Seeing that the country is run under competition policy, one where the market rules, it would be consistent to have water brought into line.
As long as productivity gains of 1.2% can be maintained, then water will continue to be available subjected to the present rate of diminuition; externalities excepted, of course.
It needs to be no less than that rate, because it just matches Australia's population growth.
In 55 years (2060 near enough) we would have twice the present efficiency: just what is needed to maintain the status-quo for water-per-capita. In the absence of any alternate economic approach, the need for such efficiencies will be required to continue. The future impact of the current downward trend in water matters can be regarded as an externality.

In keeping with the predominant economic paradigm of ignoring such externalities, others such as predicted decrease in rainfall and increase in evaporation will also be ignored for articles such as this one.

Water re-cycling is still a long way off from being affordable for the average person. Until then, another alternative would be to relocate or build new dams in locations where average rainfalls are highest. Weather patterns have changed and as a result catchment areas are no longer in the best location. This would be an expensive government initiative but would have long term state/national benefits. Australia doesn't want to be backed into a corner, paying exorbitant fees for re-cycled water or our dams running dry. We need to look at other alternatives. We think back to Mexico and how they were backed into a corner and had to act quickly to save lives. With the cholera outbreak in Mexico which was the result of the main water supply being infected, the government made a massive investment in re-building the pipelines and so saved millions of lives and improved the general health of the citizens. We are not experiencing cholera, but what is similar about the Australian and Mexican story is that our water supply is limited. Let's look at dam re-location.

The Howard Government has a proud history of dam construction and water conservation programs. Tully in North Queensland, Australia's wettest town has had a water bypass system in place to divert water into a huge resiviour, so it can be used for crop irrigation, and drinking water for the whole of North Queensland, a great start to increase water stocks on the dryest continent on Earth.....um! Sorry I was only dreaming, they have done very little indeed!

There are two more ways to improve sustainability of water supplies,

1 improve the efficiency of the catchment, and
2 move the catchment to maximise rainfall and runoff.

A typical forested catchment only collects 5% of its rainfall. The rest is used by the vegetation cover. The taller and heavier the vegetation the lower the runoff. A house roof, a supermarket roof and parking lot, an airport or a road all have close to 100% runoff efficiency. Very little rain is evaporated or used by the surface covering. So a shift from using forested catchments to using roofs and pavement will generally produce a 20 fold improvement in supply from the same area.

Put another way, a roofed catchment need only be 5% of the size of a forested catchment to deliver the same amount of water. And this enhancement in the efficiency of catchments can easily offset reductions in the efficiency of storage infrastructure.

A house with less than a 9000 litre tank is really just lip service to self sufficiency. The larger the tank the cheaper the storage. A 9000 litre tank costs about $1,500 while a 27,000 litre tank costs only $3,000.

I am thoroughly sick of the incredible blind spot that so many thinking people have with population growth.

Kevin Cox writes about sustainability and reduction of demand. But despite this he fails to entertain ANY thought of limiting population size or even reducing the rate of growth. He writes; “… the future supply of water (both fresh and recycled) must be sufficient to meet the needs of a growing population.”

He just sits back and accepts that rapid population growth will continue unhindered. Well…. how on earth can he dare to talk about sustainability, or dare to even suggest that better water-use efficiency will reduce demand if the number of users is going to rapidly increase with no end in sight? Give me a break!

In most cases, the implementation of better recycling or overall water-use efficiency will simply allow more people to live under the same water resource. It will just lead to an exacerbation of the situation….. unless the other half of the equation is dealt with as well – population stabilisation.

“recycling is necessary for long term sustainability but is rarely economically justified in cost terms when compared to the cost of fresh mains water.”

Firstly, the words “long-term” are redundant. Anyone who knows the meaning of sustainability would realise this.

Secondly, NO…. recycling is NOT necessary for sustainability!

Matching the demand with the supply rate, while leaving a very comfortable safety margin, is what we need for sustainability. This does not necessarily include recycling.

By far the most important thing to address is the ever-increasing demand

Ludwig, the rest of us are sick to death of your population "dogs vomit" that you keep returning to. Most rural houses in Australia get all their household water needs from tanks smaller than 27,000 litres. Such a tank, according to my catalogue, costs $2,900 and the annual interest on this, at 7% a year, would be $203. And as the average home has 2.7 people in it then this works out at $75 per person each year.

This is the price of self sufficiency in household water in perpetuity. In contrast, the average income of an Australian is about $50,000 a year so lets get all this so called "water crisis" in perspective. The cost of self sufficiency is not 1% of average income, it is only 0.15 of 1% of average income. The average worker covers their annual water costs from working for only 3 hours a year.

But you and your sad and miserable bunch of lilliputan ideologues want to impose draconian population controls, to reach your grubby fingers right into the bedrooms of ordinary Australians, on the basis of a supposed crisis in the supply of water that might drive the cost of this water above the price of two slabs of beer.

Please, find the rock from whence you crawled and get back under it where you can no longer be a public nuisance.

