There is a new product about to come on the market, a monument to Australian inventive curiousity (I think it won second place on the ABC's Inventors). It's called Waterfresh and will have the capacity to revolutionise water treatment. Despite what Hasbeen says, desalination is not a solution. It uses ridiculous amounts of energy. Its parallel is 'clean coal' recently lampooned by the filmic giants, the Coen brothers in US advertising, but whose ludicrous claims still holds sway in oz for some inexplicable reasonCoal Industry Tries to Hide Dirty Facts Behind 'Clean' Claims
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/03/05-8.
Waterfresh is cheap and uses mains power.. One small unit can produce enough clean water for 50 households, so if there is any residual sense of community still extant in Australia, could be bought cooperatively.

The Town of 1770 has been field testing Waterfesh water for the past four to five years..with Tony Dickson's technology, nothing comes out alive.
Watch (t)his space..

Get back to me when 1770 has been drinking it for 50 years.

St G, you are obviously not an epidemiologist. If the water is not clean, bacterial content would kill or disable quickly. If after 50 years (providing people who are already 50 years old are still alive), it would be hard to separate out all the exposure variables such as smoking, eating fish with increasingly high metal and chemical loads, wearing metal laden cosmetics etc... not to mention effects of climate change in varying patterns of diseases inc dengue and various parasitic infections.

I live in Laos and have lived in Asia for some 20 years. I meet sage old folks who have been drinking less than pristine water all their lives. The west is increasingly worried about any pathogens and as a result, have decreased immunity..

Guess you can always drink beer..

Not an epidemiologist, nor an astronaut. Spewing.

I think your first paragragh is a clause for deniability.

Sorry, but I'm not gonna drink poo juice and hope for the best. To me, desalination seems much more desirable and logical. The "but desalination uses too much energy" argument just doesn't wash with me. I don't care if it takes a nuclear reactor to pump one plant. I'd choose that over strained crap.

Seriously, if we're doing it THAT tough, buy a water tank. That's cheaper again.

...and I think the population of Asia have cast iron gut.

Just remember, you drink on average less than 2% of the water that comes into your house.

The anti rectcling loby is very clever in brainwashing all to believe that we will be drinking recycled poo.

I would rather buy drinking water at say 50cents a litre and enjoy a 10 minute shower, wash the dog, the car, the boat and the driveway, water the garden , the lawn and enjoy wathching the littlies playing under the sprinkler on a hot day.

Remember, we are talking about HOUSEHOLD WATER, not drinking water.

Mate, if they pump recycled water into Wivenhoe it's gonna be for drinking.

...unless they've got another dam somewhere they haven't told us about and they're gonna replumb everyone's house and the water grid to this mystical dam.

The anti rectcling loby (sic) haven't told me jack. Didn't even know there WAS one. Is that another term for 'voters opinion'?.

Stg,rehtub,
Gentlemen you are showing your ages and simplicity of thinking by fixating on unrealistic and inaccurate perceptional assumptions. The very thing your LNP exists on and why Qld is so far behind other states. Qld's over all conservatism (non political meaning) means that it is locked into such heavy reliance extractive on Primary industries (sunset industries) rather than investing the future and being Australia's leading state (the California of Australia.)

Melody,
The tragedy is that fear rather than fact tend to reign in the minds of some.
I saw the program and I agree that there are other better and viable options if we would only look and have the courage to invest and support research.

The tragedy is that much of our investment comes from the extractive industries and is reinvested in the same or in southern non productive but profitable 'financial paper shuffling' the result is our vulnerability to events like GCC (causes still to be locked in) and bear markets. Consequently people suffer and will continue to do so unnecessarily.

When by investing in ideas like the one you mentioned it potential for large scale application size is amazing but like Bio-char et al.
Our solution to our problems won’t come in one big Answer but through the careful application of a myriad of small ones. From small entrepreneurial entities rather than huge biased self interested conglomerates or by being scared of new ideas.
Both sides of 'Selfish Castle' need to get their collective acts together and focus why they’re there to Advance Australia Fair(ly).

So because I live in Queensland and because of the LNP - of which 'The Borg' gives me a rash - I'm not entitled to an opinion....yet?.

Yeah, that's enlightened. Thanks, Yoda.

Hold on everyone;
You are mixing up two separate processes.

Recycled sewage and desalination.

Sewage recycling is used if you still have enough water to run the
system.

Desalination is used when you are getting to the situation where you
do not have enough water in the system due to drought or dams that are
too small.

A desal plant would be used to top up the dams. If it were big enough
you would use it to bring the dam up to full from say 80% full.
Most people who argue about desalination have never thought it through.

Whatever the ins and outs it is one hell of a lot cheaper than
moving Sydney or Melbourne.

