Well they're running piping at the moment to provide water and water recycling aren't they? Isn't that infrastructure? This will help overall to Australia's water shortage and definitely QLD's.

Hopefully some of the qlders here can fill in the gaps but I think it's only little measures to pass around a small amount of existing water rather than new dams etc . I'm all for water conservation measures in homes but while the number of homes keeps growing sooner or later an area will run out of water regardless of how carefull people are . All homes should have rainwater tanks at the very least to provide water for toilets/washing etc but that's still only delaying the innevitable if there aren't more dams or other bulk water supplies . Aren't we supposed to reach 21 million people this year ? There haven't been many new dams etc done since the population was around 16 million ...

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Queensland is actually a gem amongst the rest for forward planning and thinking.

Wivenhoe dam was planned in the 60's and built in the 70's to bring Brisbane water. And it's done that after 7 or 8 years of drought with a population expansion unforseen at the time.

More have been planned but greens and opportunistic environmentalists have always managed to quash them. Wolfdene is one example which was to be to the south of the city behind the Gold Coast hinterland.

Considering the length of the drought, the population that has expanded since they were built and the ensuing demand I think it's pretty amazing that the capital cities still have water personally.

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SooperDooperMiniCooperExpertEngineering

All garage work involves equal measures of enthusiasm, ingenuity and a fair degree of irresponsibility.

OK , but mores needed though considerring the growth there . Not just bagging south east Qld , Sydney as well , how much has the Sydney population grown in the last 10-15 years and what has been done to it's water supplies ? Govt's and other groups keep arguing about it but nothing ever seems to get done .

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Sydney seems to be still paying for the cost of the olympics and growth has been stifled for a long, long time (Drive down Parramatta Road anyone?). The city (since the state is apparently sydney-centric) has been rather broke for a long time. Hence the attempt to flog their part of the snowy off to private interests.

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SooperDooperMiniCooperExpertEngineering

All garage work involves equal measures of enthusiasm, ingenuity and a fair degree of irresponsibility.

Storage of water is one thing but you need water to make water. So many of our rivers and waterways are dammed and the flow downstream is almost non existant.

The Murray Darling is a classic example. Each of the states think the water belongs to them and as a result, Adelaide was down to 40 days water at one point this year. Cubby Downs is an enormous cotton growing concern in QLD. Cotton is a crop that should never grown in Australia. It is a frail plant that constant water and constant applications of insecticides and herbicides. Cubby Downs basically captures most of the flow of the Murray Darling and contains it in huge turkey nest dams. Grows the cotton recycling the water until a crop is harvested and then releases the herbicide and insecticide containing water back into the river system.

Down stream is a series of ponds until the multinationally owned cotton group (whose profits go to shareholders O/S) let the water go and take this water to the food growing bowls on the lower river.

The real effect of not having flowing river systems is the lack of rain causing humidity in the air in a land as vast as ours. Sure we get dumps from off shore like this last week, but the river systems contributed as well and we have lost that.

Water is meant to be recycled. !!!!

My 2 cents- I agree with Mike, cotton is a crop that should never be grown in Australia. Rice is another...

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DrMini- 1970 wasaMatic 1360, Mk1S crank, 86.6HP (ATW) =~125 @ crank, 45 Dellorto (38 chokes), RE282 sprint cam, 1.5 rockers, 11.0:1 C/R.

Definitely agree with you there Mike , wrong crops and wrong areas that are using too many resources .

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One of the things that is happening throughout rural Australia is the change of focus about water. The old landcare groups are largely gone and replaced by Catchment Management Authorities (CMA's). They have realised that planting trees is not the only thing the eviroment needs and that the grasses, herbs and forbs as well as the soil biota, play an enormous part in water recycling.

Water passes through our lands and as landholders we have a responsibility to ensure that it is not carrying silt, salt and chemicals as it eventually ends up in a bigger water system somewhere. Either as run-off or as humidity. The evaporation that gives humidity causes concentration of the salt and chemicals which will be washed into waterways next big run off rains. Dryland salinity is a whole other issue that I am not discussing here.

The CMA's are working hard with farmers to ensure clean water and the governments (plural) are offering substantial grants to encourage perrenial ground cover, riparean repair etc etc. Good things will come from it.

Back onto water shortages - domestic use of water is about 10% of all consumption. Thats food for thought.

