SW Sydney Will soon be drinking shit.

Was trolling through one of the local newspapers last ight looking for atool shop add offering three work boxes on special, when I spotted a NSW government advert about a water recycling program to undertake around Hoxton Park, Glenfield, Ingleburn, Middleton Grange, Hinchinbrook, Lurnea, Prestons, etc.

Campbelltown Macarthur Advertiser 1st Dec 2010.

Starts off fine with the statement that the water is only going to be used for flushing loos, washing cars, and industrial uses.

It isn't until you look closely at a blurry annotation on the map that you see a "drinking water top up" connection as well.

So the eastern suburbs gets a desal plant which we all subsidise and the western suburbs get recycled, chemically laden sewerage out of our drinking taps.

Good one Astrogirl. Even if Bazza does his usual "I'm agin it" line, probably time to get out of NSW.

Only for flushing toilets ? Hows that work, the water only comes form one pipe in the St.

Dave.

Live out in the country where open tanks are the norm, sure it's not often your mates come around and shit in your tanks but that doesn't stop bird crap, worms, bugs of a million different sorts and christ knows what else in your water. Even adding a lid to the tanks doesn't stop that much when everything that runs off the roof washes into your drinking water. Atleast the town supplies will go through a recycling process the best most country houses have is either a tank mount filtration system or taps with filters on them. The first clean of any water tank and you quickly realise living in ignorance of what's in your drinking water is better than thinking about it.

Third pipe system Dave.

Check out any new developments near Pimpama/Coomera on the Gold Coast. They have a purple pipe for recycled water.

I'd happily drink Class A+ Recycled Water any day.

I've drunk Class B recycled water before, won't do that by choice again but still here to tell the tale.

It's no more "chemically-laden" than treated water sourced from a river or dam.

I grew up on tank water that contained bird shit, but when you think about it, what's a few bird droppings in a couple of megalitres of water? That water was the best I've had for purity and taste and town water has never matched it.

Hahahaha! Sydney siders have been drinking my shit for years!!!!!!! I grew up in Lithgow where the drinking water comes form upstream of Farmers Creek and the affluent is returned to Farmers Creek downstream which in turn continues to flow into Coxs River and all the way to the big dam where Sydney gets its drinking water from. Sorry I couldn't help myself

Cheers Brad

Krafty Yes, I was brought up on tank water of the roof. You can filter that shit out. What they don't get out of sewerage is all the hormones and Sydney Water is pretty bad at filtering anyway.

Yes Nevyn, knew where Lithgow's sewerage went decades ago. Partly why i chose the area I did to buy a house. Our water doesn't come out of Warragamba.

We have been filtering the cooking and drinking water for decades anyway, but we can not afford the filters to deal with sewerage mishaps. Any complex system will have mishaps.

This country is spoilt. Try traveling outside your own backyard and you will quickly realise that you would be happy to drink recycled water, rather than water from a ditch or puddle.Was recently overseas and driving up a road, saw a lady filling her drinking jug and 500m upstream saw an old man taking a shit and a kid having a piss in the same water system.

At least here it is treated, heated, chlorinated, and god know what else. Oh and i would imagine it is pretty thouroughly tested before they just pump it back into the system.

Be thankful you have water......

Dion said:

Third pipe system Dave.

Check out any new developments near Pimpama/Coomera on the Gold Coast. They have a purple pipe for recycled water.

I'd happily drink Class A+ Recycled Water any day.

I've drunk Class B recycled water before, won't do that by choice again but still here to tell the tale.

It's no more "chemically-laden" than treated water sourced from a river or dam.

I grew up on tank water that contained bird shit, but when you think about it, what's a few bird droppings in a couple of megalitres of water? That water was the best I've had for purity and taste and town water has never matched it.

Click to expand...

Ah righto, never heard of that. But I am not a plumber either.

Cheers for the info.

Dave.

Agree Biscuits. Plus topping up dams etc with recycled water exposes it to one of the worlds best filters, UV/Sunlight.

We had a possum die in one of our water tanks once, try filtering that out.

I agree that the idea of it sounds a little off putting and the media have helped make the idea sound worse than it is but there is still a lot worse water systems in this country, let alone the whole world.

It's not like they sift the lumps through the missus' stocking and say, "She'll be right."






...well at least not until you find lumps in your kettle.

It's like the bottle recycling plant where there is guys on a conveyor pulling out the stuff that shouldn't be in the line, only this one there is a guy pulling out the large floaties before they go into the mains system. It's what he does with them that worries me.

KraftyPg said:

It's like the bottle recycling plant where there is guys on a conveyor pulling out the stuff that shouldn't be in the line, only this one there is a guy pulling out the large floaties before they go into the mains system. It's what he does with them that worries me.

Click to expand...

LOL.

"I've come to skim the pool."

KraftyPg said:

We had a possum die in one of our water tanks once, try filtering that out.

Click to expand...

Filters on the inlets to water tanks generally keep wildlife out of them.

Tanks without lids on them allow for anything to get in. We've never filtered water inbound anyway, we had gully traps in the pipes to clean the pipes out or stop the water going into the tank when full but never filtered the inbound water.

Water tanks like available from Bunnings have a plastic filter at the inlet but 20K litre concrete tanks around our way very rarely have anything on the inlet, two poly pipes or a direct run off from the roof on the in bound side. The outlet pipe is small enough that large debris doesn't get sucked into the pump but the problem with wildlife is that it taints the water and only chemicals can get rid of that.

So you're saying that rotting possum corpses and fresh bat piss are the explanation for people like Billy Ray Cyrus?

*ducks*

I dunno about the bat's piss, we used to swat them with tennis rackets so they might have got revenge on us by pissing in the tank. The worst things in the world in tank system is worms, they come out after the rains and get flushed into the tank, or they just seem to grow in there, and when the is enough of them they make showing in the water unbearable.

Such water is good for growing mullets and writtin' catchy toons. Billy is my idol.(as opposed to Billy the fallen Idol who sang White wedding)

<Shrug> My gut feeling is that putting recycled sewerage into drinking water is just like DDT all over again. Time will tell.

Welcome to the 21st century. Would you prefer to drink 100% pure recycled water, or have bloody none? The rest of the world have been doing it successfully for decades.

I used to live in Toowoomba, the water situation became dire out there. The mayor at the time proposed recycled water, and imposed a referendum. The campaign against recycled water was funded by the narrow minded idiots, churches and a very wealthy local developer, and the recycled water proposal got thrown out. The dams eventually got down to 8-9% (and probably 10% of that was fish and duck shit anyway), and they had to build a pipeline from Brisbane's water supply. Now the same people who voted against recycled water are whinging that they have to pay an extra $600 or so every year on their rates.

Google "reverse ozmosis" if you don't believe me.

Its called toilet-to-tap. I remember reading about Singapore's new recycled water program many years go in the Strait Times when I was there. And a 2 second google search found it.

From toilet to tap, Singapore turns to recycled water