups with the community councils.
"We let the local people determine the agenda, by asking them what issues concerned them," Dr Willis said.
"The strength of this approach was that things came up on which we wouldn't have put an emphasis."
Major engineering programs to provide water infrastructure to remote Aboriginal communities began in the 1970s, and the survey found that there has been steady improvement to the infrastructure and quality of the water supply over the past three decades.
Yet while the services offered in most of the communities are regarded by SA Water engineers to be of high quality and in some cases to be "best practice" or "state-of-the-art", the researchers found that this did not always translate into consumer satisfaction.
Consumer perceptions of quality are highly influential, although they may not be scientifically based.
Even in communities with supply that met Australian drinking-water guidelines, the researchers found that an isolated incident of quality failure in the past could create long-lasting suspicion towards the water.
"Because of this, we found some communities preferred to drink rainwater, even though there is an adequate mains supply," Dr Pearce said.
This could persist even though the microbiological health of the rainwater was frequently inferior.
Many of the communities still have limited supply and are subject to strict conservation measures.
Perhaps the most fragile supply system belongs to Oak Valley in the Maralinga lands, where the water supply is dependent on a truck which "harvests" water from a scattered series of bores and rainwater tanks and brings it into the community.
"Without the truck they'd have no water supply," Dr Pearce said.
Even where the supply is more integrated, water is often in short supply.
"People would like enough water to soften or beautify the environment, and there simply isn't the amount of water to do it," Dr Willis said.
"In some communities there were assumptions that Aboriginal people waste water, but it's also true that when non-indigenous people go to these communities they expect to continue their normal lifestyle, doing three loads of washing a week and running an air conditioner.
"This puts a drain on the water supply and can cause tensions."
In semi-arid and desert areas where the supply relies on bore water, sustainability of the resource remains a constant concern - in some places bore-water reserves were running low.
This was not, however, seen as a major cause of anxiety by the communities themselves.
"There is an assumption that another bore will be sunk when the current one runs out, and I think that is exactly what would happen," Dr Willis said.
Other problems can arise from the way water is delivered - four communities, for instance, are effectively bulk-billed for their water by SA Water, and are charged for delivery of water to the community's gate rather than to individual households.
This can cause organisational problems for the community council in collecting the money.
As well as providing the Department for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation a map of its achievements over the past 20 years, Dr Willis said the report provides a base-line on which future improvements can be mounted as well as making the government and providers aware of the sorts of water-related problems and issues within the communities.
A second study is planned to explore issues of sustainability and the potential use of alternative technologies as well as exploring the effects of proposed policy changes, including the introduction of user-pay systems. Maria Wilson, an Indigenous researcher from the Department of Environmental Health has joined the team for this aspect of the project.
"Currently three quarters of these communities pay a minimal amount," Dr Willis said.
"We hope to explore the impact of user-pay systems which are planned for water supply".
"You have to remember that most Aboriginal people live on or below the poverty line. And while basic supply is guaranteed, anything above the base level, under proposed new policy reform, may have to be paid for."
The study was jointly funded by Veolia Water (Australia), Department for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation, and Flinders University.
see http://www.flinders.edu.au/?news=22
