SEQ grid - not enough to recycle ...

Excerpt from the Courier Mail:

Empty feeling stalks pipeline

5 November 2007

Pipelines to keep southeast Queensland from running dry in 2009 are more than half complete, but the Government still can’t find a way to fill them.

With level 6 water restrictions only weeks away, work has reached the halfway point on the Western Corridor recycled water pipeline and its counterpart, the Southern Regional line.

The two pipelines will stretch a combined 300km when finished.

A desalination plant at Tugun on the Gold Coast is about 40 per cent complete.

Southeast Queensland faces Australia’s worst water crisis at the end of next year unless 200mm or more of rain falls this summer.

The country’s toughest urban water restrictions will begin later this month, with fines for heavy-use households that flout an outdoor watering ban.

Other households will still be able to water gardens by bucket during restricted hours.

But the Government’s biggest challenge lies in finding waste water for the Western Corridor pipeline.

Because of reduced sewer flows, the Western Corridor will be able to produce only 131 megalitres a day, rather than 230 megalitres as first thought.

A monthly progress report released last week by the Water Commission said a business case was being developed to transfer sewage from Loganholme or Sandgate.

The regions’ dams have resumed their fall following generous winter rainfall.

After a rise to 23 per cent of capacity, they are at nearly 20 per cent and dropping a percentage point a month.
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