For more on this topic re drinking sewage as our water is sold off please read this article from The Age 12/1/07
This is happening in Powelltown, Victoria as we write.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/anger-over-licence-for-bottled-water-firm/2007/01/11/1168105116676.html

Anger over licence for bottled water firm

Cameron Houston and Liselotte Johnsson
January 12, 2007
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A BOTTLED water manufacturer with links to the soft-drink giant Coca-Cola Amatil has been given the green light to extract pure drinking water for just $2.40 per million litres, despite plummeting water supplies.

The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal has granted a permit to Sunkoshi Ltd to construct a pipeline and two tanks on the private property in Powelltown, despite objections.

They banned CocaCola from India's villages because they were drying up their underground fed creeks/resources which were used for decades by the farmers.The Indian gov stepped in and closed the CCfactories.
That stuff is bad for you anyhow,no great loss,how about it JH? close them here as well and stop obesity in kids at the same time?

Country Gal,
I think the Idea of the 10% Cap on water harvesting on private property is to stop the unprincipled harvesting of water in quantities that would affect downstream users . Fair enough .
If the downstream users start water profiteering from someone adherence to the law ,then there's a big source of friction .
I think the biggest problem with the Free market for water is when unproductive cities and towns accumulate water from desperately poor farmers [relatively speaking] and hold the asset for population expansion to feed wastefull economic growth that continues to increase the size of our "footprint" as we consume more and more of our natural resources .
Water Corporations put up the price of their cheaply acquired water at will and cashed up city and town folk pay without a wimper for their hot showers and sewerage systems.Farmers must wait for rain and a buyer for their produce .
Do we want well watered city expansion at the cost of a shrinking population in the bush ?
With already failing Hospital Services eg. obstetrics and dentists gone , are we just going to kow tow to the big city parties and their bush cronies feeding their expansion plans at the expense of the bush ?

Thanks for this article. The policies being followed by Australian Governments are examples of the sort of parts thinking that has led to the fundamental challenges we face in our economies and societies in our divided unsustainable world.

These challenges are perhaps greater than at any other time. They have arisen because of how we have been trained to think, plan and act as individuals and how we have applied this training to the way we organise and govern ourselves. We have thought, planned, organised, governed and acted as though our world is comprised of parts that can be separately exploited by humans and managed by us from one stable state to another. We have forgotten we are just one species in a complex natural world. We have tended to act without a sense of wholeness - without integrity. Meeting these challenges will require new approaches to how we are trained to think, plan and act as individuals and how we are trained to organise and govern. These new approaches will need to be based on our current scientific understanding of our world and the human mind. This scientific understanding indicates water is an integral part of our world.

Let us hope this article ignites quickly a balanced and integrative consideration of the issues involved by those with the scientific understanding and those who are well-rewarded to represent us. Even climate change "realists" should be able to change their minds in the face of overwhelming evidence.