“The Australian” editorial of 26/12/06 said many things about our current “Water scandal” that many, if not all, of us would agree with.

The editorial writer wrote that: “….state governments have spent decades avoiding their responsibility to invest in water security. Instead of proper planning, water authorities have squeezed the supply of water to consumers through restrictions to allow state governments to pocket hundreds of millions of dollars a year in dividends. The monopoly position enjoyed by water utilities has allowed state governments to get away with it.”

Who could argue with that? It appears that state governments - perhaps with the exception of NSW which recently announced that they would impose no further restrictions, but would take measures to introduce desalination and other measures – have absolutely no intention of spending money they have pillaged from water authorities to ensure a stable supply of water for the future. They are more concerned with the “credit ratings” of their states with foreign economists than they are in spending the money rightly belonging to taxpayers for the benefit of taxpayers.

Irrespective of the confused and confusing daily and weekly reports about water consumption, the editorialist claims that water consuption has now been “squeezed (by cop-out restrictions) to the same level as fived decades ago.”

Five decades ago! And how much has our population increased in 50 years!

Australia has always been the driest continent on Earth. Drought is nothing new. But, Australian politicians have done nothing, despite the available technology and techniques for water saving and conservation.

“Scandal” is the right word to describe the political incompetence that has landed us with our water problem. According to some commentators, the drought will break around March this year, saving the backsides of the politicians once more. They will get away with it again.

But what about next time, and the time after that…?

Speaking of water....recycle it.

'Eeeeeewwwwwww' is Australia's reaction, because apparently we're all 2 year olds who think our water will be yellow, despite the fact its a perfectly safe, and very practical way to save water.

London water is recycled, they surviving. I've drunk worse tasting water here.

The driest continent, right? Apparently one of the stupidest too, because despite constant water shortages, we wont recycle because we don't like the 'idea' of it. Madness.

4 brain cells shared amongst 20 million people.

Some drink recycled water, spendocrat. Anyone downstream of the upper Murrimbidgee drinks those upper towns/cities recycled effluent. So that includes the small regional towns like Hay, but also includes all of South Australia that sources water from the Murray. They are drinking it and just dont know it/think about it.

Yep. Recycling is an obvious one, but will they do it? Time is running out. We still have to force the buggers to spend the money on ANYTHING which could solve the problem.

We do have treatment plants in SA, CG! We don't just go to the river with bucket. We are quiet civilised in some ways. I'm not sure that you can compare what we drink with recycled sewage.

"The Australian" also suggested that governments should go ahead and recyle treated waste water without reference to the people as happened in Toowoomba.

I wonder if that would be acceptable? Democratic? Have we reached the stage (thanks to the lawmakers in the first place) where we are prepared to forgo the right (?) to say what they put in our reservoirs? I'm not sure that we had any say on chlorination.

In the meantime, their is a lot of useable water going to waste while the politicians rely on draconian restrictions, only, to avoid their obvious responsibilities.

The water we all drink is already recycled anyway. Sewerage discharged into the sea ends up as water vapour, then clouds and rain. Which gives the cleaner end result: the natural process or a synthetic one?

Leigh, what say did you want in regards to chlorination. Would you prefer to have health problems. Do you really think it goes in for no reason?

Rojo,

I did not say that I was against chlorination, which has proved its value now that people are buying bottle water, sans chlorine, and finding themselves with dental decay as bad as it was pre-chlorination.

My reference to chlorination re recycled water was intended to be exactly as it was meant - if they chlorinated our water for our own good without permission from us, is it OK for them to do the same again for our own good? After all, we cannot live without water.

But, let's stick to the subject. Have you any ideas about water yourself? Have you any ideas about how we can get our do-nothing politicians to remove their fingers and do something useful?

Don't sidetrack yourself just to have a little sport with me. This is a serious subject. Have a go at me for anything you don't agree with, but stick to the subject, please.

Once again we see that one of the most fundamental points of all concerning our water problems is not even within the mindset of respondents. Leigh alluded to it in his first post (“And how much has our population increased in 50 years!”), but no reaction has ensued.

Of course I am talking about the constantly and rapidly increasing demand for water exerted by population growth, directly in the cities and towns where the bloody water situation is critical!! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !!

How insane is it that NO effort… not even a suggestion… from our three tiers of government or from the general community is made regarding the NEED to stop increasing the demand on stressed water supplies, at least until the supply issues are sorted out !

STOP stupid population growth into Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, etc NOW…. or at the very least, start working towards slowing it down.

If we can’t do this, then we are being TOTALLY disingenuous about dealing with our water issues.

