My Question today is ,we live on an Island ,why can't the sea water be recycled instead of sewerage?

They are seriously considering this option.
In opposing however; in the long run, recycling water is more cost effective than a desalination plant. Also, by having a desalination plant, the waste water is returned to the environment in the same state as now, with a recycling system, all is broken down before it is returned to the environment. It is better money wise and environmentally.

Check out:
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2005/636/34165
http://www.deh.gov.au/minister/env/2005/mr07oct05.html
http://abc.net.au/news/australia/nsw/newcastle/200701/s1831148.htm

They both use very similar technologies, which is reverse osmosis or filtering the salts, microbes, chemicals and other undesirables out of the water. Seawater contains a massive amount more salt than wastewater, and salts exist in solution as ions, which makes it that much more difficult and expensive to filter them out of concentrated solutions. There are also higher corrosion and maintenance expenses associated with seawater, the filters need to be changed and cleaned more often (with more filters needed for the salt), as well as more power needed. So desalination costs up to 10 times more than recycling, with the same output at the end - clean water.

The only problem people have with recycling is that it might carry disease, whether microbial (easily removed from water), viral (much easier than salt to remove, since they are relatively large nucleic acids) or chemical, heavy metals hormones and such. The hormone or drug (and also viral) contamination is relatively easily removed as they are also large molecules and (in case of "filter failure" which people are also afraid of), also break down when added to open water sources, such as a dam. As previously noted, desalination also pumps the salty slurry back into the ocean (heavy metals and all), what good would that be for the environment around the outlet pipe?

Wastewater purification beats desalination on economic and environmental grounds. Many people just say "yuck, I don't know about it, but I don't wanna know".

Let face it, people have been drinking recycled water in one form or another for a long time. You can have it cleaned by nature or cleaned by a machine either way it is not NEW WATER. My waste toilet water goes down the pipe into the treatment system and out into the river and the next town/city who takes the water from the river or dam treads it again and repeats the process.
Desalination can be an answer to water shortages as is proposed in Sydney in the very near future. The downside is the cost, and the amount of electrical power required. So, how can we then generate a lot more electricity without generating more green house gas and other environmental problems?

I did neglect to mention that wastewater recycling does not actually add a net increase in water to the catchment system, at the moment only rain can do that. Groundwater is not replenished fast enough to be a long term solution. So, desalination does have a place in the Armageddon solution to add more to the system, but only alongside wastewater treatment.

Seems like a vicious circle,but lifes necessity.I am ignorant when it comes to chemistry and was very interested in your explanations.thank you

QLD has ditched plans for a referendum and are going ahead with water recycling:

http://ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1165390401

Hopefully this will put an end to that stupid scheme for a desal plant at the gold coast. We need to start charging people for water. I pay about 15c per person per day for water. That's hardly an incentive to use less.

Huge desalination plants, recycled sewage, piping water from the Ord River to Perth or from the wet tropics to Brisbane or even Sydney, charging everyone much more in order to reduce per capita consumption, perhaps even relocating a lot of our economic activity over time to areas of higher and more reliable rainfall….and even cloud-seeding and flooding lake Eyre in order to generate more rain in that region!

The ideas range from the apparently reasonable to the absurd, but in isolation or even in any combination, they are all absurd, for as long as they are promoted outside of a total sustainability strategy.

With the current stupid continuous unending population growth mentality, we are heading strongly away from sustainability, and any one or any combination of these ideas will facilitate this momentum, by allowing more and more people to be squeezed in, especially into areas that are now water-stressed.

A policy of sustainability, which has to include population stabilization and the matching of the demand for water with the supply capability, instead of just pandering a constantly increasing demand, is ESSENTIAL.

With such a policy in place, I could condone just about any measure to increase water supply rates and security of supply.

But in the absence of such a policy, it is hard to support any of these ideas.

So what you are talking about is population contol there Ludwig.

Good luck with that. Most people don't like to be told where they can or can't live. You probably won't either when they enact your policy.

