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The Forum > Article Comments > Salty water anytime, but we won’t drink sewage! > Comments

Salty water anytime, but we won’t drink sewage! : Comments

By Charles Essery, published 14/10/2019

The solution has been with us for millennia and the technology to deliver it has been used and applied for nearly 50 years around the world.

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Finally some measure of common sense around recycled potable water. We here on the driest inhabited continent in the world, send millions upon millions of litres of reusable water out to sea annually even as our inland waterways dry up to a trickle and we see things like massive fish kills!

Desalinated water using traditional reverse osmosis through membrane technology delivers clean potable water, but at huge cost with quite massive energy usage!

It is possible to reuse effluent as irrigation water, leaving clean fresh water from other sources available for town water.! But falls, because of the high energy component!

New space-age desalination, i.e., deionisation dialysis desalination makes more potable water 95% for quarter of the energy input!

And field trialled in Texas a few years ago as cost-effective, broad-scale irrigation! And astutely ignored by Ozzie pollies due to the sovereign risk this would involve for our water barons, some of who would sem to be governments or government agencies, others, debt-laden, tax-avoiding, profit-repatriating, price-gouging foreigners!?

Texas was using more expensive to make energy (part nuclear) delivered at a profit, for around one-third of that charged here, from cheaper to make, coal-fired energy! TBC.
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Monday, 14 October 2019 8:25:10 AM
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We also need to install mandated water tanks, 20,000 gallons per average family household!

I mean the average family needs around forty thousand gallons of water P.A. for domestic water usage, And water used in septic systems and laundries could be easily be recycled effluent!?

Especially if laundry is traditionally sun-dried! We have seen the sale of bottled water rise through the roof since our reticulated water has been fluoridated!

And energy charges have increased exponentially since reticulation was taken from local councils Who used to earn a small profit for reticulating and maintaining our electricity supply!

And when that was the standard, able to supply household energy for around half that charged in Texas! This is where we now fall down! And what makes the desalination of water the most expensive in the world? Moreover, conflicted Ozzie pollies, have no real intention of actually changing the status quo!?

For reasons only explainable by their subservience to powerful vested, special interest Some of which could be family trusts and their income streams?

If there's another more credible explanation? I've yet to hear it!TBC.
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Monday, 14 October 2019 8:44:22 AM
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Before we privatised our power supply, our power bills were far more reasonable and far more affordable! So we need to go back to that de-privatised, publicly owned and supplied system, based on former paradigms that worked, were affordable and weren't broken!

So, they just didn't need to be "FIXED"!

Critically, we need to remove , government-imposed prohibition on the use of nuclear energy, for peaceful purpose only!

That will at least allow the finance houses to invest in energy and increasingly essential R+D, into new technology and innovation, like MSR and graphene microgrids, the inescapable future.

We need to hold, do nothing real, pollies to account and challenge their energy supply paradigms before we go to the ballot box!

Otherwise, nothing of real moment will be allowed to surface, be it energy reform, water reform or real fair dinkum tax reform and we need all three if we would address climate change, decarb the economy and drought-proof the nation

Dams are all well and good where we have the rainfall numbers to support them, even the wet tropics can and have experienced dry rain-free periods, unprecedented in living memory!
Alan B
Posted by Alan B., Monday, 14 October 2019 9:01:40 AM
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Why go through so much effort & expense to treat waste water when all we have to do is waste less water ? Why create more problems with more technical infrastructure to maintain ?
Store water & be done with it. Make the base of any new home a storage tank.
Harness run-off & divert/pump into aquifers/dams etc.
Just because someone can smell Dollars in a fancy scheme doesn't mean it's worthwhile !
Posted by individual, Monday, 14 October 2019 9:03:04 AM
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More dams. How does the cost of treating sewerage compare with more dams and desalination plants? After the fuss made by South Australians over our desalination plant, we should be grateful now they we have such a thing.
Posted by ttbn, Monday, 14 October 2019 10:55:56 AM
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I have been living with out town water for 30 years. It is expensive. I have recently replaced 3 10,000L tanks, 2 for the second time, & it involves 6 pumps to use the water, & recycle the grey water.

I have to replace the smaller pumps/motors about every 12 years, & the 2 larger units require overhaul on about a 7 year cycle. Of course I don't pay water rates, but that is a small saving by cost comparison.

All grey water is used to water a small percentage of my 1.5 acre house paddock garden, the dam supplies more stock & garden water. I don't water lawns. I have only had to buy water once, in 1994, but came close again this year. We have had up to 6 people, [3 ladies with long hair] living on water off the roof of the house & a couple of sheds, so it can be done.

However I have no sympathy for townies complaining about the cost of town water. That cost is minuscule compared to living with your own water system, particularly in dry years.

I have a very good system, some neighbors are buying truck loads of water twice a month with less efficient systems, or less roof catchment, & one has just bought their own 12 ton water truck, to go fetch town water themselves.
Posted by Hasbeen, Monday, 14 October 2019 11:28:43 AM
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