It’s the price of water that is the problem.

My urban water now costs 92.5 cents per kilolitre, 1 cent per10.8 litres, about $0.50 per day for my average household.
At this price there is no hip pocket incentive for any of us to change our way we use water.

If our spineless politicians would increase the price of water, then the good ideas put forward by these posts and others would happen.
The 10% leakage from Sydney Water’s pipes would be addressed, dad would be onto the kids running water to waste while cleaning teeth, front loading washing machines and native gardens would be all the go, developers would soon wake up that houses without water saving tanks would be discounted. And so on.

Public education and restrictions are of marginal effect while limiting population and stagnating this country in order to continue to waste cheap water is a poor option.
Government mandates with associated armies of bureaucrats, local Govt. inspectors and private loophole specialists we can do without.

So I say put up the price of water and let market forces and ingenuity supply the means by which we use our water more efficiently.

I live near Perth. Almost all our rain falls in the winter. In the summer our [small] tanks would probably be empty for much of the time.

How about quality? Birds defecate on roofs. Crows take the leftovers from barbecues onto roofs to pick them over. I used to work on roofs before I retired. I've seen dead rats up there. Will the public liability section of my home insurance cover me if a visitor claims sickness due to drinking a glass of water at my place?

Our local council virtually forces us to have verge lawns, whether we want them or not. If we put in an application for anything else on the verge, we're likely to be knocked back. If we do anything else without asking and someone dobs us in, we're likely to be threatened with legal action.

The justification for this is the council's supposed legal liability if someone hurts themselves by tripping over whatever we have done. I've pointed out that a person can fall over a recessed lawn sprinkler, trip over a buffalo runner or walk into a legally planted street tree.

These verges take a huge amount of water in our long, hot summer. The verge is my only lawn and I don't really want it. I have pointed out that the council can't force me to water it, cut and edge it or weed it. It could be a jungle of weeds in our wet winter and a dustbowl in the summer. But I don't want to do that to the street. I'd prefer a nature strip, good for the wildlife and economical on water.

I water off my private bore, but that's no justification for wasting water on a lawn I don't want.

I'd be happy to have a tank inside the ceiling, automatically topped up from the bore when it comes on for watering, and used for toilet flushing. This sounds neither complicated nor expensive to me, particularly if it had been done when the house was built.

I like the idea of water tanks but I don’t like forcing people to buy one if they don’t want it.

My water bill is 70% fixed charge and 30% usage. Why not make it 100% usage and 0% fixed? Even my gas bill has affixed charge of only 10 to 20%.

Increasing the usage charge and decreasing the fixed charge will make it more economical to install a tank and won’t increase your water bill. Proper use of market forces will encourage people to install their own tanks and they won’t need to be coerced. It will also reward people for using any other method that reduces water consumption.

I find it repugnant that people like Greg Cameron would consider lobbying government to force people to buy their product. It sounds like the Cross City Tunnel all over again. Making tanks mandatory on the transfer of title is a dumb idea. What happens when a rundown property is sold to a developer? You would have to install the tanks on a building about to be demolished.

Water conservation is a great idea but maybe the carrot is better than the stick.

Brisbane

Spot on. The continuously increasing demand caused by continuous population growth is the overarching issue.

Greg Cameron writes; “Australia’s drinking water supply could be permanently secured when every building is required to reduce mains drinking water consumption, with the use of rainwater tanks being an acceptable way to achieve this.”

No it couldn’t. Not for as long as we as a nation are hooked into the absurdity of continuous growth without even the slightest thought of it coming to an end.

Brisbane writes; “The solution proffered here is to give people MORE storage, thus encouraging them to use more water - the tank water first and then the town supply.”

Yes. In fact the concept is very dangerous, because in times of drought when the tanks are empty, the draw on town supplies will be just as great as it is now, and a whole lot larger as the population grows. It is all very well to encourage home collection and storage, but it won’t lessen the need for large supply systems capable of supplying whole population centres or regions as if there were no private, business or apartment block tank set-ups at all.

The promotion of tanks, as with the promotion of water conservation, will allow the population to grow larger without increasing the communal resource supply. For as long as we have continuous growth, all water conservation measures will serve to promote or facilitate this growth. The continuous increase in demand threatens to cancel out all the gains that could be made by improving water conservation, usage efficiency and alternative collection and storage.

We absolutely MUST look at sustainability and strive for limits to growth, instead of the warped idea of continuously striving to increase the supply and/or improve efficiency without doing anything about the ever-increasing demand.

I’m not against water tanks in urban areas but they are not the solution, unless they are so large that they drought-proof the users. They would be part of the solution if we addressed the growth factor as well.

Leigh got my figures wrong, my 0.5kl/day was for five people which makes only 0.1kl/day per person which is 1/10th of his figure. Robb88 is absolutely correct in highlighting the problem of the fixed water charge. It is a tax not a charge. It is the main factor in undermining the economics of urban water tanks as the more you save the higher the rump water charge becomes. It is a tax levied by a type of institution that has no taxing powers under the constitution.

The other major issue is the protection of our right to capture our own water that falls on our own land. This is a very sinister threat that will have serious and unforeseen implications right across the community. Until now, the only water rights under threat have been those of the farming minority but, rest assured, any erosion of those property rights will serve as precedents for a similar erosion of urban rights.

And the principle is quite simple and clear. If the state owns the water the moment before it falls on my house then it is the state that must pay for, and repair, my roof. And when that water comes through my open window and ruins my photo album then the state is clearly responsible for the damage done by it's water. This is clearly not the case so the water must be the property of 'God', in the legal sense. And if 'God' or nature made it fall on my land then it was clearly God's or nature's intention to give it to me, not the state.

So forget all the this population smokescreen, Ludwig is employed by one of the country's worst water thieves, and make it very clear that the water on your roof belongs to you, not shonk central.

Here is a question for Brisbane and Cairns City Councils, which prohibit house owners from using their own rainwater in their own household plumbing.

Do the following statements correctly reflect rights of ratepayers?

The right to collect water from roofs for rainwater tanks is vested in the building owner.

The right to use water collected from roofs for rainwater tanks is vested in the building owner.

Water collected from roofs for rainwater tanks falls within the ownership of the building owner.

The water supply system from a rainwater tank may be plumbed in accordance with clause 14.3.3 of the applied provisions of the Standard Plumbing and Drainage Regulation 2003 (AS3500.1:2003/Amdt), as follows--

14.3.3 Connection between service pipes
Where a water supply system from a rainwater tank is connected with the water service from a network utility operator’s water supply, the following applies:
(a) An appropriate backflow prevention device shall be provided to protect the network utility operator’s water supply.
(b) Where the rainwater is being used as a supply to a flushing device, either a backflow prevention device, as shown in Figure 14.1 (a), or an air gap within the cistern as shown in Figure 14.1 (b), shall be provided.
(c) A suitable device (e.g., single check valve) shall be provided on the pipeline from the rainwater tank to prevent water from the network utility operator’s water supply flowing into the rainwater tank.

Greg Cameron
www.urbanrainwater.com