The Drought

[Abundance]

Water is tasting a tad muddy - back to drinking coffee. Coffee masks the taste of water and if the coffee is bad the water may just improve the flavour.

How goes it with you, especially you South Australians who I have since learned are drinking what we flush down, that would account for the severe skin condition that a fellow from SA had.

Are we taking this seriously? I used to not flush ie if it's yellow let it mellow but stopped the practice because of the chemicals I'd have to use to clean the bowl properly.

Any good tips.

[lily]

Originally Posted by Abundance

South Australians who I have since learned are drinking what we flush down, that would account for the severe skin condition that a fellow from SA had.

???
Are you sure about that?
Seems a particularly long bow to draw...

[Mythor]

As far as I'm aware there's no direct recycling of water for the purposes of creating drinking water anywhere in Australia at present. All such recycling is for the purposes of irrigation, cooling and cleaning and such.
Recycled water FAQ.
It is possible to create drinkable water from wastewater and some countries have even started doing so, but Australia isn't among them. Yet.

We already do "indirect" recycling in that very little "new" water is being created and thus the vast majority of water in existence has been recycled in some fashion, mostly via natural processes.
Dr Karl has talked about such things many times before.

[Gutter Monkey]

Toowoomba had a referendum back in July as to whether they'd start a plan to add recycled water to their water supply and they knocked it back.

Eh, they're get thirsty eventually ...

[katrant]

Listening to water minister John Thwaites on the radio this morning, my question would be if only 20% of water used is outside (garden, etc), how come water restrictions only apply to outside use? Why not regulate what's used inside as well?

[Mythor]

Originally Posted by katrant

Why not regulate what's used inside as well?

Yes, I'm sure we all want Water Inspectors standing by the loo checking if we half-flush or full and timing our showers and so on.

Outside water is mostly wasted on plants, washing cars, washing footpaths, filling pools and other non-essential activities.
Inside water is mostly used for such inconsequential things as "hygiene" and "food preparation".

But mostly it's the first point. For some reason people are not particularly enamoured with the idea of the Government monitoring what people do in their own homes...

Mains water usage only accounts for 36% of total water usage, with household usage being just 11% of total water usage, most of which comes from Mains supplies. (source)

[Gutter Monkey]

They've asked people to cut down on showers, fix dripping taps, etc, but like Myth said, there's not really a lot they could actually do to check up on this.

[Abundance]

Originally Posted by lily

???
Are you sure about that?
Seems a particularly long bow to draw...

The above question in reference to SA drinking recycled water. Can't substantiate it with a written quote or anything, heard it off the TV that Canberra cleans its effluent to a high level then puts the water back in the river. Some downstream users are reliant on it for drinking water. Will try to find you a quote or something from the media.

Turns out that the muddy taste was from switching water supply to another dam because water was getting low and the dam they switched to had an algael bloom problem giving the water an odd taste. (TV source once again) Haven't tried any water since but the coffee tastes the same.

[Laney]

Where i am staying now, the water always tastes so metallic. It's got above normal concentrations of metals in the water, like lots of nickel, which apparently you get used to tasting, but i'd rather not.

Yeah, you'll find that having a shower costs about 3cents a minute and a half hour shower, which wastes sooooo much water, costs less than $1. So ya know, this is a pretty good reason why people don't save water - it doesn't cost the end user very much. They have tried different methods of charging, but i forget the reason why they didn't change over to a new cost system.

[Gutter Monkey]

There was an article in the Herald Sun today (the girl next to me at work buys it) about how some minister or other is planning on trying to stop the sale of certain washing machines and other items that waste more water than other models. The article said that the government is turning its attention to how people use water indoors. We spoke too soon ...

[Mythor]

No we didn't speak too soon, that's very different to the outdoors-style regulation that's in place right now. Outdoors there's actual Water Inspectors who drive around checking no one is watering their gardens. You can also ring a hotline to report people doing so and there's big fines if you get caught doing it.

People are less likely to object to mandating, for instance, that all newly installed toilets must be dual flush systems.
But there's no method of enforcing usage of the half flush that is going to be acceptable to people.

They've been encouraging people for years, even before the drought, to get water saving showerheads and so forth. This is just another way for the various governments to dodge actually doing anything about the problem.

[Alisso]

Originally Posted by Gutter Monkey

Toowoomba had a referendum back in July as to whether they'd start a plan to add recycled water to their water supply and they knocked it back.

Eh, they're get thirsty eventually ...

I want to know which bright spark thought it was a good idea to let the general, uninformed public make a decision like that.

What annoys me is that we teach children about the "water cycle", and they grow up and don't remember what that actually means...do they think something magical happens between us flushing the toilet and rain falling into the dam, that isn't going to happen in filtering processes?

Apparently - and I only heard an English guy on the radio mention this, so my source is highly unsupported - English school children are taught that every drop of water they drink has been through at least seven different sets of kidneys before they get it


But the big problem is always going to be commercial use of water, and with all the commercial use permits out there, I don't know that there's enough pressure on businesses to reduce their water usage, or start recycling water. Using drinking water in situations where gray water would be an acceptable alternative is immoral, and should be criminal.

[Laney]

Apparently, if you dig down deep enough below your water meter, this is actually another switch you can turn off to stop logging your water usage all together. I heard that some bloke turned the main meter off before filling up his pool, and then turned it back on again afterwards. Bit stingy if you ask me, cause filling a pool is pretty darn cheap for the amount of water you use up. I didn't even know about these second switches, but assuming they are true, they're about 1 metre down....

[Mythor]

Um, I suspect that's an urban legend Laney. The meter records how much water flows through it directly, as far as I know? Putting a second mechanical device in is just an invitation to problems?

Originally Posted by Alisso

I want to know which bright spark thought it was a good idea to let the general, uninformed public make a decision like that.

An effort was made to inform the public of the facts and since it's something that directly affects everyone it's probably best that everyone actually get asked.

The referendum was for making recycled water available as drinking water, when that's not the only solution available - it could be made available via a second pipe system, for irrigation and other household uses where drinkability isn't an issue (toilets, washing machines) or they could use it to supply farmers with water and use the water farmers use for irrigation to prop up the drinking water supply, and so on. Then there's desalination plants to consider.

A lot of businesses, especially manufacturing businesses (I believe) already recycle quite a bit of their water, especially when it's used for things like cooling.

Simply reducing water usage isn't going to cut it anyway. We need a greater supply. Whether that supply is enhanced via recycling or desalination or cutting off chunks of Antarctica is not particularly important. They're not going to pump raw effluent into the dams and even if they did, it gets treated from there anyway as all of our water is treated to make it safe already.

[Alisso]

Originally Posted by Mythor

Simply reducing water usage isn't going to cut it anyway. We need a greater supply. Whether that supply is enhanced via recycling or desalination or cutting off chunks of Antarctica is not particularly important.

Definately. With a constantly growing population, expecting to survive on our current supply, with or without a drought, is hardly realistic. The trouble with that is that almost any method of increasing the supply is a long term project. And what was the last directly government funded long-term engineering project? Snowy River Scheme?