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.

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.

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

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 !

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.

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.

Talking of water from sewerage, Adelaide mains water is pretty awful. Maybe its got a bit something in it already. Sometimes it stinks when you turn on a tap. Colourless, but not odourless and tasteless as water is supposed to be. It's OK for washing cooking, coffee when boiled, but we always have a cask of 'spring' water for drinking.

All that stands between the people and sane decisions are the, as usual, recalcitrant decision-makers!

FIRST CAB OFF THE RANK, IS TO BECOME THE WORLD'S REPOSITORY FOR NUCLEAR WASTE! FOR THE ANNUAL BILLIONS WE'D EARN ANNUALLY.

After that, with the necessary funding stream secured for decades! Get busy with MSR R+D. Once we have a working prototype, get busy mass producing them to create the world's cheapest ever, energy! As a bonus, carbon-free energy!

And in the process extract the still unspent energy in this unspent fuel! Reticulate it via buried graphene cored cables.

Yes, this could cost us a few hundred billion.

But we have the funding tool and the income we'd earn as soon as we get these things online and operational! And given we fast track the above with a full-court press, able to create thousands of jobs in the construction phase!

Then later from the queue of energy dependant high tech manufacture that would feel compelled to relocate here, particularly if we fixed the tax system by replacing the dog's breakfast we have now, with a 15% unavoidable flat tax!

I've explained that in great detail in previous posts, so no need to further elaborate!

With affordable, reliable energy rolled out across the nation, we can finally get cracking with deionisation dialysis desalination and get the joint drought proofed!

Given the funding stream secured, all the above can be done and off-budget, via an internal deficit, we pay no interest on!

The bills, all of them, paid for with reserve bank cheques! And as the assets appear out of the factory and are commissioned, the value of the new assets offset the debt created to build them, and then the income can be directed straight back to the reserve or internal revenue!

It's time we reclaimed our purloined economic sovereignty and got it back and in harness working exclusively for us as opposed to shonky, debt-laden, tax-avoiding, price gouging, profit repatriating, foreign investors our government seem to be in league with/serving!?
Alan B.

Relax, read the words. This is about getting people to think about the water cycle from what I can see. Dams are fine, if you can find the right spot to put them,. Most good spots have already been taken or locked up in national parks. Rain tanks are great, particularly in big cities... but then they require effort to treat the water to keep them safe. I use rainwater for 90% of my water needs and because I treat it properly, can drink it,.... but mine is chlorine free, beautifully soft, and make tea taste superb, and the ice for my G&T is great! That small dash of " chlorine free water in my single malt is … well "to die for!" SO Rainwater tanks are good. next stop is desalinated water or recycled water. Recycled water seems best according to the article, so... chill and think it through. Water is water, and while some farmers suffer for shortages, most of us do pretty well compared to the rest of the world. So stop wiiiinnning.. be thankful for what we got and as the guy says, "Lets talk ___!", just like Guinness, its good for you as the 1960's adds used to say! Ha Ha

ttbn,
Desalination is fine for small communities but way too wasteful in power, chemicals, filters, etc for huge plants. Their environmental impact is massive !

Yes...and what about recycled water I collect my rainwater and treat it, I have to sent my waste water to Sydney water by law ( they wont let me recycle it by intense regulatory constraints). they treat it and pump it out into the river I live on... at a higher quality than the river that runs past my garden. Good on them, but they could recycle it at nominal cost and supply the rest of the town with it at a quality better than the water they supply don the tap. Follow that one and think about water cycles, not technologies and what you are fed my media and who ever taught you. Its NOT ROCKET SCIENCE, MATE." I say again, we don't really understand how lucky we are... even in the dryer ends of this 'lucky country'

Read J.V. Hanna, W.D. Johnson, R.A. Quezada, M.A. Wilson and Lu Xiao¬Qiao. Characterisation of aqueous humic substances before and after chlorination. Environmental Science and Technology, 1991, 25, 1160-1164.