Actually you need both.
With recycling, first catch your water. Recycling will not help many
towns as they will not have any water to recycle.
With desalination, the catch is it is at sea level, hmmm bit obvious.
It then needs to be pumpted uphill, very expensive.
Recycled water can be cleaned up near to where it was used so there is not so much pumping.
These reasons are why there is so much toing & froing about the whole problem.
To sum up either is a lot cheaper than moving towns or cities.
It all depends on how thirsty you get !

Doesnt have to be population control Bugsy. Just stop infrastructure development where you dont want further population growth, and start spending where you do. If people on the Gold Coast are permanently on heavy water restrictions, or even better, they actually run out, that will put the brakes on people moving there in droves. Or more likely, they will move there, work out its not as much fun as they thought, then move somewhere else.

Ludwig, you are correct - we need to work out how to live sustainably with the resources that we have. Whether the govt will do anything is another story. If the general population dont have to personally face shortages, there is no incentive to do anything about curtailing habits. That's why I am a proponent, of "let it run out".

Here's a few water saving tips from someone that has lived off rainwater in a low rainfall area. Ban showers and share a bath - start with the cleanest person and work your way through the family. Turn your hot water right up - hotter water = less water for activities that need it hot. Shut the bathroom door so the kids cant burn themselves. Wash up by hand once a day - start with the cleanest dishes and work through to the dirtiest. Dont rinse - use a tea towel to dry up. Its a 2 person job, so look at it as quality time together. Use a twin tub and do your washing once a week. Use the same water for the entire load - start with the cleanest...... (see a trend here).

I am really glad you two aren't running the country. You would send many thousands of families broke or force them to relocate and turn cities into ghost towns in the name of "sustainability". I guess you're thinking, "I'm alright Jack, bugger the rest of you"! Yes, everyone should live like you CountryGal, but the problem is that for many reasons- they don't. Live with it.

Bugsy

The first impression that I get is that you aren’t interested in sustainability and are quite content for the population to keep on growing in an uncontrolled manner. I hope that is not so.

Your concerns about implementing increased restrictions on peoples’ right to live where they want and do what they want are real. We all care about that sort of thing. But it is the very act of getting out of whack with our resource base that is leading directly to more and more restrictions on us all. And this can’t be more obvious than with water.

So if we implement genuine sustainability strategies, some further restrictions will be necessary. But if we let the antisustainability momentum continue, you can bet that the restrictions on us all will continue to increase and ultimately be much worse.

Besides, I think that the sort of restrictions that you envisage regarding population stabilization are probably much harsher than what I would think necessary. All we really need is a gearing down of immigration, the abolition of pro-natalist policies such as the baby bonus, and proper planning and regulation of building approvals by all levels government especially in population stressed areas, so that the stable populations can be achieved in those places.

These things in combination with improved resource-provision technologies and more efficient usage will see us on the right track.

Not hard… and certainly not draconian.

Bugsy, they dont live like that because there is no personal restriction. There is no impact to someone personally (ie you will DIE if you use all of your resource), apart from having to let your lawn die. I currently live in a town with no water restrictions, so what do I do... water my garden, take showers, use an automatic washing machine etc etc. If you force people to confront the reality of their scarce resource, they are much more likely to start using it more sensibly.

I am not for zero population growth - just that we shouldnt grow any faster than our resources can handle. One would expect that ongoing advances in technology will help us to stretch current resources further, so growth is possible and probably, without necessarily increasing the need for more resources.

Ludwig is right in that we do need to reduce world population to a level to match energy availability.
However Ludwig does not seem to accept
that sustainability can be on a large scale. We do not need to find a 5
acre plot and live in the 15th century.
Large scale energy may be more efficient than individual efforts.
Whether Australia needs to reduce population is another matter.
When the global warming business first came to my notice in the 1990s
it was said authoritavly that Australia would get more rain.
Now that we have a drought they are saying authorativily that we will get less.
Hmmmm 180 deg shift to suit the lastest news ?

I agree that “sustainability” is certainly great to have. However neither of you have really defined a success condition for “sustainability”. How will you know when sustainability has been achieved? Who gets to set the criteria?

