RSMG Weblog Welcome Guest | Login or Register

Somebody once told me “Once the water starts flowing, the money stops”. Admittedly that was referring to exceptional funding under a drought but it seems to equally apply to the QLD government backflips on the water grid. Instead of enhancing the community efforts of residents in SE corner dramatically reducing their water consumption to around about 140-150 litres/day by putting in long term assets to augment supplies for the rapidly growing population in the South East

Just quickly putting the local water wise efforts into perspective, Adelaide where I could not find daily water use which according to this article in no longer supplied but working off this site and these assumptions 135-140 GL /1.1 million people/365 days = 336-348 litres per person per day. A tidy piece of info for the next time I’m in a cab in Adelaide being berated as a Brisbane water waster.

Now that we have water from good rain (i.e. free water) the planned infrastructure to be brought on-line is being delayed (the desalinisation plant) and travestion dam effectively scrapped . Now both of these I can sort of understand from a cost point of view as they are expensive solutions per ML. But the wrangling over recycled water just annoys me.

Once again the worries about recycled water raise their ugly head. Well for me it’s a bit like QLD finally adding fluoride to their water. About time they did it! The simple thing with recycled water is just consider how many dead things are already floating in the dams and current runoff in the dams includes all manner of interesting things: chemicals (farms, boaties, deliberate dumpings, etc), soil contaminates, manure (stock, native animals, domestic animals, people swimming); the whole ecosystem already living in the water adding flavour daily; etc. Anyone who has grown up on rainwater tanks already knows the flavour benefits you get compared to treated town water.

Recycled water will be purified before it gets into the dam, diluted in the existing water and then purified again to get rid of all the additives from the runoff in the dam. What I love about those that argue against recycled water is that they totally ignore what currently happens with the water if it was not recycled? Well it still all ends up in the sea and our drinking water in one form, treated or untreated, or another.

In short with a growing population base, uncertain rainfall patterns and not utilising/finishing the water network will have us scratching our head in about 10 years time and once again making policy on the run and desperately throwing money trying to find water while penalising households. Lets just simply put the network together and use it. Once its in and being used people in general won’t care as they will either drink what comes out of the tap or have to buy bottled water.

Trackback this Post | Feed on comments to this Post