Excellent article, Ian, and I do hope more people read it. My water bill would be twice yours, and just me, my three hens, the wild birds as well as my garden use it, the piped stuff. We pay for delivery plus water, two separate accounts. Our rainfall would be much less than Brisbane, which gets its water from a wide catchment, plus our government has made in harder on the farmers to build dams on their own freehold property, as well as forbid many to use ground water.

I see the sense in Permaculture Methods in farming & gardening by makeing the best use of the water you have on your patch. Same principle could be applied by City Businesses who wish to have show case gardens & use lots of water in conducting their business, that is save their roof water.

Ahhh.... So brilliant a concept that many people just cannot see the trees for the forest - or is that the forest for the trees?

How many homes had their own water tanks until they were banned by various councils under the guise of health and safety - but replaced good and usually pure wter with foul tasting chlorine or poisoned it with flouride?

Why has Coca Cola Amatil now the largest supplier of the so called "pure spring" waters in Australia? Why has the government sold them the peppercorn rated rights to plunder our natural resources?

As is often said many things are not right in our society and our right to good clean and uncontaminated water has been sold off without our consent - not only in Brisbane - but the whole of Australia, so do we need the WHO, under the guise of "improving" our water supply to rape our resources as was done in Peruagainst the WHO and Bechtel ....
- http://www.cbc.ca/news/features/water/bolivia.html
and Bolivia?- http://www2.irc.nl/source/item.php/533
and Mexico? - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4818332.stm

Would Australian have the same courage to fight back? I doubt it so many are so ensconced in their own private little world to care about anyone else and they have mostly turned into compliant little whelps, whimpering at any discomfort, but only rolling over and showing their bellies in defeat!.

It is interesting that the proponents of megafix options like desalination and effluent recycling for human consumption all base their projects on a presumed major increase in the price of water. But if more people use water tanks then the price of the tanks will actually come down in real terms. And this will operate as a classic competition based ceiling on the price that can be charged for water from the grandiose water mafiosi.

These people are setting the public up for a price/tax sting but the key to their defeat lies in the self interest of ordinary Australians. You can have the innocent pleasure of putting these spivs permanently out of business by investing for your own profit. Enjoy.

A very interesting and well thought-out article. I don't have a water tank myself but have looked into it.

I guess one thing to consider is where you live. Most people in Australia live in subtropical areas where rainfall, although divided into 'wet' and 'dry' seasons, is scattered nicely through the year. People in the wet tropics, on the other hand, would have a bit more trouble getting a tank to suit. Living in Townsville, I would have to have a pretty huge tank to capture the rain in January and February (Both averaging close to 300mm in the month) if I were to be able to use the water in the other months when the rain is generally nowhere to be seen.

That said, if I had a tank, and if that tank was dry for nine months of the year, I would still be saving money (and a precious resource) for the three months I could use it.

The value of water tanks is not to be underestimated. Even those of us with more 'difficult' climates can gain from them and, surely, they will pay themselves off over time.

Living within the 'Smart State', we are politically and administratively humbled.

To comply with its stated environmental policy, the Smart State excised my community from Ergon's distribution authority.

I live in a very wet part of Queensland; five metres so far this year and hydro-power is the most reliable and renewable source of electricity.

By the Smart State’s own reckoning, our costs of generating electricity are twenty to thirty times higher than equalised tariffs.

In January, the Smart State advised that diversion of water by gravity would be charged an additional $900/year:

“…to fulfil the federal, state and territory governments’ commitment, under the National Water Initiative agreement, to recover a proportion of the cost of water planning and management from water users; and to encourage people to use this water resource more efficiently.”

From an electricity generating perspective, rain has fallen more abundantly this year than sunshine and we wonder when the Smart State is going to start charging $900/year for the privilege of generating power through solar panels.

The author has written the most useful article to appear on On Line Opinion since...the Flood (?). Watching the Queensland Government run around like a chook with its head cut off over water in SE Qld may not be edifying, but it sure makes Mr Motts sanity look pretty dam good to me.