Ow ullow to Persy. Thought he’d dropped off the perch. O well… just wishful thinking

Now, who was it who LIED unequivocably to the readers of OLO just recently? (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4163#34847) and in doing so (along with frequent deliberately false statements concerning other OLO respondents) showed himself to be willing to stoop to the lowest levels in order to knock those with whom he disagrees? (not just me by any means).

For months he has refused to answer questions that I have put to him in the interests of sensible debate and has concentrated on being as rude as he possibly can, within the confines of his very narrow brain.

I’m not even going to try and entertain debate with him here. It is pointless.

As is evident from the tone of his post, he is not mentally well.

(but at least he is entertaining)

The main purpose of the article was to illustrate ways of including objectives other than economic objectives into economic systems. In the article it was the non economic objective of sustainability of water supply.

Ludwig has hit upon the idea that we need to reduce population for sustainability.

The proven way to reduce population is to make it economically unattractive to have children. The economic rewards for having children are declining. Previously in many societies children were a long term economic asset. With increasing prosperity children are not an economic asset to the parents and the number of children will continue to decline with increased prosperity.

Hence the best way to reduce population is to make society more prosperous and to do that we need to make more economically efficient use of limited resources including water.

(Using the ideas in the article one way to accelerate population reduction would be to pay young women a bonus for each year they remain childless and get the money for the bonus by charging women who produce children a reverse baby bonus:)

The trick in applying the ideas is to have some goal - other than economic - on which most of us agree then finding ways of manipulating the economic system to achieve that goal. I think sustainability is one idea whose time has come and we can adjust our economic system by building mechanisms, as illustrated into the pricing of recycled water, to achieve this non economic goal.

I'd like to warmly endorse what fickle pickle has to say.

Being concerned about population size is fine, but to see every issue through the lens of direct measures for stopping population growth is not very subtle, nor effective. I doubt whether well ever make the idea of having children basically unpopular with most of us, as its such a basic biological drive.

We can however remove some of the incentives for having many children and we have a good hope for having a sustainable society if it is economically productive and educationally rich. Its the poor regions of the world that are driving overall population growth today, not Australia.Lets help them make a demographic transition every way we can.

Almost all of the resources to manage society sustainably come from wealth. Efficient use of resource is one outcome of innovation - carrots are OK, and this article introduces new angles to that concept.

By the way, early (first) comment poster, markets are not just markets - they also offer individual freedom of choice, and economic liberty is a basic right worth defending.

Goodonya Dr Cox.

"markets are not just markets' you say, d.
Indeed not! Any reasonable and progressive society would regard them as useful and essential tools rather than gods; as they would competition policy.
Economic liberty would be more widesread than at present were markets and competition policy viewed from some other position than from a prayer mat facing the psycedelic idol born of their economic hallucinations.
But economic freedom as it exists for most members of society under present implementation is evaporating and wafting away to benefit offshore locations even more quickly than does "green water" from inland Australia on a hot summer's day.
As for population - for how long can efficiencies continue to be made on each and every social need - of which water is just one. Supremely important though it is.
What a hide, those of breed-and-bust mentality have, in attempting to take the high ground on social choice!
Australian women have chosen a fertility rate of slightly less than 1.8, and good luck to them. Yet, they are being pressured by zealots to have more. And what choice do voters have in regard to numbers-boosting via immigration? Both the conservatives in Government, and those who control the opposition benches, dictate that (between 110 and 140 thousand)affluent and/or skilled, not the needy, migrants are brought in from overseas to ensure Australia's total increase in numbers is a million in four years.
Anyone advocating a continuation, as an ever-present necessity, of numbers and associated consumption needs is either mathematically challenged, or/and lives in the fog of creation rather than science. Just what do they mean by their mutterings of "a sustainable society"?

Fickle Pickle and d, you are missing a couple of important points:

Firstly, Australia does have a high quality of life, with lots of alternatives for women other than being fulltime mums and home-keepers. It IS economically unattractive to have children. This is why our birth rate has dropped enormously in recent decades.

Secondly, given our very moderate birth rate, the issue of population growth is by and large one of immigration, which neither of you mentioned.

“Ludwig has hit upon the idea that we need to reduce population for sustainability.”

Fickle, it is not about reducing population, but it sure as heck is about stabilising population size.

“Being concerned about population size is fine, but to see every issue through the lens of direct measures for stopping population growth is not very subtle, nor effective.”

d, Kevin Cox is writing about water recycling with direct reference to sustainability… and it is simply impossible to achieve sustainability in Australia with our rapid population growth, or anything like it. EVERY subject that is related to sustainability has the same issue – continuously increasing population, which means continuously increasing demand for all manner or resources, which means a dilution, a cancelling out or a complete overwhelming of good initiatives, such as water recycling.

It is not a matter of seeing everything through the lens of population growth, it is a matter of, as I said in response to Kevin, so many people having the most amazing blind spot with this critical issue of sustainability. This is why I feel the need to keep on introducing it in many threads on OLO.