Ludwig has raised a very interesting observation as to why we focus so much on the supply side and little on the demand side of the water debate. I suppose on the demand side, there are a lot of other factors that are being considered by politicians when setting immigration numbers or encouraging higher birth rates. The governments' view appear to be getting the people here (for reasons of skill shortages and economic growth etc) then think of a solution on how to cope with resource constraints, rather than being able to pre-emptively and pro-actively manage/plan for the issue. I support steady population growth for the sake of increased productivity, but it is very important to ensure adequate resource planning is undertaken.

Given the considerable section of the public(voters) having reservation on drinking recycled water, rather than to "educate" (used in a non-relative manner) them on the "benefits" of recycling we need to think of alternatives to solving the water crisis. I fully support the building of desalination plants around the country despite it being a costly option. If there is something money can buy with our increasing wealth why shouldn't we spend it on something that a significant part of the population want - pure water?

In the long run, we should be active in water conservation and tackling climate change issues, in order to ensure the viablity of future generations. Afterall as a minister said sometime ago on a morning program, he would like to see the population to double by around 2050, if i remember correctly..

Goku

Don’t you think that there is a rather huge contradiction between your support for population growth and your desire to address water conservation and climate change issues?

It makes no sense to push for everyone to reduce their consumption of water and energy if you are going to allow the number of consumers to rapidly and constantly increase.

The stabilization of population and hence demand is the biggest single factor in our struggle to address our water woes and greenhouse gas emissions in this country.

You support population growth for the sake of increased productivity. But we have had steady population growth and steadily increasing productivity since 1788! Obviously, increased productivity that is accompanied by population growth and hence does not lead to real per-capita increases is not the answer to this country’s economic or social woes. The ever-increasing productivity is putting ever-increasing stress on our already highly stressed resource base. It is not only water supplies that are stressed. There are many other areas of life-supporting, or at least, quality-of-life-supporting resources that are in decline.

Why do you support desalination plants? These are hugely energy-consumptive, which flies in the face of your desire to address climate change issues, and they serve to facilitate larger populations in cities and regions which quite frankly have enough people.

If a small number of desalination plants could help alleviate our water-supply issues without facilitating this absurd continuously increasing demand on those supplies, then ok. In other words, if they were brought online as part of a policy of population stabilization and overall sustainability, then fine. But not otherwise.

Might I suggest that Australia's current level of prosperity has almost everything to do with technology and education and nothing to do with population growth. Population growth is a per capita zero or negative sum game that enriches a few at the expense of all. Water shortages are just one consequence and provide an opportunity to rip people off further. How anyone can look at the many tens of billions of dollars of infrastructure required to cope with more people, the dismal state of health and education funding, and the parasitic reliance on skilled people from other countries, and still think that population growth is raising living standards has me flummoxed.

Leigh, perhaps you meant fluoridation for the teeth, chlorination is for "cleaning" the water. i couldn't see why you would have been against chlorination, but you probably weren't.

But yes I have great ideas on water. We need more of it, which means trying not to allow any to go to waste.

1- recycling allows an approx 80% water recovery, effectively meaning you only require a fraction of total use as fresh inflow. For towns/cities that don't usually have a supply problem this recycled water could be used for agriculture and/or sporting fields parks etc(as is already being done in many places)

2- storm water management. Difficult to find room for storage in city centres but urban sprawl will have low lying areas that could be used for temp storage of urban runoff. Reliable sites could have their own treatment plants and pump directly into mains supply.
Identify possible underground aquifers that could be overcharged and recovered later.

3- further encourage rainwater tanks and try and have the overflow directed to the garden, not straight to the drain. Reservoirs could be built under garages, basements or under the back yard if there is no room for free standing tanks.

4- create "new" water, cloudseed over the catchment, desalination or as a last resort pipe it in.

5- encourage commercial water users in the cities to move to areas with better supply. This will also have the advantage of reducing population pressures and free up more water

It is quite obvious that the politicians and policy that has been created has been undemocrated and one would also say that it amounts to a benevolent dictatorship.

It is time for something new in the political arena but this takes backstage and complacency to be thrown away and take the bull by the horns.

This you would have to agree with Leigh.

It is highly unlikely that any of the MP's consulted their constituents. We don't hear from them from one election to the next, and then only on behalf of the party they represent - they don't represent us, they represent a party, or themselves in the case of independents.

I don't know about anyone else, but I have NEVER been consulted on any subject by the politicians, state or federal, who want me to vote for them and/or their party
Posted by Leigh, Tuesday, 28 February 2006 11:53:30 AM

what we see i serious problem and until this is fixed you still get what you deserve.

for more info email; swulrich@bigpond.net.au

About 12 months ago, after I had written to the SA minister responsible for water chaos, I received a nice glossy brochure supposedly outlining how the state could ensure adequate water AND increase the population. Lovely photographs and lot of weasel words, but not one word on how it was all to be done.

