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Drought-stricken Australia considers drinking recycled sewage

Jul 24 9:37 PM US/Eastern

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Residents of a drought-stricken Australian town will vote this week on whether they're prepared to drink water recycled from sewage -- the first such scheme in the country and one of only a handful in the world.

The controversial proposal has divided the town of Toowoomba in the state of Queensland, which has faced water restrictions for a decade.



Local Mayor Dianne Thorley, who is leading the "Yes" campaign, said that without drought-breaking rains the town's dams could dry up within two years.

She insisted the 73 million dollar (US 55 million dollar) plan to pump purified wastewater back into the main reservoir for drinking was safe.




Two words, mates. Bottled Water!

Having trouble posting....





Right it keeps telling me I can't post links (WHAT FLAMMING LINKS???)



anyhow...





Yep, water is a sad state of affairs in Qld, and although once it has been processed it would be cleaner and better for you than the stuff you get out of bottles....it's the thought of where it 'has' been!!

I'm with you Snickz... :wah: It's either filtered, well water, natural spring or bottled water for me...

I want to see her drinking it....LOTS of it....

Quote:

Drought-stricken Australia considers drinking recycled sewage



Adam Zapple wrote: Two words, mates. Bottled Water!


It (water) is all recycled sewage, isn't it. Consider: I piddle somewhere. It

goes, for the sake of argument, down the sewer, and along to the the

sewerage farm, it is treated, and flows out into river or sea. There, the

treated piddle mingles with countless millions of others. Eventually, it

evaporates, and passes into the atmosphere, where it mixes and is

distributed very widely. Eventually, it condenses, and all these piddles

fall back onto the earth, as well as onto our cars, heads, etc., and they

are collected in resevoirs, treated, and sent back to all of us through the

tap! It's likely that you've drunk a molecule or two of mine. It's likely that

I've drunk a molecule of yours! Funny old world, ain't it!

Thanks EVERSOMUCH for that image!

What do you imagine the astronauts on the ISS are drinking?

If it's good enough for them .......

When it comes down to it, if the only option is recycled water, wherever and whatever it has been previously - were going to drink it arn't we...

Beer!

Lulu2 wrote: Beer!


Made from recycled water? :wah:

Lulu2 wrote: Beer!


Well there's always a viable option!!

Bill Sikes wrote: Quote:

Drought-stricken Australia considers drinking recycled sewage





It (water) is all recycled sewage, isn't it. Consider: I piddle somewhere. It

goes, for the sake of argument, down the sewer, and along to the the

sewerage farm, it is treated, and flows out into river or sea. There, the

treated piddle mingles with countless millions of others. Eventually, it

evaporates, and passes into the atmosphere, where it mixes and is

distributed very widely. Eventually, it condenses, and all these piddles

fall back onto the earth, as well as onto our cars, heads, etc., and they

are collected in resevoirs, treated, and sent back to all of us through the

tap! It's likely that you've drunk a molecule or two of mine. It's likely that

I've drunk a molecule of yours! Funny old world, ain't it!


There in lies the answer

woppy71 wrote: There in lies the answer


Erm, 42.

But that was wrong, wasn't it?

Bill Sikes wrote: Quote:

Drought-stricken Australia considers drinking recycled sewage





It (water) is all recycled sewage, isn't it. Consider: I piddle somewhere. It

goes, for the sake of argument, down the sewer, and along to the the

sewerage farm, it is treated, and flows out into river or sea. There, the

treated piddle mingles with countless millions of others. Eventually, it

evaporates, and passes into the atmosphere, where it mixes and is

distributed very widely. Eventually, it condenses, and all these piddles

fall back onto the earth, as well as onto our cars, heads, etc., and they

are collected in resevoirs, treated, and sent back to all of us through the

tap! It's likely that you've drunk a molecule or two of mine. It's likely that

I've drunk a molecule of yours! Funny old world, ain't it!
I read once a good news bad news joke.

Bad news is there will come a time when we will all have to use recycled sewer water.

Good news is, there wont be enough to go around.

Seriously, they use recycled sewer water in San Antonio at the Alamo to water plants but also they use it in base housing in Florida near Destin Beach. YOu have to keep your windows rolled up when you pass the sprinklers.

Coming from the great land of Oz and being born and raised in far Nth QLD I spent the best part of 16 years living with water restrictions. I then moved to Sydney (the biggest city in the country) my kitchen tap water was turning brown and smelt evil and we had 360 days left of clean drinking water from our main dam!!!! I move to London and low and behold there are water restrictions here too Is it me or is the planet like tryin desperatley to give us a flamin hint????????

What I want to ask all those wankers out there who believe its more important to spend two hours washing your car on the street with a hand hose, water your luscious gardens to the point of saturation in the hottest part of the day and hose down your concrete paths and driveways - where DO YOU THINK we're going to get sustainable clean safe drinking water from once its gone??? And Im sorry if this offends but adding to this problem in (Sydney especially) is ignorant attituides from migrant populations who show blantant disrespect to the non renewable resources the fine country they chose to move too is fast loosing EVERYONE has a responsbility to respect their chosen environments and relying on ones sudden inability to speak or read english just isnt a good enough excuse in my book.

"ignorant attituides from migrant populations who show blantant disrespect to the non renewable resources the fine country they chose to move too is fast loosing EVERYONE has a responsbility to respect their chosen environments and relying on ones sudden inability to speak or read english just isnt a good enough excuse in my book."

++++++++++++++ Good grief! You DO realize you could apply those statements to life in California, too?

