Bulletin Article

Waaaay too much to read. Can this be summed up in a few words?

Waaaay too much to read. Can this be summed up in a few words?

Sure mate, only takes 3 words: We are f***ed.

How about in a few words making it not sound so bad?

8-)

Good article. How's this for 3 words: Don't wash cars.

I wonder how much water that would save?

sweet f*** all


get the councils to fix all their leaky connections and you would save more water.

Getting local councils to actually do something worthwhile would be a neat trick.

wow, we are f***ed.

I say bring on the desalinisation plants, even if they are f***ing expensive, there's no point building more dams like the moronic government is fastracking if there's no rain to fill them.

^^ also get the council to reduce mains water pressure

what so when your house is burning down the firemen can use a pissy garden hose strength pressure?

There are different lines for Fire Engines and the like I'm pretty sure dude.
Also, water tanks should be pretty f***ing close to mandatory now, not just on new homes, on all homes. Instead of giving a f***ing $3000 lump sum to people who have a baby - "WOW, like that's never happened before, vote for me!" - give a subsidy on water tanks and make them compulsory. Or, instead of giving tax cuts, spend the extra money on giving people water tanks, like we get free wheelie bins.

I wash my car like once a forthnight now - with buckets of water not hose. I usualy use about 3-4 buckets depends on how dirty the car is

And we haven't turned on the sprinkler for nearly months now. Did turn it on for 2 days (at night) this week though - but then it rained so look like it'll stay off another 2 months....

put the saline water back into the ocean, as for energy, I'm sure if real effort was put into it, numerous energy sources could be used to run the plants, solar, wind, or tide generators, or a combination of all. I know all this s*** is expensive, but f*** I'd rather pay $50 or whatever a year to the council than not be able to shower or drink water

Wind generators are a good method of powering desal plants.

well I'm sure you could find somewhere to dispose of saline water, either spread it out and let it dry leaving just the salt, and sell that s*** off as salt, or dump it in one of the great salt lakes. it's not nuclear waste, I think getting rid of the salt water is one of the minor issues involved with desal plants

I say bring on the desalinisation plants,...

or use reverse osmosis like singapore does... turns sewage into drinkable water (assuming you can get over the yuck factor), then it gets pumped back into the reservours to get treated & fed back to the people.

it's also used by some of the larger military transport ships to provide water for the crew & passengers

is that why they say don't even brush your teeth with the water in singapore?

I think a combination of things are going to have to be done.
-Make rain water tanks compulsory on all houses from a certain date.. like the digital tv cut-over.
-Put in desal plants to supliment the supply, we would destroy our ocean's wildlife if we depended just on this.
-put in a second pipe system like melbourne is doing, that is water from treated sewrage, used for outside taps, and toilets.

Also from that article, get farmers to plant a crop in summer if only to absorb the water, then this crop can be stored and used to water the winter crops.

does our plumbing infrastructure support being able to split the water supply like that?, one line for drinking, another for toilet/outside?

Trouble is ... we are too late.

Water tanks is a good idea, there is a rebate for getting one now.
We need to use bore water more (happens in some areas).
We need to fix salination in cleared areas (replant some native stuff... happening).
We need to use grey water (cleaned waste water ... happens in some areas)
Charge more for water! (people respect things they have to pay for, increased profits can go into other solutions).
Desal is a last option, expensive and power intensive.

I would have thought ground water isn't being used fast enough, hence thats the problem with salination. The water table is rising so the salt is rising.

The trees used to have deep root systems and used a fair amount of water, that kept the water table down and hence the salt down.

But I don't know jack s*** about it, that was just my assumption.

is that why they say don't even brush your teeth with the water in singapore?

you must be thinking of bali... brushing your teeth with their tap water can give you bali belly. at least in singapore, it gets put though another purification process to ensure that it is clean & drinkable.

i wanna see some creationists make some model predictions & solve the problem ;D
& no cheaty "god will fix it if yur a good boy" stuff! :D

Must find a source to back up this statistic, but from what I've heard on the subject, metropolitan Australia only accounts for 20% of water usage. The remainder is used by rural/agricultural purposes.

Found it here

So, yeah. Might have more water if less was used for agricultural purposes, but there would still have distribution issues if more was taken from rural areas and given to major population centres.

Charge more for water! (people respect things they have to pay for...

Clearly you've never met aer :P

He didnt respect you in the morning?

i think attitudes have changed alot in regards to water usage. i remember as a young buck watching the old man hose down the driveway every afternoon, wash the car and leave the hose running. things like that werent thought about twice.

but anyway, whats so wrong with desalination plants? australia has plenty of uranium, why not build some reactors, as long as proper safeguards are in place, its the cleanest source of usful amounts of energy around today. there u go, power for your desalination plants.

I haven't washed my car for months now.

All I can say is, where will you be the day after tomorrow?

i dont see why people are complaining about it, nothing can change it. the kyoto protocol of cutting emissions hence stopping the greenhouse effect only applies to developed countries.

what happens in the next 30 years when china and india have huge middle classes who all want the mod cons that american and australians and europeans have had for the last 50 years. cars, appliances, air travel etc. that impact will be much much greater then whats happend since the industrial age began.

so el nino is here to stay and that f***s up the weather patterns in australia, hence it doesnt rain anymore. so why arent we moving on and building desalination plants by the assload, ie using a bit of foresight. it seems to work well in other countries that have no water resources.

even if things magically come good, you can always turn them off, or run them at lower capacity, at least if theyre there, its a safeguard. we should all just accept the fact that we're f***ed, our generation(s) will be blamed in the future for wrecking the planet and find alternative sources to fuel our demand. at least until the evil evil bad oil companies stop supressing the magical perpetual motion massive fusion electricity generating machines.

in the mean time, youd think the government would actually try and encourage us to use less fossil fuels by (a) subsidising hybrid cars (b) removing the import taxes or GST or other taxes associated with new car sales for hybrid cars (c) registration discounts for hybrid cars. why not ? they do it in japan, hybrid cars are becoming very popular.

another thing, charge people for water, if its not free, people will think twice about using it.

theres lots of things to try, you dont have to be a rocket scientist like i am, but it helps

if a desal plant is put near the beach couldn't it use the wave or tidal power.

Instead of giving a f***ing $3000 lump sum to people who have a baby

The point of that was to combat our aging population problem. Just like the first home buyer's grant was to boost the building industry, not help white trash buy houses. The liberal party has some pretty smart guys.

I saw a documentary recently about using salt water and sun light to produce electricity, but I can't find info.

takes a 1000 litres of salt water to make 1 litre of drinking water desal plant are not a vaiable option. ive lived on rain water ,people got no idea how much water they use.
why waste all that money on desal plants,etc (1.5 billion for bris is that right?) just use less water.


ground water saliation is from dams mainly rivers naturaly wash the salt out into the ocean.

""Most homes use around 300,000 litres of water per year and about 40 percent of that is used outside the home, mainly on gardens and lawns."

a faimly of 5 should be able to live on 4500 litres a month. thats the kind of usage some poeple liveing on rain water use.