“Sustainability” is actually an ill-defined goal, because it has multiple implicit goals contained within it. Example: If we recycle, will we be sustainable? No, probably not. Single measures on such complex problems are usually doomed to failure if taken by themselves. Usually you have to take multiple measures together simultaneously to achieve success.

Once these measures are taken, are we then sustainable? Not if the population keeps growing you say. Reducing population growth is one of the hardest things to establish in policy in a free country, that is why I said “good luck with that”.

What I really have issue with is though is the attitudes:
Ludwig: “A policy of sustainability...(edited for size), instead of just pandering a constantly increasing demand, is ESSENTIAL. But in the absence of such a policy, it is hard to support any of these ideas.”

Which means to me: “well these ideas are fine, but if we can’t be sustainable, then I must support doing nothing until it is”.
I think this is a naïve attitude, as I believe all the above ideas are PART of making us “sustainable”.

But the big issue I have is with CG: ‘That's why I am a proponent, of "let it run out"’

Which means to me: “Let it run out, that’ll teach ‘em a lesson”. This kind of attitude is irresponsible at best and displays an utter contempt for city dwellers at worst. It cannot be realistically and consciously implemented by any elected leader, which prompted me to declare my relief that you are not one of them.

So lets return to reality and start debating about whether recycling and other measures can work without being a health hazard, which I believe they certainly can. If you want a sustainability discussion, start your own thread on it, this one’s about WATER.

I agree that “sustainability” is certainly great to have. However neither of you have really defined a success condition for “sustainability”. How will you know when sustainability has been achieved? Who gets to set the criteria?

“Sustainability” is actually an ill-defined goal, because it has multiple implicit goals contained within it. Example: If we recycle, will we be sustainable? No, probably not. Single measures on such complex problems are usually doomed to failure if taken by themselves. Usually you have to take multiple measures together simultaneously to achieve success.

Once these measures are taken, are we then sustainable? Not if the population keeps growing you say. Reducing population growth is one of the hardest things to establish in policy in a free country, that is why I said “good luck with that”.

What I really have issue with is though is the attitudes:
Ludwig: “A policy of sustainability...(edited for length of post), instead of just pandering a constantly increasing demand, is ESSENTIAL. But in the absence of such a policy, it is hard to support any of these ideas.”

Which means to me: “well these ideas are fine, but if we can’t be sustainable, then I must support doing nothing until it is”.
I think this is a naïve attitude, as I believe all the above ideas are PART of making us “sustainable”.

But the big issue I have is with CG: ‘That's why I am a proponent, of "let it run out"’

Which means to me: “Let it run out, that’ll teach ‘em a lesson”. This kind of attitude is irresponsible at best and displays an utter contempt for city dwellers at worst. It cannot be realistically and consciously implemented by any elected leader, which prompted me to declare my relief that you are not one of them.

So lets return to reality and start debating about whether recycling and other measures can work without being a health hazard, which I believe they certainly can. If you want a sustainability discussion, start your own thread on it, this one’s about WATER.

“I am not for zero population growth - just that we shouldnt grow any faster than our resources can handle. One would expect that ongoing advances in technology will help us to stretch current resources further, so growth is possible and probably, without necessarily increasing the need for more resources.”

Country Gal, we need to head for at least zero population growth if not reduction until we are confident that the demands on our resource base are not exceeding long-term supply capability. Then if we can gain this confidence, some further growth could be possible.

Continued improvements in technology and increases in efficient resource usage will very likely make further growth possible within a sustainable paradigm. But at present they are struggling to get us up to the sustainability mark and are being severely hampered by the rapidly and constantly increasing demands being exerted on all sorts of resources.

The trouble is, if you are not in favour of zero population growth, you must be in favour of a continuously increasing population, and that doesn’t compute when it comes to the necessary sacred balance between our life-support systems and the pressure we exert on them. It simply makes no sense to continue expanding with no end in sight, even if we do it really slowly. We simply must gear ourselves towards a population that is not continuously expanding.

