Water Recycling

[Stuart]

Now that I have taken the first steps to the moral high ground, thought a poll on water recycling would be interesting, following on from Ashore's one on flushing. :roll:

So the question is: how much recycling do you do?

Multiple choices is possible
You vote is private.

[Shedhand]

You left out a couple. So I couldn't vote.

I never water the lawn in autumn or summer.
I never fill the spa in Summer.
I mulch the garden and only hand water in Summer.

[Schtoo]

We recycle grey water indoors. So much for the private voting, huh?

It's simple enough, and considered a little strange if you don't do it around here. To a point, it's nearly impossible to not recycle a little grey water every day.

Flush the toilet, water runs over the top to wash your hands, which then gets flushed down next time.

We also save the bathwater for washing clothes. Simple enough since the washing machine is 4 feet from the bathtub, the bathwater is clean (no soap at least), the machine has a pump to draw the bathwater and the machine automatically selects clean water to rinse. We need the bath for the little fella, and we use all of that water in clothes washing. Without it, the water bill would be scary.

Washing dishes? Rinse everything qucikly, soap it all up, rinse it all off. Clean dishes, less than half a sink full of water used for rinsing only.

It's just the done thing around here.


I don't like everything the locals do, but occasionally they hit the right solution on the head. :D

[Grunt]

We've always been water conscious but are going to have to get more so when we move on the block as we'll have to catch all our own water.

[silentC]

We use treated effluent in the toilets and on the gardens. We rely on tank water so we have a good incentive to do something. When you can't just assume that it will never run out like some town folk seem to, it adjusts your attitude to water use.

[Wongo]

We use a container in the shower to collect the cold water. My in-laws next door are doing the same thing.

We keep the kids bath water and use it to flush the toilet.

We don’t water our plants. We let nature looks after them and nature has done a great job so far.

We don’t take showers for longer than 5 minutes, except my niece who I have to keep reminding her over and over again.

The in-laws have 2 water tanks.

[Waldo]

G'day Stuart,

No mention of rainwater tanks in the poll.

Don't ask the Vic Gov' on their stance on this. We won't be building any dams and they're useless until it rains (or words to that effect, as our Dipstick Environment Minister said on the Sunday news a couple of weeks ago), all we think we should do is impliment water restrictions long after we should have started them. :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :(( :((

[Stuart]

Hi Waldo,

Sorry - rainwater tanks are implied in the collection, and then how the water is used (house vs garden) The focus was more on what you do, rather than how you do it.

Totally agree with you viewpoint about how it has all been mismanaged to date. We should be in stage 4 now (or worse) and be kept there long after the rains arrive until the dams actually recover, not until they just start filling.

Even rethink the whole immigration thing / country population goals. We can't permanently sustain the current population with the current management strategies. The strategies need changing, and the resources have time to recover, then see what is left over and how many more people that equates to (with a BUFFER for unusual weather conditions!!!)

We don't have any redundancy. What happens if a dam's contents are lost (and one of the big ones here), through contamination (deliberate or otherwise)?

[Grunt]

Yes, population is the killer. In 60-70 years at the current rate, we will have doubled the population. The world is warming up and Melbourne will get less rain. Plainly it's not sustainable.

There are no rivers left to dam unless we want to rob more water from the dying Murray.

If we started with stage 4 water restrictions in November, there would be a huge outcry from the gardeners of Melbourne.

[Stuart]

If we started with stage 4 water restrictions in November, there would be a huge outcry from the gardeners of Melbourne.
True, but at some stage, we are just going to have to bite the bullet. Commercial gardeners need to start looking at techniques used in other countries such as Israel where they accept that water is a limited commodity. Home gardeners need to ensure that their gardens don't impact any more than they have to on the limited resource.

As a nation we have to recognise that we live in a desert country, and the changing climate (temporary or otherwise) is not going to help. If more stringent actions are not taken immediately, the pain suffered trying to change when it is way too late will hurt a lot more.

