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'?.