Tim Flannery reckons the ideal population for Australia is between six and twelve million and he is arguably one of the most qualified people to make this judgement. If it is true, and I believe it is, then we are a long way over our sustainable population, and we really do quite desperately need to reach a stable level if not a reduction, and quickly.

“However Ludwig does not seem to accept that sustainability can be on a large scale.”

You’ve lost me there Bazz. I am very much concerned about large-scale sustainability, at the global level and most particularly at our national level, because that is the highest level that we (us lobbyers on OLO and elsewhere, and the populace and politicians that we are trying to influence) can really have an impact.

“We do not need to find a 5 acre plot and live in the 15th century.”

Of course we don’t. Please see my last post for the simple things that we need to do to direct the whole country towards sustainability

" 'Sustainability' is actually an ill-defined goal".

Yes Bugsy, it is hard to define in exact terms, which means we had better err on the side of caution. A lack of definability should not be used as an excuse to do anything other than strive directly for it.

“Which means to me: ‘well these ideas are fine, but if we can’t be sustainable, then I must support doing nothing until it is’ ”.

No. As I explained in my first post, if you support measures to reduce per-capita consumption of water, or whatever resource, but don’t address the continuous growth factor, you are effectively supporting the facilitation of the continued momentum away from sustainability, because with all else being equal, if we all use less then more people can draw from the same resource….. and you can bet your bottom dollar that this is exactly what is happening with water in Sydney, SEQ, Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne.

Pushing hard to reduce per-capita consumption and increase supply while not addressing the continued increase in the number of ‘per-capitas’ in these water-stressed cities and regions is simply beyond absurdity.

So it is not a matter of supporting nothing. Far from it. It is a matter of supporting a holistic approach, which entails a combination of demand stabilization and improved technologies and efficiencies.

“If you want a sustainability discussion, start your own thread on it, this one’s about WATER.”

Now this is just silly. If you cannot see that sustainability is intimately related to the water crisis then where are you at?

Bugsy, what is your problem with stabilizing the demand on stressed resources rather than just blindly letting it continue to increase? You are into recycling and presumably the whole ‘technofix’ side of the water issue. That’s great. But it is not the whole picture. In fact it is only half the picture, in a scenario where the pressure applied on water resources continues to increase indefinitely, overwhelming or at least greatly reducing efforts to improve per-capita efficiencies and supply rates and overall security of supply.

They could start with fixing the water pipes. There are more busts in the water pipes from the dams than ever before. How much water do we lose from a rusty old system?

OK, so I can drink bottled water. You know that over time there will be cost cutting in the filtration plants and we will end up showering in poo.

What hapens when your daughter shreaks "Ah, there's toilet paper in the glass".

Also, filtration cannot stop viruses.

Difficult times ahead.

At least NZ has clean water. Lets keep good relations with them, I can see many moving to the land of clean water.

Saintfletcher, agree with the need to fix the systems that we have.

Recycling of water happens now for anyone downstream on a river system. Obviously it is not causing too many problems.

One of the problems is that no-one ever foresaw the need to seperate our toilet water from our other waste water (shower, dishes, laundry). If infrstructure had been built to take this into account, recycling of other waste water wouldnt be so problematic. Too late now though.

Bugsy, teach them a lesson?? Yeah, I guess in a way. What's the difference to country folk who if they run out of water, have to buy it in by the truckload? One of the problems with our society is that we rarely have immediate personal impact from our wasteful behaviour. I dont necessarily think that letting Sydney's catchments run dry is the answer to our water woes, but I'd love to hear some suggestions on how to actively encourage people to curtail usage. Using price is not a fair tool, as you put lower earners at a distinct disadvantage.

I agree that pinpointing what is sustainable is very difficult. Water is more readily measured than many resources, as it is directly used, and we can work off catchment averages (or ideally, below averages so we dont come up short in dry years). We know roughly how many people are in a particular catchment. We also know roughly how much we want to allow for environmental flows. Surely there are people that are clever enough to put some figures around this for the various population centres in Australia.

