Seems like we are pumping a lot of energy into waste water, just to treat and remove it conventionally?
When we should be extracting the energy component first, in closed cycle, smell free digesters; and then passing the resultant methane through ceramic fuel cells, to provide on demand energy and free hot water.
The resulting de-watered solids, a perfectly safe high carbon soil improver.
The liqueur, eminently suitable as a feed source for endlessly sustainable algae farming/bio-diesel production.
The waste product from the bio-diesel production, suitable as either animal fodder or seed product for ethanol production.
At the end of all those processes, one assumes that there would be activated carbon filtration and something akin to the filtration process espoused.
There ought to be enough profit in bio-fuel production, if done on a municipal wide commercial application, to have money left over, after all treatment and plant maintainence costs etc, are fully met?
Instead of paying for sewerage removal, we could be credited for our output of a valuable commodity?
Yes, the application of intelligence ought to ensure we get benefits many times over, and not just from recycled water!
Many municipalities extract all their water from the Murray.
And given that is so, they're supplying sand filtered water, that has already passed through several sets of kidneys!
Rhrosty.

We don't have a water problem.

We have a lack of dams problem, easily fixed by telling greenie ratbags to go jump.

Jonathan if your system is really good, here's a suggestion. Go buy our useless sea water osmosis plants, we will be quite pleased to get rid of them.

Now prove your system by producing & supplying potable water, cheaper than harvesting it in dams.

Do that, & I'm sure you will be given lots of opportunities for water supply, & waste water treatment, on the same terms.

Oh & that is to be cheaper than existing costs, not some hiked cost caused by a tax, & subsidy scheme, like alternative power.

recharging aquifers is urgently needed & also several more dams. In fact the less technology the better all round. get the Bradfield scheme up & running. Stop worrying about the Greens because they'll run in the doors trying to get nice waterfront blocks which will shut them up for years to come.
There's no shortage of water in Australia, the only shortage is foresight.

I have always said we should be redirecting treated water back to the dams.

We can do this by pumping it to a high point, the releasing it so it flows down the hll through a series of natural ponds, with filter plants along the way, you know, the way nature filters water.

The other solution is to stop bathing, washing the dog/car or watering the garden with pure drinking water, given we consume less than 2% of what we use.

The Bradfield scheme would be prohibitively expensive, costing many multiple billions!
Alternatively, we could inject some of our copious northern water directly into the Great Artisan Basin, utilising one or two relatively modest dams, gravity and just a few kilometres of pipeline.
Given the Basin stretches from northern Queensland all the way to the top end of S.A., it would distribute far more water, over a vast arid area, for very few comparative dollars!
Lifting water to great heights, then allowing it to flow back into the system, after naturally filtering via upland wetlands, would require quite massive energy consuming pumps! And considerably more energy inputs, than reverse osmosis?
i.e., lifting water say a thousand feet, would require pumps with 500PSI!
However, it's still a great idea, with much merit, that could be used to massively improve the landscape, forcing it to store vastly more naturally occurring upland water, during the wet times, and slowly releasing it back into the system, when it's dry.
Done on a large enough scale, it would prevent erosion, mitigate against future flash floods, and perhaps even provide enough surety of reliable water flows, to enable some modest, carbon free, very low cost hydro schemes, where none are now possible!
Which by the way, would also act as some flood mitigation, in two for the price of one, if intelligently sited?
Storing vast amounts of water in the landscape, would also put a layer of fresh on top of the salt table, forcing it lower!
Australia is a land of drought and flooding rain! It seems to me, if we just stopped listening to the anti dam, anti development greens, and stored some water, as outlined, both we and the environment, would be vastly better off!
Rhrosty.