Since then, the SA government has clearly show that it intends to do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about ensuring a water supply, preferring, instead, to rely on draconian, third world restrictions in use. Still twittering about getting more people in, of course.

Rojo,

Yes. I did mean fluoride. Silly old me.

Your ideas are all sound. The problem is how to get the numbskull politicians to do anything about them. I have always been against privatisation of essential services, but I now wonder if private money and the lure of profit could help? If politicians cannot manage public services, is there much point in retaining them?

Goku,

Why do we need constant growth in production? Why do we need a larger population when we are already double what the environment can really take? What about small population countries like Sweden who have always done very well? What about New Zealand with a total population less than that of Melbourne? Not the most dynamic of countries, but a very pleasant and still wealthy little place.

Thanks for you comments, and I’m not knocking you. I just don’t understand this need for growth, and I’m happy to be enlightened.

Tapp,

Yes. We do agree on the calibre of Australian politicians. It’s the answers we don’t agree on

Well Leigh as you havnt taken the time to email or even bothered this is for you.

These are your comments not mine so

Is Australian Politics reaaly democratic or just a dictatorship

you have answered this time and time again.

Australian Politics is undemocratic and is a benevolent dictatorship.

LEIGHS COMMENTS
The draconian gun laws are a croc, as any one who thought about it at the time knew. Criminals are still out there with guns, killing, robbing and threatening. Nothing has changed.

Our politicians have once again fooled dopey citizens into thinking that they (politicians) were doing something to protect them, while merely wasting public money for nothing.

Unless Australians wake up to the fact that we have a benevolent dictatorship, they will wake up one day to find that the benevolence has gone.

Think about the real reason for disarming the population!
Posted by Leigh, Tuesday, 31 October 2006 9:31:54 AM

Sorry Leigh - didnt mean to imply that SA was backwards ;)

I know each town has a treatment plant, but my point is that the water going into this plant contains the effluent of other towns, albeit diluted. To me this is no different to drinking recycled water - in fact this is what recycled water is.

Even if we cant stomach drinking recycled water, how about we consider using it in other areas of the house - shower/bath, toilet, washing, garden, pools. The problem is that this would be a huge infrastructure investment, and we all know how much our various govts like that!

Desal plants only solve the problems for the coastal regions, and their cost would require support from all taxpayers. I am not necessarily against this, if it is the best option, but from what I understand, these things are pretty energy hungry, so we are just swapping one environmental problem for another.

I think the issue is that there is not going to be one magic solution that solves the problem. This needs to be attacked on a number of different levels. More rainwater tanks are a great idea, but lets make sure that everyone knows that they are better to have these aboveground and elevated, so that any water coming out is gravity fed (therefore doesnt need more electricity to pump out the water when its needed). Or, if your house eaves are very low, then use a two tank system - the higher one gravity feeds, and when its empty, pump it full from the lower tank. It takes a lot less power to run a pump for a length of time, rather than have it cut and and out even time you turn on a tap.

People who drink recycled water are dumber people.
This fact is often overlooked by our pollys and lawyers who want their private investments in water boards to increase by repeated use of the same water.
South Australians continually fail in the academic stakes and are a joke on the "Footy Show."(Australia's premier edu/entertainment show.
South Aussies use the dregs of the Murray/Darling basin water,and suffer by lack of quality water.
Pictures of Africans queueing for water will soon be the norm for Adelaide residents.
Australia has an abundance of quality drinking water and because of the provincial and State run water supply system in place in Australia.The rich are trying to price out the poor.
Go to any large country property run by a local politician or lawyer and see the gallons(sorry litres.)of water being pumped onto the soil.
The bore goes so deep that the water tables are dropping daily by these so called successful farmers.

Country Gal,

No offence taken. Someone (with not a lot to do one would think) recently did some work on blogs etc, and reported that we conservatives are bettered humoured and like a bit of fun more than the lefties do.

I’m all for recycling. The problem with attempts to date is that our unimaginative clods of politicians keeping talking about our “precious drinking water” (how many people actually drink the stuff these days?) and people in Toowoomba, for instance, thought that they would be drinking something nasty. Had it been touted for non-consumption purposes – gardens, bathing etc. – things might have been different.

In Mawson Lakes, a relatively new suburb of Adelaide (coping with the increased population!), there are no water restrictions because the developer introduced recycled water for gardens: they have two inlets and two water meters. As you say, expensive in older areas but, I’m afraid, maybe now a necessary expense because of lack of action by governments in the past.

