Waste not, want not?
Freshwater inflows are fundamental to the function of freshwater, estuarine and marine ecosystems. However, this fact seems to have been forgotten during the recent hype surrounding the issue of water and water use in Australia. Today the Sydney Morning Herald ran a front page piece under the headline, “Dam it, so much rain down the drain”.
In the article, Ben Cubby and Jonathan Peariman refer to an option which has been floated recently - capturing stormwater for reuse, otherwise known as ’stormwater harvesting’. Apparently this is a push by NSW Premier Morris Iemma, aimed at ’saving’ 1.4 billion litres per year. The problem is, as Sydney Water spokesman, Brendan Elliot, said, “the quality of water that lands on your roof is far higher…”. Personally, I would much rather drink recycled sewage, than recycled stormwater (although there’s no mention of using the harvested stormwater for human consumption).
Mr Iemma has also been pushing for a desalination plant. I think the money would be better spent installing tanks on all houses, everywhere. Why not? Too expensive? Like a new dam in the hunter isn’t going to be expensive!
For those of you playing at home, here are some references dealing with the importance of freshwater flows to downstream areas:
1. Florida estuaries.
2. Barramundi recruitment.
February 13th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
I have a friend who has worked in several Sewerage Treatment Plants as a chemical engineer and on a couple of occasions, after performing the regular testing, has found that the water was so clean that he has drunk it, straight from the back end of the plant, not 100m from where it’s piped-in raw. Surely with the further layers of treatment that would be required before it’s pumped back into our homes, we could all happily suck it down?
February 13th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Wouldn’t be a problem in Townsville - the water there already tastes like arse!
February 13th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
How do you know what that tastes like?
February 13th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
There are that many control ‘barriers’ in place to maintain quality, and the porosity of the membrane that is used in these kind of processes (both desal and recycled) is so small that the end product is far ‘cleaner’ than the water we currently drink coming from Prospect.
However, desal does require R/O membranes (smaller) which requires more pressure (read: bigger/more pumps read: power plant (coal?)) in comparison to that of membranes used in treating effluent (both black and grey water) which are generally of a larger porosity.
Ensuring all new development has dual reticulation and rainwater tanks a good start.
Giving every house in Sydney a rainwater tank is actually more expensive than a dam or desal. Also, there are issues with getting the uneducated citizen to actually use it wisely and not just fill it up from the mains.
I did a project in second year and found that our place would be self sufficient on rainwater alone, providing we had a tank big enough to sustain the household through dryer times (i.e. underground - which is why it’s easier to just put them under new houses).