Delivery of bulk water to the home, be it by recycled or mixed with chlorine or fluoride will not stop bacteria,mold living in the pipes and water tanks which directly supply the home. A practical way to ensure cleaner drinking water for human use is the installation of a small reverse osmosis unit with a stainless steel tank and 3 stage filtration system which includes a carbon filter for sweetness a membrane for filtration of .005ppm and a silver sterilization 3rd stage. These options lie outside the mass medication of chlorine, chloride, fluoride, bacteria, mold, and other additives delivered by prescribed state and local councils systems and give the individual the choice to add what they want to their water.

Melody, would you please explain to me the difference in cost, in both power & money, in pushing clean sea water, or less clean sweage, through an osmosis process. The only difference is that with sea water you start with less of the more difficult to remove pollutants, [chemical] in your supply water.

Sounds like a problem with words here. Must get "recycled" in there somewhere, if it is to be a "GOOD" system for some people. We would all be much better off, if we could get rid of the fashionable green words from these debates.

I have no axe to grind here, as I am one of the tens of thousands on tank water. All my water is recyled & gets used at least twice. However, after gathering, storing, & pumping twice, & maintaining the system, the water going on my garden has cost me 5 to 10 times the price of town water.

If city folk are prepared to pay a similar price for their water, there could be a reasonable argument here, for wind power. It's a dead loss when it comes to supplying power to the main grid.

A desalination plant could have it's own dedicated wind farm, with no mains supply. You would have to be prepared to accept your desal plant would achieve something less tham 30% efficiency, & the water would therefore be quite expensive, but probably no more so than mine.

This should make the water acceptable to our green lobby, as it could now be labelled "renewable" water. Provided the high cost was quarantined to the water supply, so users knew what their renewable water cost them, it might work.

Hasbeen, one word for you: SALT

Seawater is not as "clean" as you seem to think it is. It has a high percentage of salt in it. Salt is ionic in solution and thus reverts to single molecules, Sodium ions Na+ and Choride ions Cl-. These are very small and take much more energy to get rid of than larger molecules that you commonly find in actually very small concentrations in sewage.

If you want desal plants, all well and good, just remember not to put them near to the sewage outlet, as you would be defeating the purpose of your objection somewhat.

Contrary to popular belief, just because you can swim in it without getting a communicable disease, drinking salt water is not good for you and cannot possibly be described as 'clean' (even relatively so) in this type of discussion.

StG
My apologies, to me an opinion with out facts repeated several times is an obsession sorry if I misunderstood.

My observation on Qld still stands. Qld has much going forward but its inherent ultra conservatism holds it back.
While up there and with my links the fact that the Borg and Hansen are even taken seriously is a terrible inditement. Neither side impresses me much. I wonder at the SOME Bureaucrats i.e. those who oversaw Bundy hospital. I therefore wonder at the quality of advice from said. Qld great place and could really be a leading state.

Hasbeen
You raise a very good point. I suspect because modern folk (most often city folk) are so far from the reality of food, power and increasingly production they fail to value what is provided. Then bitch and complain if we’re asked to pay more. Consequently we want more and pay less. Profit manipulation etc distorts reality.
We have always under paid the real cost of both water and power. But it would be political suicide for a govt to put people on a true value basis. If they did Both the two purified versions of water under question would be viable.
The problem with privatizing either is that commercial mentality tends to string out or under resource maintenance and upgrades to maximize profits. This has been shown in several countries around the world. I agree with Pelican on the other topic in that we can’t afford a catastrophic breakdown but with business mentality this is inevitable.

Hasbeen
A wind farm for a desal plant does not have to be next door.
Although coastal areas are probably reasonable.
A wind farm could be miles away and it is just a bit of arithmetic in
the grid control computer to do the appropriate accounting.
Simple isn't it.
Anyway the cost of desal is not an issue. It does not matter how
much it costs, it is cheaper than the alternative by millions of times.

Bazz, you miss the point.

1/ Windfarms are just a bl@@dy nuisance, more trouble than they are worth, when trying to intergrate them with a propper grid. Ask the Danes.

2/ Tranmission costs for wind generated power, to point of usage, often can take most of the life of the instillation to repay the energy input into the building of the transmition lines.

3/ It should not be too hard to set up a plant that automatically expanded, & contracted its water production to use all the power available at any time. It's only when you mix feeds, that problems would be constant.

4/ yes the sights should be complimentary, by nature, & transmition losses, & costs, near zero.

