Ballarat may have sloshed its way through the past three years in wetter-than-average conditions under La Nina, but now, the forecast may swing the other way.
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The Bureau of Meteorology announced on Tuesday it has moved into 'watch' for El Nino conditions, indicating the hotter, drier brother of La Nina is now twice as likely to occur in 2023.
"There are forecasts that the bureau is making that most likely by winter or spring ... we may move towards El Nino conditions," Federation University climatologist and meteorologist Dr Savin Chand said.
"If that happens, we will see a huge swing from very wet, rainy conditions to a drier state all over Australia."
La Nina and El Nino are part of the climate's natural variability, although the extremes of these weather events can be exacerbated by a warming climate.
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Former City of Ballarat chief executive Janet Dore said as water became more scarce in the future measures to reduce the amount of water each household needed should be put in place.
"Retrofitting in some way to be able to conserve more non-potable water that we flush down the toilets every day, that should be mandatory and easy ... ways to save water that we actually use for waste," she said.
"Although we're at the head of catchments, several catchments, we all need to think about ways we can reduce and conserve the water we do use."
At its worst, El Nino conditions can spell major drought, such as the Millennium Drought, which saw Ballarat's water supplies dwindle and Lake Wendouree run completely dry in 2006 after a decade of below-average rainfall.
Ballarat resident Michael Jones was one of 5000 people to walk across the lake in 2007 in an effort to raise money to aid its redevelopment.
"It was horrible. It felt like part of you ... was missing. There was just that sense of unease," he said.
"[The drought] just didn't stop. It just kept on going and it was unrelenting. It really was soul destroying."
In 2009, Central Highlands Water (CHW) put in place a system cycling treated water from the Ballarat North Water Reclamation Plant to the lake to help maintain water levels.
Last year, it released the Urban Water Strategy, providing a 50-year outlook detailing how the region's water needs will be met as temperatures and population numbers climb.
It stated Ballarat's water supply was secure to meet its 95 per cent level of service in the short to medium term, even under high climate change and high population growth scenarios and, based on modelling, the earliest date "action may be required" for Ballarat was 2041.
"An integral part of this options assessment was a common understanding with our customers that any proposed action involves trade-offs," the document stated.
"CHW could plan to supply enough water to reliably meet our defined level of service during both high climate change and high population growth scenarios, but the cost to our customers would be very high.
"Alternatively, CHW could plan to implement water restrictions more frequently, which would reduce our defined level of service to our customers, but maintain more water supply availability in our water storages in drier years."
For the Ballarat, Maryborough and Daylesford systems, the 95 per cent agreed level of service means that water restrictions "are not expected to occur more than once" every 20 years.
Options explored in the strategy to ensure the region will maintain enough water in reservoirs included building up water treatment capacity and developing "groundwater supply" in Ballarat West.
"CHW is focussing on options to not only increase the amount of water supplied to the Ballarat system, but to find ways for our customers and community to use water more efficiently," a spokesperson told The Courier.
"We are managing demand and investigating options for recycled water, stormwater and rainwater.
"CHW has a long history of investigating groundwater opportunities. Groundwater supply already supports many towns across our region."
In 2022, CHW announced a 14-kilometre pipeline connecting Blampied to the Goldfields Superpipe that will eventually flow into the Daylesford Water Treatment Plan, securing water for Daylesford and Ballarat.
Former CHW chair John Barnes told The Courier in December there were T-intersections in the infrastructure that could be used for other townships to be connected into the superpipe in the future.
"The Millennium Drought was not the last drought that we'll ever have," Mr Barnes said.
"We learned at that point what we thought was a very secure supply in Ballarat, wasn't.
"We had to make provisions and make sure that we had more options than just rain falling in our own catchment."
For now, Federation University's Dr Chand said, just how far and how quickly into El Nino conditions the region will swing in 2023 remains uncertain: "El Nino's strength can be very severe ... or can be mild new conditions. What shape it's going to take this year is a bit too early to predict."
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