Ludwig, of course water is a part of "sustainability", however is is just a PART. Thus, the original question was very specific, so I suggest that we keep it specific to water (esp. recycling), not a silly idea. "Sustainability" is a MUCH larger topic and so it could have it's own thread rather than hijacking this one.

Can anyone confirm whether London does actually recycle water?

I keep hearing the Premier rabbit on about the fact that London already recycles water - but as far as I can tell, it's a little different.

From what I'm told, in London, they pump a very, very small percentage of waste into some rivers.
This water is then treated - therefore, the final result, can be perceived as recycled.

Here in Queensland, the proposal is to introduce a large proportion (the premier appears to have ruled out any cap) of recycled water, directly into a stagnant supply (Wivenhoe dam).

Aside from the fact that the London water is treating water that is massively diluted with rainwater and river water, there is also the fact that it is running water - as I understand it, running water has an effect on water purity, as opposed to that which is stagnant.

If recycled water is safe, then okay, but if Queensland is to be the first to do it on this scale and in this way, then we should be told...

The tap water you drink in London has passed through an average of 20 people.

I've had it, and it tastes better than the tap water in Richmond.

Of course it's safe, there's no way it'd get to your tap if it wasn't. They have very strict guidelines on these sorts of things. The fact that Australia has a problem with it only demonstrates that this country has the collective mentality of a 6 year old.

Australia: 'Ewwwwww groooossss!'

Bugsy, your belief that discussion on this thread of sustainability issues as they are related to water is some how inappropriate is quite bizarre.

Check out the seven posts before my first post. Not a thought of how recycling fits into the greater perspective. My comments which were made to bring it into perspective were totally appropriate.

That would have been the end of the sustainability bit, except for one response from you which prompted further comments, to which you again responded.

You promulgated the discussion Bugs.

You might also notice that your first two posts in response to me had absolutely nothing to do with water.

Now would you care to address the question that I asked of you in my last post, which is directly relevant to recycling?

First of all this tapwater we drink in most of Vic.is diluted with an industrial waste product called fluorolisic acid falsely called "Fluoride". G.d knows what else, I did measure the difference between natural springwater and tapwater in parts per million. Springwater has 12ppm.(minerals) against tapwater anywhere fluctuating from 26 to 52ppm.That is a difference of min.14ppm. Can anyone tell me when the requirement of 1ppm of Fluoride is reached what the rest is made out of?
The waterpeople won't tell you! BTW.rainwater of a tin roof along a main road tests 16ppm.

The point I am trying to make is this, we and our environment are being poisoned to such an extent that any spillage into rivers,aquafers or underground water sources will be so polluted we won't even be able to pump it up for drinking. I took a stroll along the Yarra downstream from Richmond last year,only to find dead eels floating,of all fish they could have handled a lot of pollution,think about it.Then there was a stroll along the bay just past Carrum where I saw millions of small shrimps dead along the shore line. What quarantees are there that recycled water can be cleaned from the pesticides and drugs and med's we've been taking? Does the following pic.tell a story to anyone? http://www.newstarget.com/cartoons/Expensive_Urine_600.jpg

Bugsy,"As previously noted, desalination also pumps the salty slurry back into the ocean (heavy metals and all), what good would that be for the environment around the outlet pipe?"

Ever heard of magnesium chloride harvesting? (see http://www.imva.org)
I am sure that hospitals could use filtered seawater for blood transfusions instead of the salinesolutions they use now? How about using seawater for big market gardens as has been tried and tested in the East? Most centerparts of Australia was under sea water why else do we have salination on vast areas,it's again, ripping away forests instead of planting which did the damage.As for saltwater farming take a leaf out of the Dutch history book and research the "Ijselmeer" and the "Afsluitdijk" you'll see that replacing saltwater with freshwater
over time and enclosing vast areas of land can be regrown with crops after years of growing reeds and grasses.Reeds being natural filters for all sorts of pollution as well.
So there would be a market for by-products

Sorry: the link is
http://imva.info

Interesting responses...and my take..