If scientists tell me that recycled sewage is purified and fit to drink and testing proves this to be the case, I am more than happy to drink it. We already take water from rivers and lakes and dams that have a degree of sewage from animals, particularly cattle, that finds its way into the initial water supply. I fail to see the difference, albeit the concentration may not be the same. There are many people, who are even considered lucky, that get their drinking water from tanks and don't even filter it. Consider for a moment the pollution that comes down with the rain and flows off your roof together with the possum and bird sh one T, not to mention the rotting garbage and insects in your gutters..............recycled sewage........it's all emotional.

Yes Hasbeen, I am aware of the stability problems of wind farms.
However they are setup and run to suit the network load.
If the capital cost of the wind or solar generators is charged to the
desal plant the accounting can be done when its output is used elsewhere.
The rest of the time when the desal plant is not needed the wind farm
output can be charged as a credit to the cost of the desal plant.
it is easy. The grid control computer just does it all in its spare time.

It is just that the average Jo Blow does not understand these things
and so goes off at a tangent complaining about the cost of the
electricity for the desal plant and then goes from that demo to one
demanding alternative energy wind farms !

You couldn't make it up !

I wonder how many of the anti recycling group smoke which fills thier lungs full of toxic gunk. Recycles sewage as they put it can't be as bad as this can it!

You are all missing the point. Nobody has to drink it and, if you do then boil your 1 or 2 litres per day, all in the name of a decent life without water restrictions.

boiling water does not remove elements which are not wanted in drinking water as chlorine to chloramines.

Why would we not want chlorine or chloramine in our water, Dallas?
If we deliberately put them in, can you really say they are unwanted?

Rehctub,
Boiling water will not remove all pollutants or kill all bacteria. Water treatment adds other chemical and elements to maintain the water quality not all of these are boiled out. The only real answer is filtering, distilling and sterilizing. Just for interest water of this type means you need to ensure you supplement your intake of minerals important to your body and each body needs different amounts and who amongst us need the bother.

Dallas,
Chlorine evaporates over time and chloramines are reduced by the filtering, distilling and UV sterilization. But as I said you don’t want sterile distilled water really. Every ‘pure’ spring has minerals and micro flora etc.

Bugsey,
A better term is needed we need chlorine et al to make sure the water arrive in potable quality and not contaminated along the way. Scientifically the amounts of Cl needed kill bacteria and then harm people are poles apart.i.e. Milton strilizing solution for babies bottles and for beer making is low concentrations of Cl look on the back of the bottle.

examinator, Respectfully, water advertised as pure is misleading and government water suppliers or commercial operators who use "pure" labels should resist. Distilled water is dangerous to the human body as it dissolves minerals and any loss of the bodies minerals must be eventually damaging. "So don't drink distilled water". Silver as a sterilizing component does not need a external power source as filtration can be achieved with normal mains pressure applied

StG: "Get back to me when 1770 has been drinking it for 50 years."

I don't know about 1770 StG, but if you have been using water from the Wivenhoe and surrounding dams you have been drinking poo for most of your life. The towns upstream from Wivenhoe have got to put their sewage somewhere. Where do think it goes? They don't have a pipeline running to the sea, do they? So there is really on one place it can go - back into the rivers it came from. Those rivers in turn feed our major dams. This mind you isn't some highly reverse osmosis filtered sewage. Rather it is your garden variety brown water that smells not unlike the councils sewage treatment plant it came from. That is assuming the sewage treatment plant is working, of course. Mostly they do, but when they don't there is no prizes for guessing what ends up in our water supply.

Mind you in dry times I'd say none of it made it to the dams. When I drove past Somerset dam a couple of years ago it bone dry and being used as a cow paddock. The cows, as cows are wont to do, were using it as their toilet. Not known for their sense of hygiene, cows. I'd say that since they have started releasing water from Somerset into Wivenhoe, we are now drinking what the cows left behind.

We're on tank water.

Dallas,
thanks for that but I wasn't talking about advertised spring water that's often BS. I was refering to the actual water that comes out of the ground as in a real live spring but you're right anyway good to see some one has some handle on actual science rather than the oooh yuk principal.

rstuart says:

".... if you have been using water from the Wivenhoe and surrounding dams you have been drinking poo for most of your life. The towns upstream from Wivenhoe have got to put their sewage somewhere. Where do [you] think it goes? They don't have a pipeline running to the sea, do they? So there is really on[ly] one place it can go - back into the rivers it came from."

It is now many years since I have been in the catchment area of the Wivenhoe dam. My memory of the area was not one of dense human settlement. If you look at the Google map for the area to the north and west of the dam, you will see the only 'towns' appear to be those of Esk and Toogoolawah. See: http://maps.google.com.au/maps?hl=en&q=Wivenhoe%20dam&cr=countryAU&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl

I would be surprised if there was any reticulated sewerage system in either place. I would expect septic tanks to be the usual method of disposal, with the associated absorption trenches kicking off the natural filtration of any water catchment with a vengeance. Plants, both algal and of higher orders, would process and transpire the lot. I doubt any effluent would reach a watercourse anywhere.

