Day Zero is a topic you might hear in a Hollywood disaster film, but in Australian towns influenced by drought (干旱), Day Zero comes when the government finally shut down the local water supply after years of drought. To some Australian towns under The Big Dry, that day arrived earlier in the last year.
Australia is not the only country that has such water problems. More water is used all over the world and drought happens more often and lasts for longer time. Australia, South Africa and India are all influenced seriously. According to the UN, more than four billion people don't have enough water for at least one month a year because of the world's rising population in cities and a warmer climate. And the problem will be even worse in the coming years.
There are too many dry rivers in Australian towns now. In New South Wales, the 32 months from January 2017 to August 2019 were the driest on record. The situation is so serious that in August 2019, the government prepared to spend ten million dollars saving fish. The year before that they had relaxed rules for shooting kangaroos because increasing numbers of kangaroos came to farmland to look for water and food.
It happened on Monday 13 January 2020. The water ran out in Stanthorpe. To satisfy the water needs in town, trucks carried water from another dam (水坝) near Warwick every day, which cost $800,000 a month. But this couldn't solve the problem.
"This is the worst drought on record," said Tracy Dobie, who has been Mayor of the Southern Downs Region since 2016. "When you see a blue sky without clouds, dry land, and dead plants, it is hard to be positive."
Scientists are trying to find ways to solve the problem, developing new technologies that could get drinking water from even the world's driest water taps.
