Living by Water: A history of Barwon Water and its predecessors

By Leigh Edmonds, Geelong: Barwon Region Water Authority, 2005, 454 pages, paperback, $29.90. Reviewed by Annie Bolitho in the August 2005 issue.

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Living by the Water is a comprehensive history of a significant Victorian regional water supplier, rich in relevant photographic documentation, snippets of oral history and primary material. The foreword by Victoria's Minister for the Environment, John Thwaites, places Barwon Water at the forefront of innovation in the water industry. Thwaites credits those who have devoted themselves to the public good of a broadly available water supply in the past, and emphasises the challenges of ensuring a sustainable water future. Edmonds is a historian specialising in techno-scientific/institutional areas. By and large, his strategy is one which might be expected in a commissioned history of this kind. The structure develops around eras of the region's water supply from nineteenth century privately initiated water schemes such as Jewell and Gray's public tanks; through municipalisation and the Geelong Waterworks and Sewage Trust (GWST); State Rivers and Water Supply Commission (SRWSC) supported hydraulic schemes, such as the West Barwon Dam and West Moorabool reservoir; to today's market-environmental driven focus, with governance alert to civil society expectations. Entwined throughout are issues with sewage disposal, and in the earlier period, the relationship between reliable water supplies and fire readiness. Policy influences on the region -- for example, the 1886 Irrigation Act and the recent Victorian White Paper on Water and 'Our Water, Our Future' strategy -- are seen through the eyes of GWST and Barwon Water as proud independent agencies. Thus Edmunds approach is to stick with the nitty gritty of early bungling and wrangling, later disappointments around investment, and more recent trends towards regulation, efficiencies and integrated environmental management, in a local historical perspective.Yet the introduction and conclusion stake out broader ambitions for the book. Here Edmonds, and evidently Barwon Water, seek to place water supply in a values domain, and to get people thinking. Thus the introduction takes up the direct address, and invites you to participate in evaluating your own experience of water, whilst the conclusion strikes out in a new direction altogether. Here Lovelock's Gaia is adopted as protectress of water. She acknowledges Aquaria, but supplants Hygieia, earlier emblems of GWST, as Barwon Water orients towards a closer society-environmental relationship. The organisation is a frontrunner in community engagement. It provides high quality water, has advanced strategies for use of recycled water, and a reputation for its work in restoring the Barwon River. Thus, overall, the contemporary Barwon Water is represented as an authority which has 'grown up' in terms of its social and environmental relations.Living by Water presents an interesting challenge for Edmonds and those commissioning this history. To what extent is it possible to take an instructional story from the details of one region's experience of water provision? Apparently, by 1860, the Barwon River was fouled by stock, the tallow industry and mining tailing. Yet past environmental practices, Edmonds suggests, cannot be judged by today's standards. Nonetheless, it is evident that gains in public health were achieved by devolving costs on to the environment. The Stony Creek water storage, for example, turned the Little River into a ditch by 1887. Today 55 tonnes of Barwon region's biosolids are stockpiled at Melbourne's Western Treatment Plant. Who can say the long shadow cast over the wider environment through metro and coastal capitalising on water, is behind us?Stephen Dovers has highlighted that in tackling natural resource management and environmental restitution, Australians are set back by a limited grasp of 'environmental civics'. In this context, Living by Water mentions Barwon Water's relationship with Corangamite Catchment Management Authority (CMA), but does not do justice to the legislation which empowers the CMA, or the growing importance of linking urban demand with catchment and river health. JM Powell, author of the classic Watering the Garden State, argues sensibly that geographies of natural resources must include historical threads and that histories must take an analytical interest in landscape transformation. This would go some way towards fulfilling Dovers' interest in citizens being able to relate existing conditions and desired outcomes on the ground, to specific institutions of governance. In this book, a good range of maps and diagrams would be very helpful. Ultimately, will Gaia inspire us to look behind the tap and beyond the toilet, and what will we make of this? For if water management is about the complexity of the infrastructure of supply and demand, it is also the scene of complex social power relations, in which a technocratic discourse is strongly to the fore. Barwon Water and other water utilities enjoy dominance not only because they are highly centralised monopolies on an essential service, with capital-intensive technology and infrastructure, and a strong legislative foundation, but because knowledge is centralised around a particular way of thinking and being in the world. It is within this knowledge framework that Edmunds tends to address change. For example, Indigenous interests in the region's water are given their due in relation to the region's past. Where Powell emphasises the continuity of prehistorical and early modern approaches to hydraulic engineering, here the disjuncture is more apparent, in line with a narrative which valorises progress. Likewise, the final chapter title 'Revolution' may go beyond the kind of managed change which is characteristic of contemporary water management.

In the case of water, governance and legislative arrangements have largely arisen in the context of shared histories across empire, and the various Australian states. For example, until the late 1980s women were more acceptable in the industry as mystical-emblems, than in day-to-day board or executive roles. Aquaria and Hygiea belonged to Sydney Water and various other colonial water authorities as well as to GWST. Living by Water, which concludes by marrying Gaia with the Triple Bottom Line, customer service, and the Victorian Government's 'Our Water Future' strategy, invites many questions as to what will make the most significant difference to water management and consumption in coming decades.

Citation

• Annie Bolitho. 'Review: Living by Water: A history of Barwon Water and its predecessors by Leigh Edmonds' [online]. Network Review of Books (Perth, Australian Public Intellectual Network), August 2005. Availability: <please cite the web address here> ISSN 1833-0932. [accessed 19 June 2013].

Back Cover Blurb

• For almost a hundred years Barwon Water and its predecessors have supplied Geelong and the Barwon region with their most important services; a safe water supply and a sewerage system. Without these services the modern city and region could not have developed as it did. Water is vital to life and our modern community, without it public health would be poor and industry could not flourish.
  
  Living by Water tells the story of how these vital services were provided. It tells of the conditions out of which Barwon Water emerged, or the people who played a major role in its work and the effect it had on the community. It is a story about what happened in the past and it gives us the perspective to glimpse what may come and what we should do in the future. Most importantly, it highlights the environmental awareness the authority has always had and its growth into a modern environmental business serving its community.