COM: Port Stanvac Desalination Plant | 100gL | $1.8b

[Ho Really]

Thanks for your input rubberman.

Cheers

[Bulldozer]

Who cares about the fishies when it's our lives on the line? Marion Bay has a desalination plant because they didn't dick around waiting for the government - they went and contracted a company that specialises in desalination to do it for them.

There are no excuses for the government's bumbling incompetence and lack of action.

[AtD]

Lives on the line? That's a bit melodramatic.

[stelaras]

Let me add a few tid bits.

Stormwater is almost as bad in bacteriological quality as sewage - so major treatment required. The cost of this treatment is higher than people pay from potable water. Question is, who is going to pay a higher price for recycled water when they can get potable water cheaper?

Agreed, the grade of stormwater is a bacteriological nightmare, but that pumped into our already existing treatment plants then diverted to our reservoirs can still be done

However, if you treat seawater by desal (such as reverse osmosis) you get a waste brine stream of high salinity. You can then dilute that with stormwater to produce a stream back to the ocean with almost exactly the same salinity as seawater.

Great Idea, requires heaps of technological nouse and a knowledge of the natural cycling of salinity levels (they are not constant all year round) but furthermore, it requires one to actually capture the stormwater in the first place! At the present moment some 80% of whatever rainfall we get is lost (not just at a state level, but nationally)

Australia being the driest habitable continent require a huge investment in the brains trust and truck loads of cash to provide/build/create a mixture of

1. recycled water plants to run our industries which currently use fresh water to cool their operations machinery
2. build De-Sal plants to provide fresh/clean drinking water to its people
3. build nuclear power plants to power these beasts of energy consumption
4. build huge reservoirs in the right places to store this water
5. build the appropriate infrastructure to collect and pipe as much stormwater runoff as possible

Half fixes will not work...sinking bores will not work and sitting around debating wont work either.

We have known about this problem for 10 years, in my opinion 10 years behind the the 8 ball is too long and we stem to suffer over the next 10 years immensely (im not just talking about water problems) lack of water, and a lack of gardens and a parched wilderness equates to devastating fires and ecological catastrophe.

[omada]

Bulldozer said:
Who cares about the fishies when it's our lives on the line? Marion Bay has a desalination plant because they didn't dick around waiting for the government - they went and contracted a company that specialises in desalination to do it for them.

I agree melodramatic indeed! Who cares about the fishies? That sums up our shocking attitude towards the environment.

What about behavioural change? A change in our attitude toward water use and the earth in general is probably more effective that a bloody desal plant - get rid of your lawn, get a water tank, have 5 minute showers, get of your old single flush toilet, grow plants that can survive on natural rainfall.. there are many aspects that we can easily change - but no lets focus on a quick fix infrastructure project!

[Ho Really]

Lives on the line? That's a bit melodramatic.

Well, if it won't be lives, it will be livelihoods.

Cheers

[Will]

Who cares about the fishies when it's our lives on the line? .

It's this attitude which is causing all the climate related problems in the world. people need to learn to respect the environment.

[stelaras]

I agree melodramatic indeed! Who cares about the fishies? That sums up our shocking attitude towards the environment.

What about behavioural change? A change in our attitude toward water use and the earth in general is probably more effective that a bloody desal plant - get rid of your lawn, get a water tank, have 5 minute showers, get of your old single flush toilet, grow plants that can survive on natural rainfall.. there are many aspects that we can easily change - but no lets focus on a quick fix infrastructure project!

Omada i can see your point and im sure a lot of people are being educated in appropriate garden design and limiting the amount of water they use, but those things alone will not solve the issue at hand.

1. Fact is it is not raining as much as it used to
2. Fact is it is generally 0.5-1.0 degrees hotter than it was 10-20 years ago
3. Fact is, the population of Australia is getting larger (therefore our reliance on water increases)

whether this is our fault or whether we are in a natural earth heating cycle it doesnt really matter, the fact remains that their is a water problem

Personally using less water, or applying the principal of "if its yellow let it mellow and if its brown flush it down" doesn't make it all go away. It will take a concentrated effort on a personal level (to minimise water use, design smarter gardens and impliment water saving strategies) and a governmental approach (to maximise water collection/purification/desalination) to fix this problem.

