Sewage, sewage everywhere, but not a drop to drink
Thursday March 01st 2007, 7:07 am

image: United States Geological Survey
image: United States Geological Survey

The battle for NSW government between Labor’s Iemma and the Lieberals’ Manbed turns on its head when it comes to water policy for Sydney. Manbed (bravely) wants a sewage recycling plant while Iemma is punting on the seemingly voter-safe ‘Toowoomba option,’ a desalination plant which Iemma has in the past said is ‘beyond public discussion.’

Is it now, Morrie?

Sydney’s a bit different than Toowoomba. The Sydney population is on balance more educated and thus more accepting of technological solutions to environmental problems. Water reclaimed from sewage can be cleaned of impurities to the level required by integrated circuit manufacturing, as has been done for some years in Singapore and Los Angeles. Water for integrated circuit production requires impurities be removed to the single-digit parts-per-billion level. Recent polls in the SMH have indicated that more than 70% of Sydneysiders have no problem at all with drinking water produced from recycled sewage.

Drinking water made from recycled sewage may have some psychological ‘yuk‘ factor, but on the same ‘disgust’ perception basis, seawater isn’t much better- face it, whales fuck in it.

Iemma’s ‘beyond discussion’ desalination plant would be located on the coast at Kurnell- which also happens to be the location of Sydney’s main treated sewage outfall into the Pacific. Also at Kurnell is a Caltex refinery which appears on Google Maps photos to have its own ocean outfall pipes. What’s the difference between drinking water purified from recycled sewage- and water purified from recycled sewage mixed with seawater and industrial waste? I reckon it’s the billions of dollars in electricity required for a seriously energy-hungry desalination plant which would also contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions from our coal-fired power plants. Water recycling from sewage is much less energy intensive.

Iemma is also not seriously looking at reclaiming the gigalitres of stormwater which are discharged straight into the Pacific every time Sydney gets a good rain- and we’ve been getting quite a lot of rain lately- over 200mm in the Blue Mountains over 10-13 February- heavy enough to cause a leak in our roof and damage some interior walls. The return of the rains must relieve Iemma to no end, but it doesn’t do much for my hopes for a long-term reliable drinking water supply for Sydney.

Sorry Morrie, but you’ve picked the wrong seahorse in the water race. We must look at recovering the fresh water from various sources which we now just dump in the sea, long before we spend a couple billion on a desalination plant and a few billion more in ongoing electricity costs to keep it running.

At the end of the day, ALL water on earth is recycled. There hasn’t been much ‘new’ water added to the planet in a very long time, though the odd comet crashing to earth may bring along a few ice crystals. The water you brushed your teeth with this morning could well have been run through a Mongolian yak’s kidneys 10,000 years ago. Technology allows us to speed up the recycling process, but the water molecules are the very same ones we’ve been recycling for a few billion years.

Time to open up that discussion again, Mr. Iemma.

-weez

MORE:
The Australian Democrats suggest home-based water self sufficiency as well as stormwater recycling.


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