By golly, Belly, I've come close to hijacking the thread with my last post, although I did mention recycled water in the second paragraph! I'd better get back on topic or I conjecture I might upset the Goldbach's! Been up for hours, you know; starting to nod off.

Zzzz ....zzz..z.. after a few years of wall-to-wall Labor governments, the newly-created Safe Subsistence Police evicted Belly from his rural quarter acre block and burned down his unsafe tank-water-supplied dwelling right before his eyes, just for his own good, mind you. I could only imagine the anguish he felt as they put an RFID bracelet on his ankle and escorted him to a rented high-rise urban slum-dwelling where he would do his time under unit-arrest, knowing that he had recommended tanks to all his home-owning fellow-citizens.

Looking on the bright side, though, he was grateful to Malcolm Turnbull for pushing through, in the dying days of the Howard government, the legislation that empowered the government to put up his now vacant land as security for the compulsory reverse-mortgage that he had had to take out to pay the key-money and bond for his new rented government sponsored privately jerry-built urban slum-dwelling! .....zzz..zz...jolt!

Oops. Nodded off there for a moment. Bad dream. Don't recall any trial being held, though: strange, that. Now where was I? Recycled water, that was it.

Apparently, when United Water got the 15 year contract for Adelaide's water supply back in 1995, it was the first such out-sourcing of urban water supply in Australia. Wonder whether they had any provision in the contract for the Murray running out of water? You know, no water in the Murray, no water for Adelaide, nothing to make profit on! With three years on their contract to run, they really needed a RECYCLING contract somewhere else where there was sure to be water on which to make a profit. Where else but Queensland? Drought-stricken one day, privatised the next!

It looked like Veolia Water (the parent of United Water) had landed a life-saving contract (or the promise thereof), when it landed one for that part of the Western Corridor Recycled Water Project that involved operating the recycling of effluent water for Brisbane reticulated supply.

See http://www.westerncorridor.qld.gov.au/sitedocument.aspx?docId=10

It replaced the rapidly drying up prospects of its subsidiary United Water, the outsourcee in SA. Beautiful. Then the other part of the slogan bit them on the backside. You know, 'Queensland, beautiful one day, perfect the next'.

No sooner had Veolia Water grabbed this life-preserver than it began to look like SEQ was going to run out of water to recycle! Following the Bad Attitude expressed by the local yokel Toowoomabanites in their referendum last July, this was all Veolia needed. Perfect! Now they wouldn't necessarily even have recyclate to ram down the banana-benders' throats! Veolia must have been thinking it had killed a chinaman in a previous corporate life!

But you (and Veolia Water) never know your luck in a big city like Brisvegas. Up went the cry 'Never fear, Forrest Gumpp is here.' Another slogan to the rescue! No need to die of thirst on April the first. Forrest will show you how to make sure there will be enough water to recycle, but only if Veolia Water behaves itself and does not try and get BOOzed, contracting on Australia's water supplies. (BOO, an acronym for Build, Own and Operate contracts, a euphemism for a 'sell-out' deal.)

Clearly, the desperation quick-fix of building a pipeline to the Burdekin, much as it is what residents of SEQ want to hear is possible, starts to look more like a Viking raid on other peoples' water that will work very well for Veolia. Only if SEQ continues to face ongoing shortage will Veolia's future be really secure. Prospects of reduced-pressure desalination of seawater using waste heat from power stations, capable of securing Brisbane's water for the foreseeable future, must be a nightmare for Veolia.

Here we have proof smoking is a health hazard, no matter what you smoke.
If we put a pipe along side the one that brings water to the coast for drinking.
And took it just a bit further inland we could recycle our sewage by re using the treated water to grow anything including trees.
Just north then east of a Pacific Highway town called Kew the best hard wood forest you ever saw is run on re treated sewage.
Nature will return the water treated in the best way as rain.
If Newcastle trapped 20% of rain water on its way to the sea during heavy rain, and piped it into say an old open cut mine just about 100 klm inland?
Is the cost more important than our future?
What if we pumped 60%?
Answers to our problems exist Israel is worth a look.
Sitting on our hands taking cheap shots at one political party while amusing some is over looking the fact we need to act.
And if we do not? well that is clear the ratbag idea that tank water is not good overlooks the fact much more than 30% of this country has ever had anything else or is likely to.
I leave the fact that after 21 straight wins Labor still is not seen by some as the voters choice? but can not refrain from laughter!

To answer critics, I would like to say, YES, I don't know much about the process for cleaning sewerage water into drinking water, but to claim that nothing will ever go wrong with the process is absurd. Even trained professional hospital staff forget to sterialise surgical instruments! I for one, a big water drinker, could never get over the thought, when holding a glass of water, is this recycled body fluids of an AIDS sufferer? Whether this is rational or not is irrelevant. As they say, it's the thought that counts!

Yes, we have tank water sometimes. Our local council tells us not to use it for drinking or cooking, but I would definitely use that than recycled sewerage. The sewerage is all yours, and don't complain when you get sick!

One almost has to be glad to be old!

No fool like an old fool. Hey oldie, I don't suppose you are planning on learning about water reclaimation anytime soon eh? You admit that your fears are quite possibly irrational, and yet seem quite unwilling to find out whether or not that is the case. But it doesn't stop you asserting your fear as fact that it is a public health hazard. The analogy of instrument sterilisation applied to this argument is like talking about how beavers are similar to making pancakes. You think someone is accidentally going to forget to sterilise the water you draw from the tap? Thats a good one. You should have written this yesterday, it would have been more appropriate.

Old fella sorry but you are living proof not every thought is true.
If you spent some time looking at the world as it is you would know only in your mind can something happen.
World city's with more people than all Queensland use this treated water.
Like it or not we dump treated and untreated water into the sea and swim in it.
And can you picture our dam water? dead animals and their by products, a big part of farm fertilizers end up in them.
We clean our water now, tank water not clean? in rural Australia it is much sought after.
If you drank bottled water from my visitors home it would be my tank water taken home weekly to refill bottles.
The debate should be about how we use recycled water in good rainfall times.
We can never drought proof this country but we can improve great parts of it not all rainwater should go back to the sea.