Even to the point that we should recognise that some things just shouldn't be done in this country - water guzzling industries etc. On a very local scale, don't allow non water efficient equipment to be sold, don't allow open transportation of water (cf pipes), even plants that have high water requirements should be limited, so individuals are not tempted to waste potable water to keep them alive.

[silentC]

Haven't been able to find any info on it but I heard on the news the other night that a document was leaked that talks about introducing a tax on rainwater use. Anyone know anything about it? Was a Fed government thing.

[Grunt]

I agree completely.

Agriculture needs to stop using so much water. Rice and cotton are not things that should be grown in the Murray/Darling basin.

I posted this short Flash documentary in another thread but I think it's worth another look. This is what agriculture should be doing in this country. Jordan (http://abc.net.au/backyard/flash/Permaculture_flash.htm)

[Grunt]

It was reported but the Federal Water Minister (that rich bloke, can't remember his name) said it was not and will not be on the agenda. As we know, politicians don't lie so we can rest easy,

[Doughboy]

My folks claimed the pitiful tank subsidy from the government and the next year they got a bill from the council for water catchment (I believe this nearly negated the subsidy in one year). Which to my reckoning is their own roof space. I told him to send them a bill for upkeep of catchment area!

Pete

[Waldo]

Haven't been able to find any info on it but I heard on the news the other night that a document was leaked that talks about introducing a tax on rainwater use. Anyone know anything about it? Was a Fed government thing.

G'day SilentC,

It was the headline on the Herald Sun down here, proposed by some stupid boffin.

The proposal: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,21057146-421,00.html?from=public_rss
"Mr Matthews' email continued: "Governments have not yet considered the capture of water from roofs in rainwater tanks to be of sufficient magnitude to warrant the issuing of specific entitlements to use this class of water.

"However, if rainwater tanks were to be adopted on a large scale such that their existence impacts significantly on the integrated water cycle, consideration could be given to setting an entitlement regime for this class of water."

Such a regime already exists for farmers catching rainwater and storing it in dams.

A residential household version could include a licensing arrangement and taxes for those wanting to collect more than a set amount."

THE Federal Government has rejected suggestions it plans to tax rainwater tanks:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,21057564-1702,00.html?from=public_rss

THE Federal Government's water reform commission has ruled out any plans to recommend a levy on rainwater collected by the owners of residential tanks:
http://www.news.com.au/business/story/0,10166,21058934-462,00.html?from=public_rss

There's just about only one thing that I agree with farmer FIL on, and that is the hide of local gov' ect. to collect a tax/levy on water falling on your own property, then collecting it into your own damn and the water runoff goes no where else but your dam. He can only collect 10% of water either falling onto his land or caught by rooves of dwellings, eg. shed, house etc. ! :((

[Shedhand]

...and when theres no water left to collect and tax, the brastrdas will tax our urine. :no:

[outback]

Thats a p!ss poor idea.




Serious question, I don't live in town, so I'm not subject to level 1,2 3, or 15 restrictions, our family are subject to the restrictions I lay down as required.

Now for the question, is level 1 or 2 or whatever the same in Melbourne as it is in Brisvegas as it is in tinylittlecountrytown? What do each of the levels restrict the householder to?

Ok that's two questions, and I'm not adding I don't give a rats ring option either. :q

[SPIRIT]

l was teaching sustanable agriculture and it came home with a bang how much we need things to look right .the design for the school it was more important how it look than being sustanable there water use was high and a simple design changes were blocked because it changed the view :doh:
easy way to save water get a lemon tree they do grow better if you do
on immigration when things dry up more what are we going to do use our planes and tanks to keep them out we as assies use more than our share of the planets stuff
fix the envioment and you fix the water problem

[Stuart]

...and when theres no water left to collect and tax, the brastrdas will tax our urine. :no:
I'll just give them 40% of mine directly. They can do what they like with it then.:2tsup:

[Stuart]

fix the envioment and you fix the water problemOf course. But we are now in a situation where the environment is going to take decades to fix, and the water resource has been mismanaged into near oblivion. So we need to take steps in the meantime to sustain what is worth preserving until such time as the long term solutions can be (found, debated, changed, bought and buried as bad for business, resurrected, mooted, finally begrudgingly agreed to (typical political ########) and) acted upon.