On reduction or limiting population growth: Reality - no government in the current climate will ever bring a policy in the foreseeable future that will try to limit population growth. In fact, the opposite is happening with the encouragement of population either by immigration or child births. Either way, we are an aging population that requires the stimulation of population growth in order to sustain our economy.

On sustainability: Reality - we have no choice but to find a sustainable solution to the current shortage of water without further endangering the environment. I tend to agree that we are being taught a lesson by mother nature for our wasteful ways but what needs to be set in place are policies that will stop the public from reverting back to "let's all have English gardens" when the next downpour happens and big business in the mentality of "its available at the moment lets use as much as we can"...it was once thought fossil fuels were sustainable?

In any case, we are able to create synthetic products and even clone sheep yet, in this so called technological age, we have still yet to find a viable way to create drinking water. Desalination is a solution but l feel all the water recycling efforts are being bogged down by big business and their rhetorical chant of "we can't afford it" - this is where this current government (or the future one) has to step in and force change....seems households are curbing water usage - is big business?

“no government in the current climate will ever bring a policy in the foreseeable future that will try to limit population growth.”

Quite right… within the current political climate. So that is what we have got to work on changing.

The last thing we should be doing is resigning ourselves to the whacko future-destroying phenomenon of continuous expansion at all costs.

More and more people, who have realized that recycling and all manner of other improved and alternative technologies are essential for our future wellbeing, are now realizing that they cannot ignore the other side of the supply/demand equation, and simply must address the need to stabilize the whole scale of our operations.

Mr.OMG, can’t you see the paradox between your first and second paragraphs?

You are resigned to the continued momentum strongly away from sustainability, but then you say that we have no choice but to address it!

Listen to the few high-profile enlightened people in this country (most notably Tim Flannery) in regard to population / sustainability issues, and join the groundswell of concern pushing for the paradigm shift away from continuous growth and towards stability in the magnitude of our impact on this continent.

Check out Sustainable Population Australia http://www.population.org.au/

Whatever you do, for goodness sake don’t just sit back and accept the Howard and Costello dogma surrounding their insane continued unending maximized expansionism.

Ludwig, l quite agree, the point l was making is that both are paradoxical yet both need to be address as whole rather than part there of! If anything a balance needs to be sort on population growth and achievable sustainability but, and here l go again, you cannot just halt growth - we as a race got ourselves in this mess by over capitalizing this land, its time we make amends.
I wholeheartedly agree with what Tim Flannery and SPA(cheers for that) say. Unfortunately, I'm a realist and highlighting the problem is one thing, acting upon it is another. The biggest problem that we have now is a government that just focuses on political points scoring at any means, a PM that is driven to be marked in history as great as his hero Menzies. Also, primary production is still our main export..the same industry that utilizes more water and has cause more salinity issues in the pursuit of maximizing it's yield.
The public needs to start to put pressure on this government and demand that the economic surplus start being spent on finding solutions to our water crisis, forget cotton and rice farming (all given startup grants by governments) and at least stick to an agriculture industry that Australia can sustain - then again, come the polls, how many Australians will not remember Howard saying that climate change isn't happening yet he is all about being our Saviour because of climate change - ha!
$10b over 10 years for this so called water scheme, thats a $1b a year...ummm I'm sure we spend more on defense? Wonder if you replanted $1b worth of trees a year do to the environment? Maybe spend $1b a year re-piping all those terracotta water pipes in many suburbs? Or maybe, spend $1b a year covering water channels that are left to open to evaporation? Or just maybe, spend $1b a year on water recycling and desalination plants....hmmm
I wonder if common sense ever plays a part in politics?
Oh it's all too hard...lets just nuke ourselves and end the pain :P

Ludwig, really I do agree with you in principle on the ideal population/sustainability issue. It does impact on water, I know. However, population growth, while not being entirely separate is larger than the original recycling vs desalination question.

Anyway, since you appear not willing to start a thread on it, population growth control is a can of worms that you will find very difficult even in other political climates...

