Forrest, Steele
Very informative thanks,
I very much suggest that there won't be one solution but many. Much of the early comments were based I think on the emotional 'yuk factor' or total ignorance to the real risks in proportion to others.
I guess my point Forrest is that your statements on motivation is valid for Victoria but as you also point out places like Toowoomba the options are very much reduced.
Clearly I am in no way as knowledgeable as to the specifics as both you but I do have an interest in all things survival.
Can you perhaps help me understand what I have been taught by the local water people when in Qld? (? My mum lives there and due to the dramas a while back she asked me to explains so I took myself [with the help from powers that be] to the plants and spent time learning *basically* how it was all supposed to work.)
BTW there was much fuss up there about both options being used together any thoughts/ please.
1. A Qld Shire was selling the dried processed waste for fertilizer but was stopped because of a high level of 'radio active'(?) naturally occurring (its toxic anyway.) substance that concentrates in the process. The waste is now dumped.)
If it’s too toxic to sell for gardens dumping sounds suss.
a. what is it?
b. how does it accumulate?
c. where is the research on neutralizing it?
d. do we know much about the dumping effects?

I do remember however that rain water contains more than pure water what depends on a myriad of circumstances.
I also read that there are different brands? Of reverse osmosis and that the waste is being treated for fertilizer status/ what do you know of these?

Hi examination,

The product you refer to is known as biosolids. To give a little background our water authority has been carting the wet sludge (recovered from sewerage before the wastewater is discharged into the ocean) 60kms along the highway to another treatment plant to lie in ponds then to be spread on surrounding fields within the boundary of the facility.

They are now constructing a biosolids plant. This dries the wet sludge into pellets which are safer to health and lighter for transportation. This product is to be sold to farmers for use on farmland and although there are restrictions on its use they are far less than that of wet sludge.

To digress slightly, the plant is very high in energy use, both electricity and natural gas. However when a complete energy audit is done the sums favour (only just I might add) drying as the lesser GHG producer. This is because pond drying creates methane which is a far more powerful GHG (about 20-25 times CO2 from memory) in terms of its contribution to warming. Also the road transport needed to be taken into account.

As the plant is being constructed under a PPP (public/private partnership) the owner will have to be able to make a profit on the product and so their business case must have ticked all the boxes.

Anyway the trade waste management of the water authority is critical in making biosolids viable for areas other than non consumptive ones like tree plantations etc. If your authority has been deficient in this area then your sludge may well contain significant levels of heavy metals, some that may be radioactive, which can quickly bio-accumulate via grazing cattle and into humans. Remember much of it has already had one pass at bio-accumulation to end up as sewerage in the first place.

The radiation contamination can come in many forms and be naturally occurring, indeed one significant source can be from accumulation in water filters. I assume the levels in your area have made biosolid production unviable and yes there are issues with dumping the stuff.

cont'

Cont’

You have asked how it accumulates. Think of radioactive iodine as an example spread over all the fields in a district. A dairy cow hovers up an acre of grass increasing the concentration in its own body then releasing it via its milk to be consumed by yourself. Your thyroid selectively uptakes the radioactive iodine thus a further concentration occurs. Although it is hard for the body to excrete heavy metals from the body some will end up back in the sewerage. If the biosolids ‘manufactured’ from the produce of a district are then spread over one or two fields further base concentrations will occur.

My understanding is that although there are techniques for removing heavy metals from biosolids in many cases it is just too expensive to be viable. Instead they are graded by their heavy metal content and organic pesticide content and used or disposed of accordingly.

I hope this helps.

Csteele,
Thanks I wasn't sure of what I was told in this area but your explanation rings bells.
Is this what the MMBW used to spread on their paddocks at werribee if so they graized cattle and it was next to a river and where I went fishing. Incidently I got bacterial blood poisoning from a cut foot from there too complete with 14 days in 'death central'as it was known then( Box Hill Public Hospital). That was years ago.

It seems appropriate to draw attention to the fact that this discussion can illuminate not just the issue of actual or anticipated reticulated water supply shortage and the potential for its amelioration by recycling of sewage effluent, but those associated issues of applications of renewable energy, utilization of waste heat and off-peak electricity surplus from existing coal-fired plants, climate-independent desalinated water supply, and effluent disposal into the marine environment.

The technologies associated with waste heat utilization, geothermal heat extraction, reduced-pressure seawater desalination, solar pond energy collection, engineered wetland disposal of sewage effluent, and the cultivation of oil algae, are all potentially very synergistic.

Securing of a climate-independent desalinated water supply can in the process provide a key component of the means of conversion from coal-fired electricity generation to 100% renewable energy supply, simply by conserving the saturated brines that are a by-product of the reduced-pressure desalination process, rather than viewing them as a disposal problem, which they otherwise could be.

The acquisition of adequate quantities of salt for the saturated temperature inversion layer of solar ponds is generally the major cost associated with establishment of such cost-effective solar energy collection facilities. As an example, consider the point made with respect to the SE Queensland water shortage, in this post: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=495#9790 , that, "Using only the existing pipeline to deliver seawater [inland] to Tarong, it would take around 13 years to accumulate sufficient near-saturated brine in around 560 surface Ha of solar pondage to be capable of producing solar generated electricity equivalent to the 1400 Mw generating capacity of the existing coal fired operation."

77/20!

Where does the energy come from to pump these brines and sewage effluents inland? How about from the surplus of presently off-peak largely coal-fired electricity generating capacity of the national electricity market?

It is also a good time to point out the link given by rstuart in this post to the contemporary topic 'Recycled sewage': http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2586#58291