The faeces of other animal species are decomposed and naturally recycled in much the same way as septic tank effluent, unless there are intense concentrations of animals (as in feedlots) where there may be a localised problem. The major point is that the micro-organisms that may debilitate the host species mostly don't pose a problem to other species. Human sewage effluent from concentrations of human settlement that has NOT been through nature's 'filter', returned to a reservoir intended for human consumption, can pose a risk not otherwise run.

Why did this topic get a run when, 'Sewage into drinking water?' was approved only the day before? The links in this post, http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2583#58034 may prove helpful here.

examinator, Crystal Creek, Cape Tribulation and Fraser Island spring ground waters are the sweetest, I have tasted.

And yes,business,including government, marketing "pure" need to be drawn and quartered. Public servants and their marketing arms should be responsible for these deliberate errors considering their role as regulators.

Forrest Gumpp: "I would be surprised if there was any reticulated sewerage system in either place."

I have a surprise for you:

http://www.vetiver.org/AUS_sewage.htm

And what a pleasant surprise it was, rstuart!

What a relevant link. It explains an en-macro achievement at Toogoolawah of what, en-micro, I have achieved in my rural residential septic tank overflow absorption area: an engineered wetland for sewage effluent disposal, a compost farm.

I see from the link that it was in 1970 that the pre-existing Toogoolawah sewage treatment plant was first commissioned. It was 1969 when I was last in that area, so that fact was unknown to me. In any case a minor detail. The linked-to paper explains "... the treatment plant was constructed as a primary sedimentation (Imhoff Tank) followed by three sewerage ponds. The effluent from the ponds was designed to flow down into a swamp area before it entered into the local creek. The plant construction was based on a very simple design but it is effective. With the recent changes to license conditions imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the plant no longer complies with the license and so an upgrade of the plant was required."

What a seemingly excellent solution by the Esk Shire Council! The paper concludes "the Vetiver Wetland System is treating the effluent to a better standard. Also the system is very easy to implement and is a very low cost method for treating effluent and leachate in both domestic and industrial scenarios.". Why do I get the feeling that this was not the solution anticipated as a response to the recent EPA changes to the Toogoolawah sewage treatment plant license conditions?

As the page the subject of rstuart's link does not permit navigation of 'The Vetiver Network International' website, I give that here: http://www.vetiver.org/

"The Vetiver Network International (TVNI) promotes the Vetiver System (VS), a concept integrating simple scientific principals of hydrology, soil mechanics, and similar natural processes to manage soil and water on a landscape scale. The concept excels best when implemented using clones of a remarkable domesticated plant – vetiver (Chrysopogon zizanioides), a non fertile, noninvasive Indian clump grass cultivated for centuries ...."

What do we say?

'Esk, Esk, Esk'?

The thread has moved a bit from its purported subject as touched upon in the opening post.

The post content relevant to the stated topic appeared to be Waterfresh, with the claim that the town of 1770 (in far north Queensland) had been "field testing Waterfesh water for the past four to five years". Unfortunately melody only posted a link relating to 'clean coal'. So here is the link to the Waterfresh website: http://www.waterfreshgroup.com/

Clicking on the 'about Waterfresh' tab, here: http://www.waterfreshgroup.com/page.aspx?catId=2a7c46f3-ebad-4b02-9d8b-bf75db7e0b04 reveals that "WaterFresh is an Australian water treatment technology company. .... WaterFresh designs plants for its clients and licenses its technology. Waterfresh ....... provide[s] clients the assurance of; .... the plant receiving the appropriate operating certification".

I was unable to answer, from a perusal of the website, my own query as to the capability of the system to remove toxins, as distinct from "kill[ing] pathogens", that may be present in the untreated water source. Neither is it clear what the untreated water source is at 1770 upon which the field tests are being performed. The implication appears to be that it is sewage effluent, but is that really so?

What also perplexes me is the statement, in the opening post, that "Despite what Hasbeen says, desalination is not a solution." Neither Hasbeen, nor anyone else, had yet posted in this thread. It is thus difficult to know the context of Hasbeen's claimed statement. A link to what presumably is a post in some other thread could help give that context.

I guess the real significance of the Waterfresh technology is that it is proprietary, and that to overcome water supply shortages that are a consequence of governmental neglect to invest in infrastructure, against a backdrop of migration-driven population increase, Australian individuals and communities should now pay through the nose for what has historically been their right for much lower taxation-based contributions.

Interesting technology, nonetheless.