What you will find is that under the unclear "sustainability" goal, you will also find conflicting goals that are quite contradictory. While you don't think that draconian measures will need to be enforced for population control, I think that you will find that they will. Many measures will infringe on many rights (liberty, reproductive etc) that people take for granted at present. Any policy that doesn't even explicitly state these things will often be accused of infringing on these rights by stealth. Just the demographics of an aging population alone will give any politician the willies, especially when Tim Flannery says an "ideal" population is 12 million! Negative population growth? That will play havoc with any number of things including quality of life issues for the aged and take a long time to implement (more than a lifetime). And how do you think you will control those sectors of our community who have policies of little to no birth control (guess who they are) will react to your policies? What you may find is a much more violent reaction than you would expect. All in the name of "sustainability". So, the most obvious course of action for many is to try and increase the resources available, through technology and attempting to lessen demand (without being tyrannical on peoples rights). CountryGal may right and a crash may come, but willfully letting it happen in the hope of a better future afterwards is not a policy to be pursued by the sane.

Spendocrat: I'm somewhat sceptical of the arguments against recycled water myself, though I'd be much more certain if you can direct me to something to back that up.

I've trawled through London's drinking water inspectorate here:

http://www.dwi.gov.uk/

I didn't see any mention of recycled water.

If what you say is accurate, then I'm fine with recycled water.
But everybody seems to just keep parrotting the line that london recycles their water - yet nobody's backing it up.
That's what bothers me - if there is no precedent for using recycled water from a stagnant supply, I think we ought to be told.

Richmond and Windsor on the outskirts of Sydney use recycled water.

Indeed Bazz... but is it for agriculture or drinking? what kind of percentage are we talking?

I'm certainly not opposed to recycled water per se... but it looks like I'm going to be drinking it in high percentages sometime in the next few years, and I'd like to be properly informed.
As it is, I've seen a lot of spin and not much substance.

I am pleased that we all agree on the basics of sustainability.

I don’t think there needs to be anything paradoxical about it Mr.OMG. We just need to get it into our collective thick heads that continuous growth must be dealt with.

It is all quite simple. The paradigm shift away from continuous expansionism and onto genuine sustainability is just waiting for the right person or political party to initiate it.

I was hoping that Kevin Rudd would be that person. I wrote numerous posts on this forum on different threads imploring him and Labor to make this fundamental change, on the basis that the time is right for it, as is obvious to all with the water crisis and various other issues. Support from community would be there if the campaign is handled properly, and it would be their best chance of really being seen to be different from the incumbents instead of just a shadow of them. And it would be their best chance of securing power at the next election.

But alas, Rudd shows no signs of embracing the all-important demand / supply balance, nor anything else substantial within a sustainability paradigm.

Bugsy, I have started seven threads on this forum, one of which was sustainability/population-oriented. http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=162. I don’t see any point in starting another one.

The best approach, which I take on vigorously, is to remind people on all manner of threads that we’ve got to think about the relevant topic of the thread within a genuine sustainability framework. I find that this is needed, as many people seem to be quite happy to think within really narrow parameters and lose sight of (or never gain sight of) the big picture.

We’ll have to disagree that “population growth control is a can of worms”. I think it is all very simple.

Alright, so you are full of thoughts on why sustainability might be a hard thing to deal with, but you still don’t seem to even be considering the consequences of not dealing with it. You are concerned about peoples’ rights being reduced by efforts to direct our society towards stability, but you completely fail to consider the reduced rights and increased inequality being imposed on us all now by way of resource stress….and which is going to get much worse if we let it. And again, this can’t be more obvious than with the water crisis.

In short, you still seem totally resigned to the continuous strong movement away from the balance between demand and supply of our vital resources, and completely unwilling to even start to address anything that might slow this momentum let alone bring it to a halt.

So it begs the question; why are you in the slightest bit interested in water recycling?

Professor Don Bursill who developed Australia's drinking water guidelines says he would not drink recycled sewage water and would not back its use.