Unfortunately we spend too much time debating who is at fault, and not enough time debating how to solve the problem

[skyliner]

1. Just saw on the news in Brisbane - the Murray River is about to reach salinity levels too high for drinking.
2. This explains quite a lot the other news that came - zero garden watering in Adelaide by October.
3. link this with info from this site that the river supplies 80% of Adelaide's water.
4. Although the dams are at 82%, this will not last long.

THIS IS MORE SCARY than in Brisbane. andI have been tracing this VERY closely.

When you llnk this with the fact that SA is the driest sate in the driest continent wth the current government the outlook does not look good. As stelaris pointed out, the desal plant is desperately needed as this is the only drought proof water supply there is. Recycled water depends on water to recycle in the firs place. Aquifers run out if no rain input. Tanks are only any good if there is rain enough to fill them. Droughts don't help this. (It was only recently stated that the rebates on tanks were being considered for discontinuation as the tanks were not making any difference in Brisbane).No rain - no tank water!

ACTION by the SA gov't is imperatve.

[rubberman]

The discussions here highlight the basic problem that SA is facing in trying to come to grips with the problem of water.

There are several points of view which are almost diametrically opposite. There are those that want to get on and do something, and there are those whose approach is to continue to reduce and recycle.

The problem is that unless there is some sort of community agreement, nothing will happen. The reason for this impasse is that whatever is done will take several electoral cycles. If there is no broad agreement, a project started in one cycle will get shafted in the next. This is what happened with the MATS plan for example - one Govt started it (by buying up land etc), and another Govt stopped it.

This is a job for Governments and oppositions - they must get out there and get community support for whatever solution they propose. Of course they have made it hard for themselves since they got rid of all the planners, engineers and scientists who could actually put up the figures and discussion papers on which an intelligent public debate could occur.

I would like to throw a few things into the ring relating to previous comments:

First of all, there is no quick fix - whatever is decided on will take many years from approval, design, construction etc. So even if a decision were made tomorrow you are looking at ten years possibly before the taps are turned on with extra water. Of course had SA Water retained its major works capacity instead of getting rid of it ten years and more ago, we could now be using water without restriction.

Next point is that there is some fantastic work being done in the Salisbury area on stormwater. The eyes of the nation are on that particular project. Part of the work relates to storing the stormwater underground - thus obviating the need for construction of large dams to some extent. That is a massive dollar saving as well as being environmentally better.

[Bulldozer]

THIS IS MORE SCARY than in Brisbane. andI have been tracing this VERY closely.

Exactly.

I'd just like to ask those who think I'm being melodramatic what they think is going to happen when SA runs out of water? Do you think everyone is going to continue going on about their lives as if everything's cool? I don't think so. There will be a mass exodus from the state that will cause chaos around Australia.

YOU CANNOT UNDERESTIMATE THE SERIOUSNESS OF THE SITUATION.

Conservation can only work so much because water is a CRITICAL resource and you can only cut back so much. An increasing population growth rate and decreasing annual rainfall are both going to eat up any savings very quickly, as is being currently demonstrated. Recycling is not going to do any good if you haven't got water to recycle.

As I've said before, when you do the sums of how much water is in the gulf the amount of brine that would be dumped in is miniscule. The phrase "a drop in the ocean" accurately describes it. Even if it is a problem then we could lessen the impact by piping as much of it as we can to the salt pans. If we capture and recycle as much wastewater as possible then we're going to further reduce the amount of desalinated water that needs to be produced.

The madness is that in the middle of the desert at Leigh Creek, Copley and Lyndhurst they don't have water restrictions because they have a giant dam that's full of water. Here's a couple of pictures I took of Aroona Dam a few weeks ago:

[Norman]

Maybe the state government can sell the salt as Governess Majiorie Jackson Nelson De-Sal Table Salt

[stelaras]

What has been highlighted here is that the problem will be solved by a multi-fasceted appraoch. There will not be one way to do it, rather multiple strategies that when implemented will go a long way to drought proofing the state.

Unfortunately as rubberman stated, what gets passed by one governmental body,gets turfed by the next. I think that a bi-partisan approach must ensue and whatever approaches adopted must be legislated such that they can not be thrown out some time down the track

[omada]

This has been an excellent discussion, with some very considered opinions, we all agree that something need to be done..

Has our State Government has been doing enough? It seems as if we are cutting things a bit close, if our dams are 80% how long will this last?

[urban]

I had no idea this dam existed. Is the water in Aroona Dam just catchment or do they pump it up from the artesian basin?