Morris 1100 is right, we're allowed to water our gardens. With a 20L device for 3 hours, 3 nights a week. This doesn't make much sense to me. But it's ok, I haven't watered my gardens since... well, I can't remember ever watering a garden! I don't enjoy gardening. And my neighbourhood is frequented by water management utes, who do nothing more than drive around looking for people using hoses (which are banned). Washing cars (at home) is also banned (unless you use dew!). And you have to have 3 of 4 water saving devices (aerator taps, AAA Shower Heads, dual flush toilets, AAAA washing machine) and a pool blanket to be allowed to fill your pool (I've filled mine once - just a little bit - since October. Pool is currently massively overfull after the rain).
Qld may have done well in the 60's to plan ahead for water needs, but it doesn't mean that any government in the last 15 years anywhere in Qld has had any sort of vision for the future. Water's just the latest crisis up here... And there are scandals up here as to the government's use of water. There's a massive leak in the Southbank Pool, several public pools are being drained and refilled over the winter, and none of the pools have pool covers when not in use. As much as pool covers can be a pain to use, they really do save a lot of water lost through evaporation.
Recycling is, to me, a very short term solution. And, despite the propaganda we get, not necessarily the safest one. I say that because I don't trust the water we get at the moment, I can't imagine what will happen when it's not originating from as clean a source (the sky, via dams). Anyone who's ever been able to compare SEQ water to any other water will agree with me! It tastes disgusting. The big problem with recycling, though, is that you can't recycle 100% of what you use. Most places around the world use less than 10% recycled water (Toowoomba proposed 25%). So it doesn't really add that much of a supply. You can only reuse a portion of what comes back through the system, and not all water leaving the system (going to homes) comes back - a lot goes into gardens. So it really is a finite resource, and not a good one.
I reckon WA and NSW have picked the right option. So much of Australia's population lives right on the coast, it only makes sense to desalinate. There are now cheaper desalination techniques, and some investment into making them more efficient wouldn't be a bad thing, either. Yes, current setups produce a super-salinated discharge, but surely there could be investigation as to how to harvest the salt from it..? In northwestern WA, they do this - they let tidal waters onto large areas, then block it from the ocean, so the water stays and evaporates off over the next few days. They then collect the salt. I don't see why we couldn't do a similar thing with the discharge (space constraints being the biggest problem on the east coast). If we could change over to a desalination model, then the dams could become what they really were originally intended for - flood controllers! And if we built big enough desalination plants, we could actually start refilling the dams as required in drought conditions to allow some water to flow down the rivers. Which is really something neglected by most city folk, as Mike's pointed out.
Maybe I'm naive, but I think that makes some sense...
Oh, one other thing Mike's pointed out, domestic use is small compared to business. But not only that, beverage manufacturers use a lot of water. Cola manufacturers use about 1.5L of water to make 1L of product. There's a new brewery up here which uses 2.3L of water for every 1L of beer. The older brewery up here uses more like 4 - 5L of water for every 1L of beer! Food for thought...

Hmmm..
The recycling I am talking about is the big picture stuff that has always happened and is done by nature. Not the reusing of sewerage or gray water - just so thats clear.

Industry widely uses and wastes water - we have open cut coal mines around here - Ulan, wilpingong and Moolarben and they use enormous amounts of water to wash the coal, think abbotoirs and other industries where the water use is copius.

They steam ahead regardless while you sit and watch the roses wilt. They are not having psuedo police pounce on them for picking up a hose.

Yeah, I know Mike - every drop of water is always in a continual cycle. It's a good thing, and I reckon the water should go through the full cycle before it comes back to us. I just thought I'd explain why I voted No to direct recycling to potable water in Toowoomba - other people had mentioned it.
The problem with just adding more dams is that, while a dam has a lot of good points, as you've mentioned, it does choke the river system downstream... People aren't the only things that need water, and the biggest supply of water is the ocean.
And Ian (Sports850) is right - the population is projected to hit 21 million in the next month or so.

Man made Recycling water plants should go pretty close to the proper cycle of water.

I am not in favour of desalination plants and it goes back to the Vietnam War. Lots of nasties were sprayed around then and while the major issue was Agent Orange there were many other substances. When the wet season came it was all washed into the sea.

Australian Navy people who were both working the gun line (which meant six months offshore) and also those ferrying goods and men to and from Vietnam were living off fresh water that was distilled from sea water. Now many of these men in their fifties and sixties are getting Lymphoma's and the incidence is way above the population normals. The department of veteran affairs has accepted that organic hydrocarbon substances such as dioxins are concentrated during the disillation process and absorbed into the bodies at concentrations far higher than soldiers who served on the ground in Vietnam.

I dont think that distillation process of a large body of water in a container is a safe way to obtain water. I know about other methods such as reverse osmosis etc but ultimately a concentration of toxic wastes is going to be captured. Its simply dangerous in the hands of governments who are known to play with the truth for another term in office.

Interesting little device installed in one of the upper priced motorhomes at the current Caravan show is a "dragon fly" It extracts water from the humidity in the air and produces 30 litres a day. There was a device shown on the New Inventors the other week doing the same thing but fitted in a windmill arrangement so it's energy to drive the condensers was provided by the wind. Reducing the households need for external water means less reliance on dams

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David L


My greatest fear in life is that when I die my wife will sell my Mini and tools for the price I told her I paid for them!

Thanks David - I had heard about that.

Again its a circular discussion. Again we need humidity in the air from a living continual water cycle which means full river systems and water systems that allow the air to be humid. A trade off is less of the "thirties" syndrome that allows that wild fires that we are increasingly experiencing. The thirties syndrome is humidity of less than thirty percent. Temperature of greater than 30 degrees C and a wind speed greater than thirty km/h.

banking up the water at more strategic points is not the answer except for those few who can access that water until it begins to dwindle.