Sucks, doesn't it? :rolleyes:

Lulu2 wrote: "ignorant attituides from migrant populations who show blantant disrespect to the non renewable resources the fine country they chose to move too is fast loosing EVERYONE has a responsbility to respect their chosen environments and relying on ones sudden inability to speak or read english just isnt a good enough excuse in my book."

++++++++++++++ Good grief! You DO realize you could apply those statements to life in California, too?

Sucks, doesn't it? :rolleyes:


It sure does Lulu I should of been a greenie full on!!! :sneaky:

(I don't want to hijack ADAM'S thread, so I'll just say it's better to come late than not at all. We've been pissing in our own well for centuries and now we're seeing the result.)

Lulu2 wrote: (I don't want to hijack ADAM'S thread, so I'll just say it's better to come late than not at all. We've been pissing in our own well for centuries and now we're seeing the result.)


Dead right there!!! Actually I think we're pissing AND crapping in our own backyards, dont even get me started on recycling especially in places like London Im sharing house with a few other Aussies here at the moment and we are absolutley horrified at the lack of consideration for the environment here. London is just feral sometimes and wait for this 7.5million people in this city and we cant recycle glass?? :-2 :-2

What the????

WHAT? London doesn't recycle?

Lulu2 wrote: WHAT? London doesn't recycle?


I've been here just over a year and it was only about 3 months ago that we actually got a recycle service in our area at all. And when I say service I mean bright plastic orange bags left on our doorsteps that we can only put paper, tins and some plastics in, dont get me wrong we think its great they are finally doing something but lets again consider the size of this place, the population and this is only just starting to happen now??? And what about all the glass??? Back home we have three recycle wheelie bins, and one of those is split into two inside for even more efficient recycling processing (trying to keep costs down at the plant) and we've been doing that for at least the past 10-12 years so it astounds me that places like London appear to not give a toss Admittedly there are boroughs out there miles from the CBD that have some form of recycling but Ive seen on tv where they still have to load their cars and take all this rubbish to a recycle plant miles away, I mean lets put the effort in Im all for that but why arent govt's and councils making it easier for EVERYONE to participate as not all people have cars to get to the plants :-2

OzBoy wrote: Coming from the great land of Oz and being born and raised in far Nth QLD I spent the best part of 16 years living with water restrictions. I then moved to Sydney (the biggest city in the country) my kitchen tap water was turning brown and smelt evil and we had 360 days left of clean drinking water from our main dam!!!! I move to London and low and behold there are water restrictions here too Is it me or is the planet like tryin desperatley to give us a flamin hint????????

What I want to ask all those wankers out there who believe its more important to spend two hours washing your car on the street with a hand hose, water your luscious gardens to the point of saturation in the hottest part of the day and hose down your concrete paths and driveways - where DO YOU THINK we're going to get sustainable clean safe drinking water from once its gone??? And Im sorry if this offends but adding to this problem in (Sydney especially) is ignorant attituides from migrant populations who show blantant disrespect to the non renewable resources the fine country they chose to move too is fast loosing EVERYONE has a responsbility to respect their chosen environments and relying on ones sudden inability to speak or read english just isnt a good enough excuse in my book.


I'm sorry but I can look out for my front door and see as many trees as I ever could - Global Warming must be bullsh!t!

Can't see the forest for the trees, eh?

Lulu2 wrote: Can't see the forest for the trees, eh?


Unfortunately, some pelple cannot!

Ozboy, you're right we are crap at recycling in this country.

My local council introduced recycling bins a while ago and we can now recycle tin cans, newspaper, plastic milk bottles etc but to do this we went from one wheelie bin to two, we have kitchen caddies to get the composting scraps and two plastic boxes to help us separate stuff for recycling day.



We have a two week cycle for putting stuff out so in the summer you end up with maggots in your composting bin. On recycling day the lorry goes round twice, first to empty the boxes then the bin.



So not only do we have more plastic boxes and bins to be made and distributed we have more runs in the bin lorry.



None of this makes sense to me but I suppose they are at least trying:-5

Snickz wrote: Having trouble posting....





Right it keeps telling me I can't post links (WHAT FLAMMING LINKS???)



anyhow...





Yep, water is a sad state of affairs in Qld, and although once it has been processed it would be cleaner and better for you than the stuff you get out of bottles....it's the thought of where it 'has' been!!
Here in the US there are some cities that use recycled sewer water to water plants. The Alamo does that for sure and they do that at base housing in Fort walton Beach. As we were about to drive past some sprinklers my grandson told me to roll the windows up on the car so the water would not get in. It had a bad smell alright. Not sure if you could actually ever treat it so it did not smell.

Okie wrote: Here in the US there are some cities that use recycled sewer water to water plants. The Alamo does that for sure and they do that at base housing in Fort walton Beach. As we were about to drive past some sprinklers my grandson told me to roll the windows up on the car so the water would not get in. It had a bad smell alright. Not sure if you could actually ever treat it so it did not smell.


Sure you could, straight distilation would take out any aromatics - just take more energy than most people want to use.

I'd have thought that Texas would have enough reliable sunshine to use solar ovens to clean as much water as they could need.

Bryn Mawr wrote: Sure you could, straight distilation would take out any aromatics - just take more energy than most people want to use.


Remind me to find out how a sewerage farm processes foul drainage. I seem

to remember that it involves screening/filtering, oxygenation, micro-organisms,

and settling tanks, perhaps not in that order!

Bill Sikes wrote: Remind me to find out how a sewerage farm processes foul drainage. I seem

to remember that it involves screening/filtering, oxygenation, micro-organisms,

and settling tanks, perhaps not in that order!


Also bloody big pumps with macerators and lots of stirring.

A friend at the boat club installs this kit and has us in stiches with his stories.