“A reminder that 1 litre of water weighs 1 kilogram. It is ludicrous to push hundreds of kilo's of water 1,600km just to have a shower.”

Seaweed, it would indeed be hugely expensive. It has been enormously expensive to pump water from the Burdekin Dam to Townsville in dry times, a distance of ~160 km.

But as Peter Ravenscroft says, a pipeline (and pumping stations) could be built far more quickly than a desalination plant of the same magnitude. And time is of the essence.

This water would not be “just to have a shower”. It could be a matter of the coherence of society in SEQ. Without it there could be massive civil upheaval and an exodus of desperate people. Let’s not brush over the seriousness of the situation.

“The problems in SEQ are just a symptom of over expansion of both population and industry.”

Absolutely! This factor is at least as much to blame as the decline in rainfall.

“The solution is simple, reduce both.”

We can’t do that quickly. In the longer term yes perhaps some reduction would be advisable. A moratorium on population growth in SEQ should have been implemented some years ago, or at the very least a gearing down of the growth rate. It is ludicrous beyond all words for this rapid population growth to have continued unabated throughout the period when governments knew that there were serious water problems.

“If industry wants land and water it should move to Townsville.”

Aaaaaarrgh no! We don’t want to just spread the problems around. Townsville’s growth rate is tooo big as it is. And it is in a dry belt, having had numerous failed wet seasons in recent years and serious water problems for just the same reasons as SEQ – too much development and population growth for the water resource to comfortably and confidently support.

Some relocation might be sensible, within a stable population regime. But to just accept that the rapid influx into Queensland will continue and that Townsville, Cairns, Mackay, etc will cop the brunt of it is just not on.

It's interesting to observe our community react to the latest round of pressures. Global warming & water supply. Which might even be the same topic actually. There is no less water on the planet than usual. Short term - we should all get tanks, and continue to modify our attitudes and behaviour. I don't think we have done enough of either yet. Then we need to recognise that what water we do have is probably "occurring" in the "wrong" place. That means we might just have to "move" it ie from the Wet North to the Thirsty South (pipeline?) and also seriously consider the implications of a simple fact. Most of our cities are on the coast - the most reliable supply of water is right there - we just have to find a better way of taking the salt out. Is anyone working on that ? Whose job is it to pay attention to that ? Did someone say politicians and administrators ? Are they actually doing anything, and / or reporting back to us ? We are stuck in a blame game just now and should demand better. No-one is to blame for the drought, not even us. It was probably going to happen some time anyway, and we would not have thanked politicians who demanded big sums of money from us for infrastructure we could not see the need for. We must all act quietly and calmly to move this problem towards the best set of solutions - now !

Nostradamus! – where are you when we need you?
What lies ahead, weather or even climate- wise? (those scientists reading the entrails of our slaughtered atmosphere are so unbelievable!).
Without over-exercising the imagination by peeking around the future’s impenetrable corner, perhaps we should just accept that the climate record of the past 60,000 years indicates that our “droughts” are normal, and the wetter patches are exceptional. And harvesting 1890s, or 1974 Brisbane River flood events to even out the average has its difficulties.
My folks up around Townsville and further north have not had a decent wet season for yonks now. Most of the rain events have occurred on the coastal side of the high country from which the Herbert, the Tully, and the Burdekin rivers rise. Getting an assured supply for S.E. Queensland from up there really is a pipedream.
In some parts up there, it has been so dry that the muscle-bound cane toad has not even been able to weep, but has croaked. During the dry, the more svelte local-yokel frog has survived by applying thousands of years of experience. After return of rain, they have reappeared from sheltering in cracks in tree-trunks, soil, or whatever to ribbit, squawk and make hell of what used to be night-time silence.
The South-East Queensland human canetoads might be well advised to learn to accommodate themselves to the ecological niche they have occupied for so short a time. That, rather than attempt to continue business as usual by putting all their efforts exclusively into doing the reverse.
There can be no prospect of success for that desirable lifestyle for so many people at present in the long term. For a lesser-desirable one? Maybe. For an ever-escalating number of people? Never.
Tiddalick the giant frog might produce the goods for water once a century, but lifestyles for the locals could be miserable in between, and during, the events. How to tell?
Nostradamus, we need you!

Let there be absolutely no doubt that the only reason we have a water crisis is that we have ceded this part of our needs to the public sector. When tanks were phased out in the past it was under the belief that the public sector could manage this service more efficiently and deliver as much water as anyone could possibly need.

Since then the cost of a tank has more than halved, the average roof area has doubled and the cost of maintaining an ancient pipe system has multiplied. We now have more expensive mains water than a tank can supply and we can't use it for all the needs we were led to believe we could.

In a semi-privatised, deregulated, water market pensioners in big old queenslanders with lots of roof area and room underneath could install a few large tanks and sell their surplus to their neighbours.

Farmers could manage part of their property exclusively for water yield (still 5Ml/ha at Esk) and either capture it in their own dams or deliver it, via the river, to a down stream water market (called a dam).

Others closer to the city could install off-stream storages for capturing urban storm water for resale to industrial users, deliverd via small drip lines (attached to the optus cable) to on site water tanks.

And above all, with 13,500 litres of water tank capacity at each household, the average Brisbane home, even in the current drought, would only need to get 32,000 litres from other sources during September, October and November.

And the City Council would still be free to operate their recycling plant to supply industry and farmers up stream.

Given that we are getting a desalination plant and that quite a few households also have a swimming pool, I have recently suggested to Gold Coast Water the following idea that they are now investigating: that water tankers be allowed to tap into the filtered seawater just before it enters the reverse osmosis stage. Householders can then pay to have their new pools filled from scratch or have existing pools topped up, without having to draw down on dam-fed water. This is a practical idea worth serious consideration.

Sylvia says "Water supply is a natural monopoly. Accordingly, it can only be performed by governments, or by a private company functioning as a regulated monopoly."

While it appears to be a natural monopoly we have been able to get over the natural monopoly problem with electricity and communications.

The problem is in distributing the excess profits obtained by selling cheap water at high prices but not high enough to encourage desalination and recycling by other suppliers.

A solution we are promoting http://cscoxk.wordpress.com/2007/03/14/water-rewards-pilot-project/ includes the distribution of some of the profits in a way that requires them to be invested in the market for water sustainability infrastructure. The distribution of profits to consumers is done by a not for profit controlled by the water consumers.