Ludwig, you did say, "how people can put their life’s work into more efficient and higher productivity while never putting the slightest bit of effort towards stopping the demand from continuously increasing", and, "I maintain that it would be an enormously better idea for us to put most of our efforts into stabilising the demand on our resource base rather forever trying to increase the supply rate".

And while you may be capable of classifying my reference to this as a "lie", few but your gonzo mates would do the same. But this sort of defamatory ranting is standard operating procedure, as you have consistently demonstrated.

You take every opportunity to turn any sort of constructive discussion on just about every resource issue into a population rant. And the behaviour of yourself and your little rent-a-crowd makes it clear to most readers that you would actually stiffle innovation to heighten interest in your ideology.

A man on the spot in West Bengal once told me that "if you really want to reduce population growth then all you need to do is put a TV in every hut". But good governance with respect for the rights and liberties of individuals (including procreation) also works a treat.

But tell me, Ludwig, do you have a water tank? My guess is that you probably don't own a house and don't have any kids. And as the old joke went, "if you no playa da game, you no makea da rules".

On the topic of water catchments... some of ours are situated in our National "lock-'em-up-and-let-'em-burn" Parks, futher reducing our catchments' ability to catch water. It's a simple fact that certain modes of trapping and transporting water are more effective. To trap water around a clay lined hole in the ground is efficient whilst to trap it in the middle of our unmanaged National Parks is a waste of time. To transport water by irrigation canals that are open to the elements and lined by soil is inefficient whilst to transport it by pipe is far better.

Some means of trapping the excess water that would normally flood the north of WA, Queensland and the NT for irrigation is bleeding obvious, especially in light of the recent flooding in WA... i'm not saying we can stop flooding, but having a way of diverting water into a holding bay when faced with imminent deluge would help. If that water from Queensland could be piped to irrigators down south as well, then the Darling's first steps could be less inhibited, and there might be some flooding in Northern NSW.

Often people talk of redistribution of wealth, but redistribution of water is equally important. Areas should strive for self-sufficiency, and lowering demand in urban Australia with better technology and tanks (preferably big ones) is obvious, but in areas whose productivity could sky-rocket, such as regional and rural areas, with greater allotments of water, then why not find a way of moving excess supply there?

Perseus lied to the forum. Pure and simple. Caught red-handed. He had every opportunity to explain himself or put whatever spin on it he could. He was left speechless. He had no response, and still doesn’t.

What sort of a braincell-deficient moron would assert that someone had gone on the record as espousing something totally opposite to what they believe in, thus effectively defaming them? Who did he think he was trying to fool? After pushing him a number of times to come up with the evidence that was “on the record”, he produced something which indicated entirely the opposite. He has many times stated that I have said things or believe things that have not and do not. He does to others regularly too. It is his standard operating procedure.

Regarding water tanks; for goodness sake, how narrow is his whole outlook? I try to encompass the big-picture issues while he sticks to some tiny subissue and completely fails to relate it to the bigger picture. He makes fair and reasonable points within this narrow focus, but when it comes to the holistic view, by crikey is he lost in the wilderness.

If he wishes me to answer his question, he has got about 50 of my questions, asked in the interests of healthy debate on other threads, to answer first.

Now this is the first time that he has come up with things like “gonzo mates” and “rent-a-crowd”.

Haaaaaaaa haa – yes here are indeed a lot of other people on this forum who share my concerns about continuous population growth and sustainability. His paranoia is beginning to show.

.
DFXK, there seems to be a contradiction in what you are saying;

“Often people talk of redistribution of wealth, but redistribution of water is equally important. Areas should strive for self-sufficiency”

Aren’t regional self-sufficiency and the moving excess supply to where it is needed opposing concepts?

Excuse me Ludwig, at the time of my supposed guilty silence I was away for a long weekend at my farm with, thankfully, no PC access. And when I got back I made the relevant post which confirms two things;
1 Most people will regard it as evidence of your willingness to discourage innovation for the sake of your ideology, and
2 Most people, especially if the review the rest of those tedious threads, that you are quite capable of serious self delusion.

But I take it from your silence that you have no children and certainly have no water tank. Remember water? This is a thread about water, not some elaborate ideology to justify your own absence of progeny.

Well it was perfectly obvious that Perseus finds the discussion of population stabilisation and sustainability tedious. It is also obvious that many OLO respondents don’t, because there is plenty of it on this forum. If he finds it not to his liking, why doesn’t he butt out or leave it alone when it is introduced? What sort of a clot partakes in lines of discussion that he is not interested or knowledgeable in??

As I said last time, he lives within his own little world with his own very narrow focus, and he really doesn’t want to know that we are living very unsustainably. What a shame. Thank goodness there are progressively fewer and fewer people who think like that.

Nothing I have ever written on this forum even remotely suggests that I discourage innovation. Innovation is a very important part of achieving sustainability, which is my bottom line. We’ve been through this and Persy couldn’t produce any evidence…of course…because there is no way in the world I hold that view or would ever espouse such a thing.

