NSW - how your loo will work for industry ...

Excerpt from Fairfield City Champion:

How your loo will work for industry

17 September 2008

A scheme to reclaim 4.3 billion litres of effluent for industry in western Sydney may not be sexy, says new Premier Nathan Rees, but it's probably unique.

Contracts for the $100 million Rosehill-Camellia Recycled Water Scheme were signed with AquaNet Sydney and Veolia Water Australia last month when Mr Rees was the water minister.

The companies will build and operate a treatment plant at Fairfield to recycle sewage from plants at Fairfield and Liverpool.

A network of disused gas pipes will transport the effluent to the treatment plant and then on to companies including Basell Australia, James Hardie, Rosehill Gardens, Visy Paper and Marubeni Australia Power Services.

At the Visy Paper recycling plant at Smithfield to mark the signing of the contracts, Mr Rees said the project would take Sydney a step closer to recycling 70 billion litres of water a year by 2015.

"Provision of both potable water and recycled effluent into the same property is easy in greenfields sites where's it's just a matter of putting pipes in and connecting up to the sources," he said.

"But where there's already development, whether commercial residential or industrial, it's a very different story."

"If you want to retro-fit homes to get recycled water into each home, it's about $9000 per property."

"The cost is just exorbitant you can't afford it. This is the first time in the world, as far as we can determine, that we've been able to get recycled water systemically into an already established urban area."

"At 1.8 megalitres a day you're looking at about $10,000 a week on potable water expenditure that's $500,000 a year."

"It's fundamentally re-engineering the way we deliver water and water services."

See - Fairfield City Champion - How your loo will work for industry.