[Studley 2436]

Waldo half the problem is that farmers block off rivers creeks etc with dams and the like.

Have you heard of Cubby station? They dammed the Darling and made a dam that Sydney CBD all the way to Manly would drown in. They pay less than 1% of the price city people pay for their water. All so they can grow cotton.

Anyway could I pose a different viewpoint. Let's suppose there is no water crisis but should people get worked up about it Government can pretend to be doing big deal stuff when all they are doing is what they should have done some years ago.

Regarding water restrictions here we went level 2 and water use increased by 50% compared to same time last year. This gave Mike Rann a great chance to feature in a TV campaign for level 3 "This is why my govenment etc etc" BUT the great thing is that water restictions increased use and thus the money the state govenment gets from the water company. We all know how much govenments love having money to bribe us with at election time.

So if they just said we will have a water market where everyone buys water we will all pay the one price. Cotton and Rice would have to pay too much for it to be economical. People who get good value from their water will pay the price and home users will have price pressure not to use too much. Then there would be no crisis, the bureaucracy would just set how much water the market could access according to catchments and the like.

Studley

PS I said that I don't do anything to recycle water because I don't but my lawn hasn't had a sprinkler on it for about 8 or 9 months lots of mulch and I like Aussie Natives because they just handle dry weather and wait for the next rain

[Waldo]

Have you heard of Cubby station? They dammed the Darling and made a dam that Sydney CBD all the way to Manly would drown in. They pay less than 1% of the price city people pay for their water. All so they can grow cotton.

G'day Studley,

I know very well the situation re Cubby Station, as my late Dad was a Hydrographer who worked there taking water levels, run off collection etc, and worked on approving the application for it. And nothing meant to you, but what you wrote is a massive misconception. They havn't dammed the Darling, in fact Cubby Station takes no water from the Darling directly, they only collect water that is run off on their land only.

Yes, it collects water greater than Sydney harbour.

:)

"...Aussie Natives because they just handle dry weather and wait for the next rain."

The more people learn that the most efficient way to grow garden is to plant Aussive natives, top plants - pity that most people don't like them. :(

[martrix]

:chase:..........slight hijack, but worthy none the less.

Is it true that an Evaporative Cooler (roof mounted and ducted throughout house) uses close to 30 litres p/hour?

So if one of these was on for 24 hrs during a hot period, thats 720 litres down the tube?:(

[Waldo]

G'day,

There's a good question from Matrix.

I'll put my hand up and say I'm guilty of that, if it's true. But like they were asking on the news last night for anyone to turn off non-essential power points etc. SWMBO justly said to the effect of, "Can't do, have to keep our little (13mths old) girl cool and comfortable in the house on a hot day" such as yesterday was at 41º.

I am gulty your honour.:;

[silentC]

Can't do, have to keep our little (13mths old) girl cool and comfortable in the house on a hot day
How do you reckon they got by before air conditioners were invented? :wink:

Actually, I lived in Sydney for 16 years and only ever lived in two houses that even had air conditioners. :) The sparky tried to talk us into putting one in here in the new place (600kms North of Melbourne) but we decided it wasn't necessary. I grew up here and the most we ever had was a table top electric fan for the really hot days.

[Studley 2436]

Fair enough Waldo
Either way regarding Cubby they don't pay market rates for their water if they did they would either not use so much or find a more efficient use of it.

Same goes for everyone. If cotton and rice are so bad they would stop in a day if they had to pay full price for their water. If they are OK they would just keep on doing it.

