Desalination plant at Kurnell

[Crystal]

GDay Forum,

The Desalination plant at Kurnell is likely going to cost up to $2 billion funded by the governement. This will supply water to 460,000 households in the city's east and inner west by 2008.
Does anyone know how much it would cost to fund the retrofitting of rain water tanks to every Sydney house? In my opinion, this would be a similar expense, provide more water and be far better for the environment!
Even if the cost of tanks for each house was subsidised, perhaps with a premium charged for those who refuse, we could negate the need for this white elephant at Kurnell!
Does anyone know much about the costs to install and how much water could be saved?
If everyone in Sydney just flushed their toilets with rainwater, would we even have a water shortage?

Cheers,
Karen

 

[lizzie]

i think the desalination plant is a load of crock ... do we live in a desert or something?

only two hours up the coast at newcastle our water dams are almost constantly full (has to be a really bad long drought to make an impact) because we placed our dams in high rainfall catchment areas. what is so hard about that? surely for long term sydney would be better off building a new sustainable dam somewhere along the northern or southern coast where is actually rains - rather than in the rain shadow of the mountains.

okay - so the greenies wouldn't be real happy ...

love the tanks idea and recycling should be bumped up - all that lovely stormwater that just gushes out to the sea every time it rains

 

[Macca]

Hi all,

One of my favourite hobby horses......

I have a 5000 L tank on my garage and I get enough water out of that to top up my pool...........doesn't upset the water balance either !!

We have another tank on the garden shed and my wife uses that to water the garden most of the time.

In Brisbane it costs very little to put a tank on your house as it is subsidised.

Surely if the money allocated to the desalination plant was put towards subsidising the installation of water tanks throughout the suburbs it would be a better solution in the long term.

Maybe make it compulsory that if you install a pool you must have a tank to fill it from.

 

[topcropper]

This is all a bad joke.

Sydneys average rainfall would be nearly 900 mls a year.
What would the average house roof area be? 300 square meters?
That's 270 000 litres a year!
What about a huge drought?
That's still 135 000 litres a year!
And that's just houses.
What about roads, and pavements.

Biggest waste of money ever. Waste of energy too. It wouldn't cost much to clean up waste water that now just flows to the ocean.

See ya's.

 

[monoply]

Vic goverment is to tight to look at a new catchment area. They say water restictions are the best way to go, and they are here to stay.

What a pack of short sighted ediots.