Of course, if people accepted recycled water, this could be pumped directly into reservoirs, as it is in Los Angeles, where they have a mixture of recycled, river and nuclear reactor water.

Rainwater tanks are not really an option. New developments are squeezed into ever-smaller blocks of land, and there is simply not enough room for a tank of any practical use. Here again, blame politicians and their greed for more revenue that they refuse to spend properly.

Ludwig,

Keep up the population aspect. If we had had a population policy, we would not be talking about water shortages now. We can’t blame the original settlers, but we sure as hell can blame the knob-heads who persisted in high immigration after the ‘40’s and 50’s, long after substantial immigration was needed. Off the subject, but isn’t ironic that the greenies would now block the Snowy scheme many of the migrants worked on?

Brock,
"People who drink recycled water are dumber people."

I now can't decide whether your footy show quip is an attempt at humour or if you are serious.
I had the pleasure of drinking water in Adelaide only a few months ago and compared to other cities it tastes pretty good. Yes It draws water from near the end of the Murray, but that water quality is quite good even given the drought. Salt concentrations have been falling, mainly due to salt interception schemes. The river has not stopped flowing so no problems associated with stagnation.

"Pictures of Africans queueing for water will soon be the norm for Adelaide residents"
Why would Adelaide residents want pictures of queueing Africans?

"Go to any large country property run by a local politician or lawyer and see the gallons(sorry litres.)of water being pumped onto the soil"
Yes it's called irrigation and is not confined to either occupation. Noone within reach of the Murray is going thirsty so that water is put to it's next best economic use. Bores are often used for irrigation and whilst there is drawdown in peak season the aquifer recharges in the off season. A great deal of change has occured in NSW to ensure sustainable bore yields.

Seen today.

$500 million worth of water, enough to supply 2 major cities for 12 months,is disappearing to irrigators because of faulty meters which could be replaced for $1.5 million.

With politicans and adminstrators like we have, who needs enemies?

South Australia does recycle, refine and treat sewerage water- and guess what? many of you eat it in vegetables all over the country. I can testify that struggling limp lettuce from water starved regions does not compare with South Australian lettuce grown to decadent lush crispness with the aid of the treated water. Still old tea bags and Cow dung fertiliser and bucketed rain water make for rich tasting vegetables.

There are successful instances where storm water is used to rechage aquifers. Most of these have been in conjunction with wet lands which purify the water and on the scale of single suburbs.

Governments should consider massive underground dams , a system to recharge aquifers around the country such as (not exclusively)the Great Artesian Basin from the tropics and to pipe it out to the coast when needed.

There are various systems which could be used to minimalise infrastructure and so cut costs. There would be no need for water restrictions (although we should keep a reign on water waste). Farmers could then fill dams with bore or mains water and allow once permamently running now dry creeks to flow again. Even the Murray could be flushed with surplus water. Recharge water would correct earth sinking, flush salinity in dry creeks and evaporation loss would be lowered.

Water is a resource in a class of its own.

Water is the one commodity for which we have no alternative. It is fundamental to human life.

Water is not like the other utilities, electricity, gas, telephone, mail services etc.

We can and many do get by without some or all of them. My house has no gas service, all electric. If mail were not delivered I can pick it up form a PO mail box and mnowadays I have a range of different electricity. Gas and telephone vendors competing for my custom.

No one survives without water. Dust is what Australia would be without water.

For this reason, I do not believe water should be placed into the same basket of “saleable utilities” and privatized. Water supply services should remain in public hands. However, we should consider whose “public hands”.

Certainly the actions of Queenslanders display a parochial attitude to selling off water before it gets to the Murray. I do not suggest they are right or wrong in doing this. What I do observe is the responsibility of State politicians is to the state electorates. Such a relationship guarantees parochial values and priorities for what is the MOST CRITICAL life resource.

State governments have been fiddling with water and raping metropolitan water users by exacting “special dividends” to convert water rates, paid to finance infrastructure, into general funds, used to squander on whatever takes these state politicians fancy,

Overlayed on a patchwork of water authorities is a separate veneer of bureaucracy, the Water Catchment Authorities plan and scheme to manage the same resource at the supply (dam) level.

Why?

Is this the most effective way of managing water?

Are state politicians the best to co-ordinate the most critical of national resources?

I for one think not.

Water is all too important for small minded politicians and their local bureaucrats to deal with.

Water, as the most critical of resources needs to be managed at a national level by real professionals who understand national strategy, not a bunch of parochial nonentities.