His view on this is a product of one of the weirdest brains I have ever encountered, which has the extraordinary ability to project things, in the most ridiculously polarised manner, not only to the end of the spectrum, but clean off it into the realms of pure fantasy. Time and time again he attributes things to people that are so far removed from what has been written that no one but him can make any connection. He is his own worst enemy. If only he would dwell in the real world, and accept things at face value, he might stand a chance of being a meaningful commentator and debater on this forum.

I take it from his silence on the many unanswered questions that I have put to him that he knows diddly squat, and cares even less, about sustainability.

I thought Perseus posed fair questions, Ludwig. They would certainly help put some of your observations in perspective.

So, do you have a water tank?

Do you have children?

Purely in the interests of understanding your position, which - you have to admit - is quite dogmatic.

It would be interesting to see some comments on the idea in the article of taking control away from governments and government agencies and giving control to those who work towards sustainability. Is this a good idea?

David Hasslegrove (aka Ludwig), I am 51 years old. I semi-retired at 45 with a number of times more retirement funds than the superannuation industry suggests one should have. I earned that money from scratch in the market place from people who valued my capacity to observe, assess and properly implement information, people, processes and technology into the circumstances that would maximise the contribution of all these elements. This often presented the opportunity to bet my professional reputation on a "rough diamond" or an unknown quantity and the record confirms that I left the industry with my reputation intact.

Your highly defamatory attempts at portraying me as some sort of extremist with severe cognitive dysfunction would appear to be directly at variance with the assessment of my peers. And these include state and national level industry representatives, executives of major corporations and partners of numerous firms.

Your devotion to your cause would be admirable if you confined your efforts to commentary on articles discussing population etc. But you have consistently dumped your anti-population diatribes onto any trail with even the most tenuous of links to population issues. And when brought to task, you invariably resort to villification, defamation and abuse.

And when all your tedium makes other contributors tire of having any further dealings with you, you respond with boorish gloating over some sort of moral victory that exists solely within your own head.

You have stated on an earlier occasion that you are currently employed somewhere in the Queensland public service. And to this one can only say, "that would be right" and suggest that you take all steps to keep your position. For one thing is very certain from your performance on this site, sir, you have zero commercial value anywhere else.

Fickle, working towards sustainability has got be everyone’s goal with respect to water recycling, overall water policy, and everything else. But it’s got to happen within the realms of government. We can’t take control on something this big away from government without usurping the role of government. It is the very basic role of government to protect society now and into the future and to mitigate the forces that threaten this. Sustainability is one of the most fundamental roles of government.

Pericles, these questions are reasonable to ask, but they are personal questions, not questions that promulgate the debate. No one should feel pressured to answer personal stuff on a public forum.

Exchanges with Perseus have proven to be a total one-way street, as he just refuses to answer my questions. I came onto this forum in November last year with the intention of answering every question that was put to me in the interests of sensible debate. But only if the courtesy is repaid. I continue to exercise this goal of answering sensible questions with respectable respondents, which after nearly five months has proven to be every other person with whom I have had any debate on this forum.

So then, it will come as no surprise to you that I don’t have a water tank next to my urban house. I am also very pleased to say that in my forties, I have no kids and have no plans to have any. I think about that a lot and remain very grateful that it has turned out that way. It wasn’t planned – just life circumstance. By the way, I think that people in Australia should be free to have as many kids as they like, for as long as the fertility rate is well below 2.

I guess you can say that my position is dogmatic but by crikey, what do you call the position held by our governments, that is leading us so strongly away from sustainability?

Perseus

I think our battle has reached its natural conclusion.

It has become obvious that there is no point in exchanging bad blood any longer.

As you will see under ‘Some Labor states would rather rob the poor’, I have attempted to engage you in meaningful completely non-derogatory discussion.

I think we can do this very successfully if we both make an undertaking to just respect each other and to be non-offensive. I will if you will. Just give the word.

For years I wrote letters to the editor. I had a long-running hard-case battle with one particular respondent. When I finally sought him out and we sat down together, we found an enormous amount of common ground. We became good friends.

Here’s hoping.

(Ludwig is not David Haselgrove).

Ludwig says "We can’t take control on something this big away from government without usurping the role of government."

Given that in a democracy "the government" is "the people" I disagree that the proposal is taking control away from "the people". Governments still have responsibility for "the system" and can still change the way people are appointed to the board that controls the money to be spent on water sustainability. What is proposed is a different way of appointing people to boards that have responsibility for spending money on sustainability of water supply.

For society to function we cannot have "the people" controlling everything and so we have invented corporations, cooperatives, departments, etc. who each have roles.

The issue being addressed is who decides who gets to control the running of each of these bodies. Privatisation gives control to shareholders whose objectives will almost certainly not be sustainability. Leaving appointments to "the government" or state means that control is given to a group which changes and which in practise is unlikely to have sustainability as a prime objective.

The objective of the proposal is to give power to appointment boards to those members of society who through their actions are likely to agree with the premise that sustainability is a good idea.

