When science fiction author Paolo Bacigalupi published his best-selling novel The Water Knife about a water crisis and the growing commodification of water in 2015, he foresaw something alarming – a dystopian future.

‘I just had to fast-forward it,’ he said.

Indeed, we can fast-forward a decade later to drought-stricken South Australia, where satellite surveillance monitors rural dams and water collection rules are enforced by fines and regulation. It has become a monolithic environmental policy casting a shadow over people who simply seek access to water.

Although we do not see the physical force envisioned by Bacigalupi, is our reality so different?

Last week, the ABC reported that in South Australia’s parched Mount Lofty Ranges, the Hills and Fleurieu Landscape Board – armed with aerial imagery – uncovered 400 illegal dams and 300 enlarged ones, branding their builders liable, with what I believe is little regard for intent. For over a decade, South Australia’s environmental policies have enjoyed bipartisan support, sowing an Orwellian web of surveillance.

The ALP’s 2013 moratorium on new dams planted the seed while the Liberals’ 2019 Landscape Act built the framework. Now, in 2025, the ALP’s enforcement reaps a bitter harvest. This echoes The Water Knife’s ashen-future vision, where water scarcity regulation fuels authoritarian control. And in South Australia, the quiet rebellion of farmers is quashed under the unblinking eye of satellite surveillance.

All for catching rain.

How did we get here? In Australia, rainwater falling on your property is not yours outright. It belongs to the state, who charges you for it. South Australia’s policies, while historically rooted, are unusually harsh even by global standards.

English Common Law, which recognised riparian rights tying water access to land ownership, arrived upon settlement but was abandoned by the 1830s for state-regulated water to ensure equitable distribution in an arid climate. By the late 1800s, licenses and fees emerged, evolving into today’s complex water markets.

While the Landscape South Australia Act 2019 is modern, it feels less like environmental stewardship and more like a colonial relic reborn where bureaucracy and revenue are prioritised over farmers’ agency. Environmental policy, once a shield for Australians, now looks like a tool for control.

It would not be the first time environmentalism was accused of crossing into socialism. The South Australian government’s ideological intent is unclear, but the reported lack of transparency around surveillance rightly raises concerns.

Globally, South Australia’s use of satellite surveillance to police unlicensed dams is an outlier. In Peru and the EU, satellites monitor dam safety and environmental risk, not rainwater harvesting. In California, water rights are fiercely contested, but often end in negotiated settlements, not punitive surveillance. Most nations regulate large-scale water infrastructure but don’t punish people for catching rain.

Australia’s uniquely strict, commercialised water licensing is unlike systems in California, Spain, or South Africa.

Extreme commodification elsewhere has sparked conflict, from Bolivia’s 2000 Cochabamba Water War to the century-old Silala River dispute. Yet regional Australian farmers, lacking the numbers to protest, face quiet suppression. As with Covid-era overreach, when urban Australians resisted curbs on autonomy, today’s water policies alienate rural communities.

Globally, the question of, ‘Who owns water?’ remains unresolved.

What’s happening in the Mount Lofty Ranges is not without precedent. Well-intentioned policies have gone awry and led to unfortunate ecological and bureaucratic missteps. The Murray-Darling Basin Plan, designed to preserve Australia’s most vital river system, sparked years of protest from farmers whose water allocations evaporated under remote mandates. Likewise, restrictions on controlled burns – once part of Indigenous land management – have left rural communities vulnerable to catastrophic bushfires. Local wisdom has been dismissed in favour of bureaucratic caution. Both cases echo today’s dam crackdown.

What began as a moral impulse to protect the land – a sincere environmental concern for our slab of the planet – has been elevated beyond the reach of humanity’s judgment. Law has replaced care. Compliance has eclipsed compassion. The value of resources has upstaged the value of people. And when you exalt soil over souls, you risk losing both.

For rural Australians, policy nooses hang where weather once ruled.

Drought used to be the main enemy, now it’s also legislation, fees, and the crushing sense that no matter how much rain falls, the state will find a way to possess it.

These aren’t abstractions. They are felt in suicide statistics. In broken families. In the vanishing archetype of the free and rugged Australian which tourists still imagine riding a Brumby instead of taking the train. We risk becoming a parody of ourselves. To penalise resilience kills livelihoods and erodes national identity.

Is it really theft to catch rain that would otherwise vanish? Where to from here? Reform, decentralisation, reprioritisation – all are possible. But the South Australian zeitgeist may prove harder to drain. Culture runs deeper than water. We’ll catch our own, thanks.