Watershed Victoria

The urgency to halt work on the two mega-projects - the N-S pipeline and Wonthaggi desal factory, has just reached a new extreme, according to  economists and environmentalists.

Summed up by here by Kenneth Davidson,  Fairfax Media senior columnist.

“But let’s face it. Even drinking A-grade water would be safer than drinking water from the existing fire-affected catchments after heavy rains have washed potash and fire retardant into the reservoirs. To convince Victorians that there is no alternative to drinking recycled water is the real task of statesmanship over the next few weeks and months, so they can begin the immediate upgrade of the Carrum treatment plant and install the pipes to divert water from the affected catchments to the plant and back into the Melbourne’s water grid.”

Full article here.

Clean Ocean Foundation released their fact sheet recently  comparing  purified waste water & desalination using public data -  purified comes up way ahead …

Very recently (September 2008) the report Purified Recycled Water for Drinking: The Technical Issues was released by the the Queensland Water Commission . Thanks to Stuart Khan of Sydney, New South Wales, for explaining his role in this report and making it easily downloadable on Stuart’s Blog

After more than a year in the making, the recently published 270 page report is made available

Download this 4 MB pdf with detailed index from this page

SAMPLE FROM THE REPORT