The proposal does not take ultimate reponsibility away from "the people". What it does is to provide a different mechanism for the appointment of boards. It gives responsibility for the appointment of the board that controls the spending of money on sustainability of water supply to the members of society whose objectives are likely to include sustainability.

I disagree with Cay - water recycling is within the reach of many Australians given appropriate support from governing bodies..

Living in SE QLD, those of us in the industry have waited impatiently for changes in the QLD Plumbing Code to come into effect on 1 March this year, outlining guidelines for use of greywater. Unfortunately to our great disappointment and frustration, discretion to accept the use of greywater was given to each individual local authority and use was limited to subsurface dispersal. (Don"t make it too difficult to bring in this new technology!)

It is not cost or lack of ability that is holding back water recycling from the masses it is the governing bodies fear of responsibility and litigation. This has been maintained quite nicely by the State handing discretion to the Local Authority and around in a circle we go with no-one wanting to take responsibility and explore the possibilities. (I may not entirely agree with Toowoomba Mayor Diane Thorley but I do respect her courage in at least attempting to move council out of their comfort zone.)

Greywater treatment plants are available and could be used to provide recycled water for outdoor use. The local councils are quick to offer rebates on rainwater tanks-a passive means of increasing water storage (it does need to rain though!). Why not offer rebates on greywater treatment systems-an active means of providing an alternative and relatively constant water supply. Figures suggest that a standard household produces somewhere in excess of 1 000 litres of wastewater a day. WASTEwater is an accurate description because that's exactly what we do with it! I am sure our gardens, pathways and cars would not suffer if we were to replace mains water with recycled water for outdoor use. The high level of treatment results in recycled water of a class that it could safely be used for outdoor purposes with the support of governing bodies. Incidentally the cost of a greywater treatment system is similar to that of a large tank and installation isn't that much harder on suburban properties.

Fickle, thanks for the clarification. I have no disagreement.

But how do we get people who have sustainability as their primary motive onto boards?

Even if we did manage this, we would still have the pro-growth anti-sustainability government above them. It really has to be government itself that embraces the sustainability ethic. And for that to happen, the whole of society has to do it, and elect the appropriate government.

We may well see water boards appointed or adjusted that have sustainability as a goal. You might even argue that some do now. But for as long as we have governments that promote population growth and thus a constantly increasing demand for water, we aren’t getting sustainability. The same sort of thing applies with all sorts of things, such as the Qld Vegetation Management Act and end to tree-clearing at the end of 2006, which is very sustainability-oriented….but which is operated by a government that is far and away antisustainability-oriented, by way of its promotion and facilitation of rapid population growth and everything that goes with it.

So how do we get governments, that are in the pockets of multinationals and the vested-interest continuous growthers in general, to switch to sustainability? That is the question.

I would love to hear some suggestions.

Ludwig the proposal is one possibility that could prove to be a model. Here is the thinking in another form.

We cannot depend on governments to hold their nerve on sustainability. However, we can get windows of opportunity when governments, who are the only ones who can set this in motion, decide that sustainability is a good idea and act upon it. In that "window" of opportunity we build systems in specific areas that will be "sustainable" systems. The idea is to put a non economic goal into an economic system in such a way that the economic system will continue and will enhance the non economic objective. In the water case it is the transfer of income from mains consumption to recycling infrastructure.

The key is control of the purse strings. We give control over money to a board that is elected by many people who have demonstrated by their actions that they wish to act in a manner that fosters sustainability - hence the rewards for reducing use (i.e. these people have gone against the idea of more use being better).

While governments can always change the system, once it is in place it becomes very very difficult to change. Ask anyone who tries to change any system - for example this proposal:)

We don't solve the whole problem in one go but we solve it in bits. This week it could be water. Next week it could be public transport. Next week it could be health. Next week it could be population growth and the following week green house gases. (I am sanguine about population growth because I think our existing economic system has economic rewards for people not to have children compared to those who have children predicated on society gets "richer")

The model presented for water may or may not work but the only way to find out is for some government somewhere to give it a go. If it does work then we may have a methodology for building sustainable systems or whatever other non economic goal we decide on.

Fickle, I would have thought that an excellent window of opportunity for building sustainable systems has opened, with alarm over stressed water supplies in our major cities across the country. But the powers that be just continue cramming in more people…. and telling everyone that they have to use less. I think this is really ominous. It indicates to me that we are going to have to have a full-blown disaster before we collectively wake up to ourselves.

I can’t see that inserting non-economic goals into an economic system that is fundamentally predicated on rapid growth will achieve much. We have that sort of thing now to a fair degree. Arguably, the various initiatives that would be good aspects of sustainability are bad within the growth paradigm, because they actually facilitate more people being squeezed in under the same resources and supply lines. Water recycling, or recycling in general is a prime example.

“The key is control of the purse strings.”

And for as long as the money-minded what’s-in-it-for-me-in-the-short-term mob have the power, the purse strings are going to predominantly geared towards short-term profit.

