Another engineer says we should drink recycled sewage ...

... but let's just change the name first.

Opinion piece in today's Courier Mail by a senior lecturer at Griffith University. He is directing his comments at the Brisbane and State politician level rather than focusing on the Toowoomba debate - which is fortunate because Toowoomba residents have heard the "science spin" before.

An excerpt (annotated):

"Philip Williams says we need to find a new name for recycled water before it's too late."

Too late for what?

"Reverse osmosis only lets water molecules through the membrane. At this stage, it is pure water, and has long since lost any hint of its origin."

The lecturer has been looking at too many brochures from the NEWater facility in Singapore. Even the Toowoomba City Council now concedes that not only water gets through the membranes - there's also the 30mgs/l of TDS.

"If we were to take this path, there inevitably would be people who could not contemplate drinking the water or using it for cooking. There is always bottled water for the tiny amount of water for personal use. "

Big mistake - adopting Mayor Thorley's "you can drink it or buy bottled water" approach to community engagement just will not work.

"Perhaps as a starting point when talking about water recycling, we should drop all references to "sewage", "effluent", "toilets" and so on and come up with a suitable name for our own recycled pure water."

Again, the reference to "pure water".

Toowoomba City Council wants to introduce "Thorley Water" so perhaps it could be called "Beattie Bitter" or "Palaszczuk not quite Pure".

Renaming recycled sewage water to something innocuous will not fool the public. Another mistake - treat the public as stupid - if we change the name, they'll forget what it is.

"We need a sensible debate on water recycling without any more scaremongering."

No argument there - one of the problems with Mayor Thorley's floundering recycled sewage project has been Toowoomba City Council's steadfast refusal to engage in any form of sensible debate.

Source - Courier Mail - Wash away our fears.

The Courier Mail has also commenced a blog - a new name for water - which makes the following point:

"So why do people think that raw water in a dam is better than this. The dam water may contain lots of nasties like cow dung, pesticides and poorly treated wastewater from other towns. By piping recycled pure water into the dam we would be improving water quality, not degrading it. And then of course, it would all be treated again at a water treatment plant before getting to our taps."

Source - Courier Mail blog - A new name for water blog -(with moderated comments section!)

It's surprising how quickly they jumped to the apple and oranges comparison - recycled water is clean - dam water is full of cow dung, pesticides and poorly treated wastewater.

Using scare tactics like this has been one of the approaches of the Toowoomba City Council and its "champions". At least the blog comment acknowledges that the water would be treated again - something which is often omitted from similar comments in the Toowoomba debate.

Anyone attempting to comment on the use of recycled sewage in Brisbane should at least try to learn from the mistakes of Toowoomba City Council ...