Thanks for this Andrew

We see celebrities on TV saying "water is our most precious resource" and I always wonder "If it is so precious, why does it cost a dollar a tonne delivered." Even dirt costs $30 a tonne. If a 1000 Litre rainwater tank costs $500 you would have to fill it 500 times to break even on the water at current prices. You would be lucky to fill it 20 times a year so the tank would need to last 25 years. Unlikely. That does not include the cost of the pump and the electricity to get the water to your garden.

Even so there are other considerations. Comparing the supply of milk and bread to the supply of water is not really appropriate.

Water supply is a government monopoly. When bread makers make a profit they have earned it by producing a superior product in a free market. Government does not face this competition. No second Warragamba Dam is going to be built in competition. Doubling the price of water across Australia would pop a cool $1-3 billion into government coffers every year even if demand did drop. History suggests this would be used for general revenue, not for improving water supply or planning for the future. The cry that it is just another sneaky tax would be hard to argue.

If all the revenue above the current price were set aside for environmental purposes, there might be some consensus in the public to allow the price increase, but governments have not been able to make themselves do this in the past. They want all the money.

I think recycling sewage is an excellent sustainable solution to the problem of water supply. It reduces the pollution discharged to the rivers and ocean and provides a source of water near the consumers who need it. Even so, it will be difficult selling the idea that water is going to cost more and it is going to be recycled sewage, instead of clean mountain runoff.

Agood argument Andrew
, albeit from a greenies point of view. I would prefer to see an argument from a realists POV. there is no need to tapdance around what is required. We need more dams,we need planning by government. I think they can do it, as they have done well in some achievments in the past, and I say phooey to those namby pambys who pontificate and dont face reality. As for charging more to reduce usage, this idea smells of ACT type government when they introduced a tax on how many toiletsa house had. Mad idea, but it was in force for a year.Rommel

Opinion in two parts to address the word limit.

Andrew Leigh wrote "As the demands on our water supply have steadily increased, Australian governments have imposed ever more stringent rules on water usage." and then proceeded into the bulk of his article AND this is called 'Limiting Context' and this then leads to the next question 'what is your benefit?'.

Opening the context relating to water, the water 'demand' may have increased but the primary problem is the naturally supply has diminished and this primarily from the destruction of the local natural ecosystems i.e. trees.

Trees cause large amount of evaporation on a daily basis and when the number of trees reach a critical level the water density is no longer able to be supported as vapor and rain in the local area develops without which the water available usually runs away from the area in its natural course to the nearest ocean of which amazon forests is the largest example of this and the opposite of it is remove those trees and you get a desert as the soil is poor to naturally sustain growth and the daily heavy afternoon downpours cease causing the greatest river on earth the Amazon to dry up eventually.

Andrew Leigh introduced the word 'government' so what does this exactly mean...

Sam

Contd,,,

contd...

Since the English civil wars of 1600's when ruler Charles 1 executed and Commonwealth of England established under the common person protector Cromwell and the then parliament the common person has reserved the right to decide the existence of the monarch after which Charles 11 invited to re-establish monarchy from exile by the common people of England but with restriction of capacity which is the monarch who being a smaller parter of the greater group called the crown through their 'federal' government can only act on the elected common person ministers 'advice' to rule the country and colonies e.g. Commonwealth of Australia.

In the early part of this century the crown cleared most of the vast swaths of Australian forests by the simple and indiscriminate bulldozer and chain to then release the land after titling for the common person to use which led to the current dramatic increase in desertification and removal of the local water ecosystems leading to the area dependent on long distance weather patterns to bring the occasional rain and the rest of the problems caused liked rising salinification known.

Whats the point here being asked and so the point is water scarcity is only going to get worse with increasing costs and diminishing quantity of use BUT it does not fix the primary problem which is the crown damage to the land that sustains us and meaning the crown now as part of its responsibility now pour its vast monetary reserve to rebuild the ecosystem of Australia than tax the common person even more for its reserves.

A unusual and known but unspoken suggestion this may be but it is the most effective solution to stop the horrendous continuing degradation of land by giving the responsibility to restore back to the causer of the damage before we are living on the worlds greatest man made desert and the land gives up its last breath after then incapable of sustaining us.

Sam.

All of the comments so far are good, but the main reason why we have permanent water restrictions in the Sydney Basin and Illawarra, with people encouraged to dob in their neighbours for hosing the car or watering the garden on the wrong day, is because of government policies of mass migration at the federal level and lack of encouragement at the state level for decentralisation, i.e. putting the people where the water is. We got these policies because the business mates of the politicians wanted bigger domestic markets, effortless profits from land speculation, and an oversupply of labour, so that they could have a cheap, docile work force. The politicians have delivered handsomely. We now have 16% of the working age population wholly or primarily dependent on social welfare (as opposed to 3% in the 1960s). It takes 8 years of average earnings to buy a modest house (as opposed to 4 years in 1962), with most of the difference due to increased land prices. Working hours are the longest in the Western world. The list could go on. How about real user pays in the form of death duties on the top 0.5% of estates to pay for conservation and other improvements in the water supply? And I'm not that keen on the industrial chemicals and maybe viruses we would get if we were forced to use recycled sewage water for drinking and cooking.

Divergence - I agree that population drives water restrictions as well as most resource shortages and pollution issues. This is a very difficult message to communicate because population has been increasing while standards of living have been increasing. The conventional wisdom is that we need population growth to keep the economy booming and standards of living increasing. This is the message that the Howard Government, Steve Bracks and many business leaders like Richard Pratt are selling.

Water restrictions are good in one respect. They make it clear that all resources are not infinite and population can't increase forever. If we want higher population we have to accept water and other resource restrictions, and higher prices.

On recycled sewage, the standard of treatment for recycled sewage would be higher than for the existing drinking water supply and testing would be far more rigorous for just the reasons you point out. Plus it would be mixed with Warragamba water. The same industrial chemicals would be used for the sewage as for the Warragamba water. No change. Viruses are trickier but the technology is available and it has worked around the world where there is more population pressure than in Australia.