He claims there are too many risks attached to the practice and there is no assurance that the water would remain safe.

Chlorine based organic chemicals like to hang around sewage plants. Dioxin comes to mind - a seriously health damaging and DNA altering persistent compound which invades the entire food chain.

Testing for dioxins can cost thousands of dollars and one would need an assurance that operators have the technology to filter this chemical and other chlorine based compounds from the end product.

Since public drinking water agencies use chlorine as a disinfectant, I suspect this would only exacerbate the catalytic effect of other organic chemicals.

For citizens to advise that we should trust the regulators is foolhardy indeed since aren't the regulators and their masters partly responsible for getting us into this mess in the first place?

Which reminds me of the quote attributed to the philosopher Karl Popper: "Those who promise us paradise on Earth never produced anything but hell."

Ludwig, you can expand any resource problem into population/sustainability. But that just means that any discussion on how to deal with increasing available resources ends up being a discussion about limiting population. Energy- population , food availability- population, water- population. You can see where this gets us. Any time someone asks a sensible, limited and specific question, you can come to the rescue to tell us its not a debate about water availability or technology, its a debate about population size!

Can you direct me to the posting where you plan for the effect that limiting our population will have without foreign cooperation in stabilising global population size? The birth rates in western countries are already decreasing due to education and high living standards, how will we be treated by the international community when we refuse to take refugees and immigrants of countries that are total warzones, most likely due to resource depletion? No, it's all very simple isn't it?

Globally, I would suggest that population stabilisation is more likely to occur when a higher standard of living is enjoyed by people with less children. That is, better education and greater wealth in developing countries will help to reduce the birth rate as the number of children is still seen as being a greater wealth producing/survival asset amongst the poorest communities.

Bugsy, thanks for continuing the discussion on population / sustainability. As your questions are now taking our debate right away from the subject of water, let’s take it to the ‘Population and sustainability’ thread. Please see my response there: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=315#7672

Nice one Ludwig, see you over there. ;)

re London water supply-- Checked out the dwi site posted by TurnLeft TR and I also could find no mention of treated sewerage-effluent going back into the water supplies for London, only treated effluent being discharged into water courses which would find its way back into the drinking water supply. Therefore, it would be nice if someone in authority could point to the relevant information re London and recycled effluent for clarification so we're all happy.
I'm opposed to it in SEQ as experts have been quite wrong about other 'safe practices' with necessity forcing implementation of quick turnaround policies after unforseen disasters. Also, human error, new exotic diseases, possible future cost cutting are all negative scenarios which are not impossible. Anyway, the narrow focus and lack of vision by our illustrious leaders and their advisors were and are factors contributing to the magnitude of the present situation. Cost is always a factor but so is unnecessary wasteful gov. expenditure which is another topic.

Isn't most of the U.K using recycled water? And have been for a very long time...
And the solution to electricity plants producing GHG is Nuclear power, but we know that will never be legal in Australia. So I guess we need to cover our desert with a wind power plant to generate enough power too keep us all happy and start growing cactus to absorb the current CO2 emissions - nothing else will stay alive in the speedy global warming.

http://www.nei.org/documents/Policy_Brief_Nuclear_Energy_A_Key_Tool_0107.pdf

If recycled water really has been commonly used elsewhere, you'd think there'd be a link to a reliable government website, somewhere, outlining this practice.
I'd really like to see one. It would be comforting.

Singapore uses NEWater which seems very similar to the recycling system proposed for SEQ. They only introduce 1% into their reservoirs with plans to add 2.5%--Here is a link to their FAQ page.

http://www.pub.gov.sg/NEWater_files/faq/index.html

What are the proposed introduction figures here? Also, I'm always very skeptical about the wisdom of simply adopting methodologies from very different climatic-rainfall areas as per lessons from the past.

digiwigi-

The Premier has been asked what the percentage will be, though he has strictly ruled out any cap on the water. So effectively, it will depend on how much rain is in Wivenhoe.

If we had plenty of water there, we wouldn't need the recycled water, so I'm guessing the percentage is going to be quite high.