Greens' Drew Hutton falls for the RO glossy pics ...

The Greens have declared that drinking recycled water is the alternative to building Beattie's dams.

It's a pity they couldn't get their facts straight:

"Reverse osmosis membranes have pores that will allow only water molecules to pass through. If a water molecule was the size of a ping pong ball, a hormone molecule would be the size of a football, a virus the size of a truck and a bacterium the size of a house."

Source - Greens - No dams - recycled water or dams?

Nice try but even the Toowoomba City Council now admits that the RO membranes don't just permit pure water to pass through - there's the 30mgs/l of TDS to deal with.

Seems the Greens have been looking at the old brochures of the Toowoomba Water Futures project.

Following the release under the FOI Act of the Water Futures NWC funding application, Toowoomba City Council were forced into an embarrassing admission that their brochures (sourced from the Singapore NEWater project) were misleading.

Now if only the Greens could get their facts right.

As highlighted in the response to Senator Bartlett's comments:

Why is it that the only alternative to "expensive unreliable destructive dams" is forcing people to drink recycled sewage?

Why can't recycled sewage be used for non-potable uses?

Read the comments in the recent NSW Parliamentary Committee report which discuss this issue (NSW Parliamentary Committee Inquiry Report - 8 June 2006).

Why can't we establish a water grid in South East Qld that includes Toowoomba?

Why can't the gas water which is being utilized in Dalby and Chinchilla be part of that solution?

Why can't more new land subdivisions be required to use dual pipe (or purple pipe) systems? Look at the examples around Melbourne (see - South East Water video). It is not part of the Toowoomba Water Futures plan (as set out in the NWC application) other than a reference to new subdivisions in Highfields which is in Crows Nest shire.

It seems odd that the only alternative to the dams is to force people to drink recycled sewage when there are other uses for it.

When Mayor Thorley is planning to continue to use bore water to water Toowoomba's parks and gardens (while forcing Toowoomba residents to drink a 25-29% recycled sewage mix that even the Council's own advisers think is "high by international standards"), you can see why many people in Toowoomba think that her floundering recycled sewage project makes no sense ...