I don’t think the incremental approach will work. The overall thinking has to change first. While there may be potential leaders out there who could promote this change, they would be quickly terminated if the big business lobby thought that they were even starting to become effective.

I never liked Keating much, but his ‘the recession we had to have’ statement was based on the premise that growth was unsustainable. Well, the same applies in the bigger picture – we are apparently going to have to have an almighty recession, which pulls apart the fabric of our society, before we grow a brain.

Sorry but I think we are so fundamentally hooked into the Easter Island syndrome, that we will just have wear the consequences when they come – about 2012 I reckon.

This is my first contribution and reading the incendiary nature of some of the comments by seasoned antagonists I intend to tread very warily lest I cop a serve too.

The following condensed extract on the subject taken from my web site covers my perception of the position here on the Gold Coast.

RECYCLED WATER
Recycled water is not the most favourite of subjects and whoever coined the phrase “toilet to tap” has a lot to answer for but that is exactly what it is, recycled sewerage, some of which would/could have passed through other humans numerous times before it reached our taps. If there was no other choice but to use it as drinking water then it would have to be accepted for that purpose but only with the most stringent measures in force.

Unfortunately I, and no doubt many others, would find it difficult to have complete faith in those measures being carried out without any possibility of a breakdown in the treatment process or human error creeping in. If a mistake is made and it follows the normal process of being discovered, vigorously denied by "officialdom" and finally admitted, it is usually followed by.“We will take whatever step are necessary to ensure that this can never happen again”, which I find to be of little comfort after the event.

The proposal to increase the volume of water in the Hinze Dam by piping/pumping recycled water into it would be unwise, even if it would be diluted by the water already in the dam as was surprisingly claimed by someone.

Fortunately such an extreme measure would not be necessary if we harvest the rainwater as suggested. There could even be a case for storing recycled water in the new reservoirs since they will be used for purposes outside of the home. However, I believe that we should rather be directing all our efforts toward persuading industry, commerce and farming to switch to recycled water wherever possible and also increase its use by GCCC and others in the irrigation of parks and gardens, golf courses, plant nurseries etc.

Welcome hyetal.

Unfortunately, the powers that be will make every suggestion except limits to population growth and hence limits to the ever-increasing demand for water. Everything in the absence of this is at best tail-chasing, if not outright facilitation of continued rapid growth [see second para of my last post].

This can’t be more obvious than in places like the Gold and Sunshine Coasts.

If we want sustainability for cities with our present or even a reduced population we have to accept permanent water restrictions because less rain is falling in the catchments of the our major cities. The alternatives are to build more dams, divert water from other catchments, to spend money on recycling or to go into desalination.

Water recycling happens today in many places in Australia but it costs money and someone has to pay for it.

All of Canberra's effluent is recycled into the Murrumbidgee and is drunk by the good folks in Adelaide. The capital cost of Canberra sewerage treatment plant was paid for from Federal Government funds not by the citizens of Canberra and I suspect the running costs are subsidised by Federal Funds.

Sydney Olympic Park with about 10000 residents gets 94% of its water from recycling and storm water. The 6% from mains supply is used for drinking and other internal household use. Olympic Park non mains water costs $2 a kiloliter compared to $1.20 for water from the mains. The capital cost of Olympic Park was covered as part of the cost of the Olympics.

The capital cost of a household tank is of the order of $50 per kilolitre and is paid for by the householder.

If we don't want water restrictions and we want sustainability through recycling it is going to cost more. The article makes a suggestion on one way to get money for sustainability from the users of mains water in a politically acceptable way.

Unless I have misunderstood, Fickle Pickle you seem to have access to a line of very inexpensive rainwater tanks at $150 for a 3000 litre capacity and $250 for 5000 litres (BG) No doubt you intended that to read “$500 per kilolitre which would equate to $1500 and $2500 respectively.

Taking that a stage further my own calculations concerning the cost of a rainwater tank are admittedly a little out of date but I still stand by the conclusion that, after factoring in most if not all of the capital and on-going costs, the resulting cost of each kilolitre (1000 litres) of water drawn from the tank would be in the order of $14 per kilolitre. This has to be stacked up against the actual cost of the water in the tank which would range from nil in the case of rainwater falling on the roof to say $1 per kilolitre when supplied from the mains. (which also fell free of charge but chose the dam and its catchment area to land on)

If you log on to my web site via the logo below you will find a section on rainwater tanks but I urge you to read it in context with the rest of the web site. The site also addresses some of the other points you raised and I would welcome any comments through this forum.

hytel I don't see any logo. Can you give the URL.

My calculations were done on the basis of a life for the tank and how much water you draw off the tank over its lifetime. Those assumptions could be way off and I expect my number is too high. It is partially related to the tank capacity.

Thank you for the welcome Ludwig and I do agree with you that we are squeezing in more people with little or no hope of meeting their needs from our present infrastructure. However, I have to ask the question, how do we stop a juggernaut
when the motivation of the local council and the developers seems to be growth (income) at whatever cost to the community ?

