"If they are going to end up drinking recycled water ... then frankly they've got to have certain rights and I'm not going to leave them out."
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=65741

What is this right that bereft Beattie is talking about.

When all the water in the world is currently locked up in the oceans, why do certain aristocrats believe that recycled water is going to save the nation. Surely they can come up with something better than that.

And with the health crises already knocking on the doors of the Queensland health system, whos to say it wont get worse when they return toilet water to Queensland homes. This sort of anti-logic looks to me like some contemporary, tehcnological neo-agrarianism. Like in the days when old societies used too fertalise the garden vegetables with you know what.

Just because this idea is being touted by those on high, doesnt mean that it should be accepted by Mr and Mrs Average. Beattie should be informed of his right to provide the best services his Government can produce. Governments have acess to the best knowledge in the country, and they should be forced by the populations to use this knowledge base to develope parrallel lines of supply to homes in need of water, and not just rely on the murkiest solution.

Pooralcy i say.

Maybe John Howard could offer some of his billion dollar surplus instead of saving it to hand out like lollies to win the next election.

Generally, I support the idea of using desalinated water for our costal towns. However, Toowoomba is not a coastal town. It's 115 km from the coast, and also 800m up.

Of course, in reality, one wouldn't pipe desalinated water from the coast. Instead one would desalinate water on the coast for Brisbane, and use one of the nearer reservoirs as the source for Toowoomba's water, such as Wivenhoe.

Still, that's still 65 km away, and the water would still have to be pumped uphill for 700m. That gets expensive. Lifting water through that distance requires about 2.5kWh per kilolitre (75% pumping efficiency), even before frictional losses are dealt with.

The technology used for recylcling water produces a product that is cleaner than ordinary tap water. If Toomwoomba residents really don't want to drink it out of some misguided sense that water molecules can somehow be tainted, then they're going to pay a significant price for their water, even assuming that a suitable pipeline could be built in time.

Sylvia.

What's the problem? All water is recycled. Does everyone think that water that falls as rain and runs into dams isn't ? It then runs through and over ground that is saturated with dung and detritus to remain in a stagnant pool before being cleansed and piped to homes. What is the difference between that and purefying used domestic water directly. It gets recycled naturally anyway. Even the people that have used tank water for generations drink water that has run over roofs and into gutters where possums and birds crap and isects die.

From my research it appears that it costs more, & uses more energy, to recycle water, than it does to desalinate sea water.
I can therefore see no reason, other than to appease greenies, to even consider recycling water on the coast.
There are plenty of uses that the currently treated water can be put to, aith advantage.
Toowoomba would not have a water shortage, if they were allowed to dam one of the rivers up on the downs.
They were not allowed to, because it runs into Wivenhoe, & thus supplies Brisbane. Obviously much more important than allowing those bushies to use it, even if it comes from there.
If we can ever get the city to take responsibility for its own water supply, [as destinct from taking other peoples water] Toowoomba will be able to harvest their own water, & supply themselves, with out any problem

Sylvia, I generally support recyling water with one reservation. It's easy to imagine the day that the government put's a CEO into the organisation responsible for recyling the water with a focus on cost cutting.

We've seen the kind of debacle which that can lead to in other government run organisations when the CEO's performance pays are based around short term cost savings. When the managers around that CEO are on a similar deal, when the minister(or treasury) does not want to hear that they can't cut costs even more. When the staff who know what needs doing and who care about the quality of the water are made redundant because someone has an artificial financial target for their department.

I don't know how we protect ourselves against that kind of mismanagement and it seems all to much a part of the political cycle.

R0bert