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The Forum > General Discussion > Water restrictions-lets keep them in place permanently

Water restrictions-lets keep them in place permanently

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im glad we are still talking about water, we are in for a hot dry summer down here in S.A and you can imagine all the water sucking thats going to go on.
I agree with Belly that tanks ought to be mandatory, in our state they are when a new house is built-but what about ALL PREVIOUS DWELLINGS not to mention APARTMENTS and FLATS etc- will these types of dwellers be exempt from any water conscious behaviour or responsibility?
I mention this as im sure this is a big part of the problem, people with no connection to the LAND and NATURE, cant seem to get their heads around the personal responsibility we all must face collectively, well that is if we want it to be a successful collective.
I think apartments and flats/ units etc ought still collect and store water for its tenants use, im not sure how this could be managed? or what area the water would be allocated to? still it COULD and SHOULD in my minds eye, be done! ALL HOUSING DEVELOPERS and OWNERS need to adapt to this responsibility from now, regardless of how old their building is, they cannot escape their responsibility of the collective, just because they let out their premises (or sell off) at a profit , to residents/ clients with little power over the management of the property.
Posted by mariah, Wednesday, 5 September 2007 11:04:15 AM
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Belly,

Even rainwater tanks incur a significant environmental cost, particularly if we aim to have one in every dwelling. Whilst I think it would be far better that the world's manufacturing capacity be dedicated more towards producing useful items such as rainwater tanks rather than throw-away junk which largely ends up in landfill after a matter of years at most, we must still bear in mind that:

* Plastic rainwater tanks require finite non-renewable petroleum for their manufacture and will not endure indefinitely, anyway.

* Galvanised iron tanks require non-renewable non-renewable metals for their manufacture and even their life span is also finite.

* all require the burning of fossil fuels, which will accelerate global warming, for their manufacture.

As I wrote above, there are no cost-free technological fixes for the predicament we find ourselves in.

The first we need to do is to stop increasing our demand for water. This means that Queensland Premier Beattie's demented dream to increase the population of this dry continent to 50 million (http://au.news.yahoo.com/070904/2/14cda.html) at a time when we are staring in the face desertification caused by global warming and poor land stewardship, must be loudly repudiated by every thinking person in this country.
Posted by daggett, Wednesday, 5 September 2007 11:14:09 AM
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Daggett, try concrete tanks.....

As for water use, we use 1746gigalitres of water annually for cotton, and 1230GL for rice. Horticulture (vegies/fruit) uses 2085GL annually. So cotton and rice arent chewing up quite as much as some wuold have you believe. This is despite the fact that more and more horticulture is using highly efficient drip systems to water and they still have a higher usage.

Then again, it all depends on how you twist the numbers to look at them. Grazing uses 2871GL water a year - shock horror!! It apparently takes 16,000l of water to produce just 1kg of steak. This sounds terrible. But then if you look at the kj density, steak takes just 0.19L/kj, whereas the 70L it takes to produce an apple results in a wter use of 0.35L/kj - nearly double. Therefore we must stop growing fruit! not.
Posted by Country Gal, Wednesday, 5 September 2007 12:52:37 PM
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Country Gal,

Thanks for the stats. The quantity of water consumed in food production seems to dwarfs our domestic water consumption.

---

I assume that you are aware that concrete requires combustion of fossil fuels in its manufacture. The energy necessary to ceate the strong chemical bonds in concrete has to come from somewhere. Presumably the greater energy cost will be offset by the greater durability of concrete tanks.

I am not in a position to judge which of the alternative materials for rainwater tank construction - plastic, galvanised iron or concrete - is the most desirable (or, rather, least undesirable) from the point of view of the environment, but my point remains that whatever we do to solve the water crisis for over 21 million Australians will incur a substantial environmental cost, and that cost can only become greater, and possibly even too great, if our political leaders insist upon increasing population numbers in order to suit the short-term selfish interests of land speculators and the malignant property development sector.
Posted by daggett, Wednesday, 5 September 2007 1:42:01 PM
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Guys,
I live in Sydney and for my own purposes, selfish or otherwise, I can live with our water restrictions the way they are.
Other states' restrictions are different to ours so I can understand this being a sensitive issue especially when applied to agribusiness.
However, at the end of the day, what's the point of wasting any finite resource.
Posted by Goddess, Wednesday, 5 September 2007 4:24:47 PM
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Add stainless steel tanks to the list, they last the longest and are practially indistructable when used for water storage.
Posted by Is Mise, Wednesday, 5 September 2007 7:45:04 PM
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