By the time those responsible are voted out of office (if at all) the damage has already been done and the pattern set in train.for years ahead. So do we just shrug our shoulders and say that’s democracy?

On a lighter note the only section that seems to be keeping up with the demands of a rapidly expanding population is shopping centres. They seem to be striving to provide one for each of us.

Hyetal here are the calculations on the capital cost of using storm water recycling with household water tanks.
http://www.stormwater.asn.au/tanks/tanksuppliers.html gives the cost of an above ground tank of 9000 litres at about $1000. The cost of installation appears to be about $2000 then there is the cost of pumps and other bits and pieces so we make that another $1000 or a total cost of $4000. If we assume a tank will last for 20 years, the cost of money is 8%, that the tank produces 3 times 9000 litres each year then we have

Cost of tank 4000
Number of years 20
Cost of money 8%
Litres 9000
Number of times tank "emptied" per year 3

Total Kilo litres 540
Total Cost 10400

Cost per Kilolitre 19

This does not include the cost of running pumps or of repairs or of any filtration etc. Of course the assumptions and methodology are not precise and probably wrong but it does give the order of magnitude of the capital cost of water through water tanks. Dams are a cheaper way of storing water and where they are available they always will be.

Fickle, faced with the post limit of two per day. I sent a reply to your message on the other forum“ The virtues of healthy choice” last night

Just click your cursor on the little yellow house with the green roof at the foot of this message and my web site should appear. You will find a section on my perception of each of the major issues that affect the Gold Coast and its present and future water requirements (crisis?)

Looking at the web site you used for reference in your costing I note that the News Release from Bob Carr’s office is dated May 2002 so presumably the information and prices are of that time frame which means that your $19 per kilolitre could well be higher now. Perhaps owners of rainwater tanks would soon qualify for membership of OPEC (BG).

I went to your website hyetal and found it quite interesting. There is no doubt that some governments and local authorities are using water income as a form of taxation. This is supposed to be checked by pricing bodies that are supposed to protect us from monopoly suppliers but they do not seem to stop much of the money collected from water going into general revenue.

There are many ways to recycle and use storm water to better advantage . The issue is that no matter what you do it will almost always cost more than water from dams. The only "fair" thing seems to me that if we want to have a sustainable long term system then the people who have the advantage of very cheap water from dams should contribute to the cost of sustainability by an increase in the cost of dam water they use.

You do NOT do what the ACT government is proposing which is to put ALL the burden on reducing water consumption onto new home buyers by changing the regulations so that they MUST have tanks and they must have some system to use grey water at an estimated cost of $10000 extra per new house. This is not only unfair on new home buyers it is probably the most uneconomic way to recycle and use storm water - but it is politically expedient and it makes the government appear to be doing something about the problem without upsetting existing residents.

Hyetal,

“However, I have to ask the question, how do we stop a juggernaut when the motivation of the local council and the developers seems to be growth (income) at whatever cost to the community ?”

This is the all-important question – How do we get out politicians, the profit-driven business community and indeed the whole community off the continuous growth paradigm and onto the stability / sustainability paradigm?

I don’t know. I have battled with this for a long time. The more I explore it, the more it seems that the growth momentum is totally sewn up, and the only way forward is to have a major resource disaster and then hope that political and community reaction to it will be such that an undertaking is given that nothing of the sort will ever happen again.

It seems that peak oil will give us just the disaster we need to engender a sustainability ethic, in a very short time from now.

In the meantime, recycling will achieve nothing other than to actually facilitate the squeezing in of more people under the same resource provision. Recycling in the absence of stabilisation of demand on the resource is not promoting sustainability.

Ludwig the article suggests one way that it can be done. At its heart is what bureaucrats call hypothecation dedication.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothecation

Whenever a proposal such as in the article is suggested the word hypothecation is immediately wheeled out to stop the proposal. (I know because I have been proposing various schemes based on this idea for many years) Note that politicians use it when it suits them as a way of increasing taxes without appearing to increase taxes so it can be done. (The Ansett airticket tax, the petrol tax etc).

The idea is to ask consumers of resources to pay extra for something but to tag the money collected for some other purpose. Politicians like the idea of collecting money to spend particularly if it is disguised but they hate the idea of being held to account for the expenditure. Hence the idea of tagging money for sustainability is resisted. Even more so if the expenditure is controlled by people who are elected by those whose actions say they believe in sustainability.

It the system can be introduced it will "solve" the problem because once a system, as envisaged in the article is put in place, it will fight to preserve itself as is the way of all systems.

The article proposes giving rewards to consumers who act in a sustainable way and giving those same consumers the right to control the expenditure where the use of the rewards is restricted to sustainability. This will work in all areas where sustainability is an issue be it water, transport, education, health care, land etc. The reasons why it will work is that it brings “the market principle” to expenditure as well as consumption, it has a system to keep it in place and it is more democratic as it gives power over sustainability expenditure to more people not to the elected few.

I appreciate the idea Fickle, although I must say I have never heard of hypothecation.

