With all the talk about the lack of water in South East Queensland, what about the water flowing down the Clarence and Richmond rivers into the sea in northern New South Wales?

Queensland supplies a large part of New South Wales electricity so surely they could afford to let us have a little of their surplus water to help generate it?

The pipeline would only be about 160 kilometres long and the land is already available if it runs up the interstate rail line corridor.

It could serve Brisbane, Gold Coast, a spur line to Toowoomba and even onto the Sunshine coast therefore no need for the Traveston Dam.

Well then, what about the Northern Rivers residents right to use the water to support their own development? Why is it that they should forgo their resources just to keep a highly profitable development industry going in SEQ. There are other practical solutions though. One is to build power stations on the coastline and harvest freshwater from steam arising from the seawater cooled condensers. A proposal for a solar thermal power station claimed that this measure could produce 40 litres of freshwater for each kilowatt hour of power generated. Electricity generated in this fashion would also guarantee an adequate water supply.

John Howard and Malcolm Turnbull may have a point. Reading the tone of this thread is like a State of Origin football game.

I mean, really, there is no "us and them" get over it.

Every State has a part to play in this and any jealousy has to be put aside. Currently, the QLD Government thinks that a connection between North QLD and the Murray Darling catchment area could solve many problems.

Don't forget that Byron Bay also had a disaster in water catchment, and the Northern Rivers didn't help them much either.

There is no one solution to this. It has to be a cocktail of various ways of catching water now that our dams are not longer reliable.

Mooree could also be desalinating some of its famous spa water to and piping it either to the coast, or to the Murray Darling catchment area.

I'm sure there are many ideas on the table, now action is worth more than words.

What about the various Governments giving every house a 10,000 litre rainwater tank?

There is no "us and them" saintfletcher? There certainly is so. If you wish to bulldoze scrubland, erect shoddy housing, then make a motza from it because the authorities coincidentally dont ensure sufficient housing supply to meet demand (try this trick without high immigration), you need water. Without it your golden goose dies. NSW Northern Rivers can play this game for a while quite easily as they still have plenty of cheap water for the taking. Now what sort of insanity would prompt them to have the water piped away so that others could make a motza from the game elsewhere?

On the freshwater from electricity generation line, this research describes a method of producing 4 megalitres of water per day per 100MW generation capacity using waste heat from a steam power plant.

http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/proceedings/05/UCR_HBCU/pdf/papers/Klausner.pdf

And this group claims to be able to produce 1 gigalitre of demineralised water per day as a byproduct of 1200 MW of solar thermal generating capacity.

http://www.trecers.net/downloads/proposal_gaza.pdf

Saintfletcher, the moree spa water is sourced from the great artesian basin which has been coming under increased levels of protection. Whilst many of the regions artesian bores have been capped and piped, it is unlikely the pipes will lead back to the coast. The spa water already does flow into the river system, but at only a few ML/day it is a minor contributer.

Is mise, why "give" tanks? how about requiring new developments to be largely self sufficient in water. If you want to water a garden BUY a tank. Rural people have had to buy their own tanks, it would be unpalatable for them as taxpayers to pay for more city tanks too.