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.