Not meaning to be a total pessimist, I can point out a couple of problems.

Firstly, it is the government that is horribly antisustainability-oriented, not the general community. If the community could see that extra charges were rendered in the genuine interests of sustainability, then they would very likely accept them. There is no reason for the government to be cryptic about it.

Secondly, in order for those charges to be accepted as genuine, the whole growth paradigm will have to change, and the government would have exhibit sustainability ethics across the board.

Hypothecation is thought of as sneaky. Hypothecation in the interests of sustainability, implemented by governments that continue to promote grossly unsustainable ever-increasing demand on resources, can only be thought of as doubly sneaky, if not outrightly perverted.

It is not appropriate for a government to reward consumers for being more frugal and sustainability-oriented, if that same government is going to continue to facilitate ever-more consumers. A system of sustainability-oriented consumption and expenditure sounds good. But again, if it is overridden by a government that it hell-bent on increasing the scale of operations with no end in sight, then it is just another blind alley that we are being led up.

Ludwig your objections are cause for hope. They are based on the belief that most politicians and people have growth as a prime if not only objective. I believe this is true.

What is being proposed will achieve economic growth. Here is the argument

We can increase economic growth with respect to water by using it more efficiently to achieve the desired outputs. One way to do this is to reward people who use less water for their needs, require the rewards to be spent on methods to increase sustainability and give control of the reward funds to those who have the rewards.

What is proposed is pro-growth and so is likely to happen. ALL economic growth PER HEAD of population occurs because we get more outputs from the same inputs - i.e. we use our resources more efficiently - not because we use more inputs.

We need a trial to show that the proposal works. Watch this space as there is a good chance we will get a trial and you and others can help by supporting the concept.

Fickle, what you appear to be suggesting is improvement in the per-person usage of water while the number of users continues to increase. This is exactly the sort of thing that I very strongly object to, because it amounts to pretending to do something about sustainability while the magnitude of increasing demand on the resource rides right over the top and renders it meaningless. Continuous increase in the number of consumers, in places like the Gold and Sunshine Coasts and just about every other large centre, will very effectively cancel out improvements in per person efficiency.

Yes the average economics per person would be improved if the average usage declined. But overall economics wouldn’t be improved if the overall resource continued to become more stressed.

With your idea, you are pandering to continuous economic growth, which is fundamentally opposite to a stable economic regime and hence sustainability. Yes your ideas might work in the context of the continuous growth paradigm in the first instance, but the very purpose of those ideas would be lost.

We do need real per-person economic growth, instead of the current situation of overall economic growth where the average per-person growth is nil or negative. But even per-person economic growth must realise limits, not continuous increase.

We simply MUST fight the very foundation of continuous growth thinking and not pander to it in any way, if we are to regain a healthy and secure water resource supply vs demand ratio and hence a high and secure quality of life.

Ludwig it depends on the arithmetic. If "productivity" causes a decrease in demand of 5% per year and population increases by 3% then we are in front. If productivity is -5% and population increase is -3% then we behind. With water recycling we can probably do much much better than 5%. As mentioned previously at Sydney Olympic Park residential only 6% of the water used comes from mains. If we did the same thing for other population centres as we are doing at Olympic Park we could reduce our water demands on dams by 94%. Putting it another way we could increase the population of Sydney by 16 times and not use any more water from dams.

Yes it does depend on the arithmetic, or more precisely on the rate of improvements in per-person efficiency compared to the rate of increase in ‘per-persons’.

On the Gold and Sunshine Coasts we would have to see an enormous rate of increased efficiency just to break even with the growth rate.

We can potentially do much better than 5% improvement in water-use efficiency. But even in slow-growing areas really significant gains of say 20% are going to be quickly cancelled out or at least greatly diluted, all else being the same.

I think we could potentially improve water usage from dams by 50% or more, if we all had large water tanks, implemented recycling and had to pay through the nose for town water. But why should we be forced to go down that sort of a path when the public water supply system has proven to be very good for a very long time, and is mainly being threatened now by blindly stupid overextended growth?

Yes, we have arguably come into drier times, or times of less reliable rainfall. This is a good reason to prepare the whole community to be able to get by on much-reduced water provision when necessary. And of course, it presents an absolute imperative to stop increasing demand on now unreliable water resources.

But it should not be used as an excuse to make everyone tighten their belts so that human expansion can continue unhindered

Fickle, the Sydney Olympic Park model is really good. But how feasible is it to adapt new or existing buildings / suburbs / whole cities to this model, with anything like this sort of improvement in water-use efficiency?

I reckon we would still be battling to get more than a few percent improvement on a per-capita basis, which again, would just simply be overwhelmed in most places by the growth rate.

“Putting it another way we could increase the population of Sydney by 16 times and not use any more water from dams.”

Yes! This is exactly how authorities would think about it…….’oooow goodie, we have greatly improved water efficiency, so now we can continue pandering to the real estate moguls and land speculators and our big business buddies for another decade or so before we need to start worrying again’!