Where does Alice Springs get its water from?

The Alice Springs water supply comes from the Roe Creek borefield in the Amadeus Basin. The basin is an enormous underground sedimentary rock formation extending south from Alice Springs towards the South Australian border and westward into Western Australia. The basin is 7 km deep in the middle, and covers about 150,000 km2.

Most of the water used in Alice Springs comes from the Mereenie Formation, which is an aquifer about 14 -18 km south of the township. It is one of three underground rock formations from which we draw our drinking water, the other two being the Pacoota and Shannon formations.

The Mereenie aquifer provides about 80% of the town’s water supply from a storage of about 5,200,000 ML, which is about the same size as 5 million Olympic sized swimming pools.

  • 1 kilolitre (KL) = 1,000 litres (L)
  • 1 megalitre (ML) = 1,000,000 litres (L)
  • 1 gigalitre (GL) = 1,000,000,000 litres (L)

This diagram shows a cross section through the Alice Springs region geology and the location of groundwater aquifers supplying Alice Springs water.

The Roe Creek borefield can be seen tapping into the Mereenie & Pacoota sandstone and the Shannon formation.

While Alice Springs is lucky to be located close to this large body of good quality groundwater, pumping water from underground rocks is expensive and energy intensive.

Water moves slowly though rock and extracting it is like trying to drink a thickshake with a narrow straw.

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Are we running out of water?

More water is taken from the Roe Creek aquifers than they receive from rainfall or river recharges. As a result, water levels in the Roe Creek bores are dropping more than a metre every year.

Since pumping at Roe Creek began in 1964, the groundwater level has dropped 60 metres, from 90m to 150m below ground level.

There’s still a lot of water in the basin, but it isn’t being recharged quickly enough to replace the water that is pumped out. Pumping water from deep underground is expensive, costing more the deeper we go, and uses fossil fuels which contribute to climate change.

By saving water we can delay the drilling of new bores, reduce our energy use AND conserve our water resources so they can be supplied at an affordable price to future generations.

Power and Water estimate a new borefield may be required in 20-50 years, however a number of variables will determine exactly when this occurs.

Variables include; extraction costs, water efficiency measures implemented, climate change, improved leakage detection and repair .

How does water get into the underground aquifers?

Water soaks into the ground when rivers flow after rain. The underground water at Roe Creek has gradually accumulated over thousands of years. Some of it comes from ancient floods that occurred when the climate was wetter than it is today and some of it is much more recent.

There are small rises in the Roe Creek borefield water level following flows in Roe Creek and the Todd River.

The water that occasionally flows down Roe Creek and the Todd River will slowly trickle through into the Alice Springs water supply. To keep our water clean, we need to make sure that our stormwater drains and waterways are not polluted. Click here to see a video of rubbish in the river.

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