GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM IN THE SYDNEY WATER SHORTAGE

"Sydney's water monopoly has to be broken open to solve the crisis facing Australia's largest city. Water efficiency expert Peter Coombes said the NSW Government's 25-year water plan looked like an attempt to protect the revenue of Sydney Water, a state monopoly, when what was needed was more private sector innovation.

NSW Premier Bob Carr announced new details of his water plan yesterday. By July 2007 all houses for sale would have to be certified water-efficient. This might cost as little as $22 for subsidised devices such as water-saving shower heads. Mr Carr said big commercial water users, government agencies and local councils would have to come up with water conservation plans.

But Dr Coombes, of Newcastle University, said Sydney's water strategy needed to draw on wider expertise and enterprise. "We have to let the private industry in. We might have to highly regulate them, but we have to have incentive for innovation," he said yesterday. Dr Coombes said energy-intensive desalination (a government research option) and wastewater treatment, Sydney Water-style, would favour the flow of utility dividend payments to the Government. He said it was easier for the private sector to mount efficient smaller-scale wastewater projects in Melbourne, where utilities were more enlightened."

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AND ANOTHER AUSTRALIAN STATE CAPITAL PROVES IT

ADELAIDE carrot and onion farmer Morris Nicol shakes his head when he thinks of all the good drinking water going down the drain in Sydney. "If they're using mains water for any sort of garden or irrigation work, then they're wasting it," said Mr Nicol, working on his market garden on the outer northern fringe of Australia's driest state capital. Adelaide gets an average 575mm of rain a year, mostly in the winter months, while Sydney is second only to Darwin in rainfall, receiving 1230mm throughout the year.

Because South Australia is so dry, farmers like Mr Nicol have been forced to innovate, and in the past six years he and almost 285 other irrigators have received about 20gigalitres of water recycled from a nearby sewage treatment plant. The scheme cost big money - $55million to upgrade the water treatment plant to produce germ-free class A water - but has taken pressure off underground supplies, and cut the amount of nutrients released into the sea in sewage. "They tell you not to drink it, but you could," said Mr Nicol. "Because of this we've been able to extend our operation and grow a bit more produce." The overall volume of treated wastewater reused in the state has increased by nearly 400 per cent in the past six years, from 3691 megalitres in 1998 to 19,205 in 2003-04.

John Bingham, chief operating officer of SA Water, said this was made possible by a state government investment of $30million in a filtration and disinfection plant to treat effluent from the Bolivar wastewater treatment plant. So while Sydney households have to cut back on water use, arid area farmers in South Australia are expanding their land under irrigation.

CSIRO head of water reclamation research Peter Dillon said Sydney had not investigated water recycling and preservation in the past because it had approximately four times the storage capacity relative to demand that Adelaide had.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

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