SEQ recycled water - Water everywhere and effluent to drink ...

Excerpt from the Australian:

Water everywhere and effluent to drink

21 November 2008

Flooding rains have removed the need for recycled water

The 'Gabba roof is off, cars are floating under houses, ovals are turning into lakes, hillsides are sliding and creeks are breaking their banks. Southeast Queensland is awash, its dams filling fast. And the Queensland Water Commission, as relentless as the deluge that forced schools, offices and one of Brisbane's main arterial roads, the Inner City Bypass, to close yesterday, is forging ahead with plans to put effluent and industrial waste into the region's drinking water.

Like an indecisive bureaucrat answering to political masters, Premier Anna Bligh has washed her hands of the matter, leaving the decision to the government-appointed Water Commission. On Wednesday, she appeared to open the door to scrapping recycled drinking water unless essential, declaring she would listen to advice from the commission. This was interpreted widely as preparing the public for a backflip.

But the commission has spoken, and it's having none of it. Water recycling will go ahead unless the dams reach capacity. If current patterns continue throughout the summer, that is not impossible at some point. Come next year, however, it is not the commission facing voters.

At the height of the drought, The Australian supported the building of infrastructure for water recycling to cope with what former premier Peter Beattie called the "Armageddon situation." When we advocated a "yes" vote in the Toowoomba referendum on recycled water in mid-2006, the Darling Downs city was in real danger of running out of water within 18 months.

When Mr Beattie cancelled a regional referendum in January last year, he reassured voters the treated effluent would be added only when the three dams that serviced southeast Queensland had fallen below 40 per cent capacity. Yesterday, they stood at 45 per cent and were rising rapidly.

The drought has been a salutary lesson about water waste for millions of Australians. It is appropriate, in a hot, dry continent, that recycled effluent be used as extensively as possible for industrial use. It is also imperative that every state, including authorities responsible for the Murray-Darling system, complete accurate audits of water usage. Water also needs to be priced at realistic levels to discourage waste. And authorities should direct infrastructure spending towards capturing more of the run-off of major falls, much of which is currently wasted.

While the Queensland Government has hailed Singapore as a prime example of the success of recycled sewage in the drinking water, less than 1 per cent of drinking water in Singapore is comprised of recycled sewage. This is a fraction of the 10 to 25 per cent of recycled sewage proposed for southeast Queensland. Nor is it clear how much hospital waste would be recycled.

On Wednesday night, National Health and Medical Research Council water scientist Don Bursall told ABC television he was impressed with the technology and regulations being proposed in Queenslad.  The risks aren't zero but neither are they in conventional water supply systems, but we felt that they were virtually as safe as conventional water systems." His personal preference, however, was for water authorities to consider all other conventional options first.

After southeast Queensland dam levels fell below 20 per cent last year, the storms now wreaking havoc have confirmed, yet again, the unpredictable nature of the phenomenon known as climate change. Or perhaps it's just the weather.

See - Water everywhere and effluent to drink.