Too much politics water rights and the like in it. Markets do this stuff so much better it is not funny. If it was in the market stuff would be grown that made money without needing a subsidy. Stuff that wasn't effective would be forgotten and bought more economically from other places.

Farmers would see their water expense rise or fall in direct relation to how efficiently they used it. Good farmers would prosper bad ones have to shut up shop, but there is nothing like the hip pocket nerve to stop all of us wasting water.

Studley

[journeyman Mick]

..................So if they just said we will have a water market where everyone buys water we will all pay the one price. Cotton and Rice would have to pay too much for it to be economical..................


The trouble with this approach is that it assumes that agriculture sources its water the same way as domestic users: ie the government or a central body like a water supply board builds the infrastructure to collect, store, treat, distribute and charge for water. If you want a truly level playing field then either someone pays for the infrastructure to pipe water to every farmer's gate, or we get rid of all the infrastructure and everyone collects, stores and treats their own water. I'm fine with the latter, I do it already.:U

Mick

[journeyman Mick]

Studley,
unlike domestic wastage of water which is pretty effortless (ie, you leave a tap running) wastage of water by farmers generally requires them to run a pump or something. So I'd say that direct waste by farmers is pretty minimal. Some crops (like rice or cotton) do use a lot of water, but I wonder how it compares to lawns and European style gardens that people insist on having? If people who wanted to water lawns or grow water dependant gardens were forced to collect and store all their garden water requirements how many would continue to do so? Most farmers pay for their own infrastructure for water collection and storage and most of this is water that would not have found its way into domestic water supplies but would have run down the river and into the sea. Now I'm not saying that water running down the rivers is wasted, I do know that some river systems don't have enough flow to keep them healthy. But this is a seperate issue to the "user pays" issue.

Now if somehow we end up sourcing all water intensive crops (rice, cotton,sugar cane, most fruit etc etc etc) from overseas because it's "cheaper" what happens when rising fuel prices make it uneconomical to import them and there's no local producers anymore?

[Stuart]

Gets back to my point. There is no way a desert country should even consider growing water intensive crops such as rice and cotton (didn't know cotton was so demanding). There are plenty of countries that can and do, and on a global scale, we should be buying from them, and providing to them things we can do well.

Pity that is too utopian to work.

As to fuel prices making importing water intensive crops uneconomic, the cost of fuel would have to get so high, that we'd be in a situation that the current fuel type would have been abandoned.

If there was a sudden huge demand, then like bananas, within 12 months the local growers could respond to that demand. It's not like having to regrow 10 year old trees.

[Grunt]

Buy organic rice as they use considerably less water to grow in then the big ag rice growers do.

Cotton should be replaced with Hemp. It improves the soil, you get to use the majority of the plant for making cloth or paper therefore an acre of hemp will produce significantly more usable fibre than cotton and it uses about 1/4 of the water.

[Studley 2436]

The trouble with this approach is that it assumes that agriculture sources its water the same way as domestic users: ie the government or a central body like a water supply board builds the infrastructure to collect, store, treat, distribute and charge for water. If you want a truly level playing field then either someone pays for the infrastructure to pipe water to every farmer's gate, or we get rid of all the infrastructure and everyone collects, stores and treats their own water. I'm fine with the latter, I do it already.:U

Mick

Yeah Mick to get past the nuts and bolt the detail of structuring a market what I think is that if water was sold on an open market then it would be there to buy. You and I wouldn't be bidding there for our bath water too much mess to sort out to arrange delivery.

SO what I think is that AGL and the like could bid buy water and then for the ones that own the pipes allready just sell it on to customers with a markup to cover their expense. The Farmers who buy it but have their own infrastructure don't have to pay someone in the middle but have to cover their own expenses.

The bit where it gets interesting on a consumer level is that say Mick and Studley open a water company which is like Dick Smith an office and a couple of desks. So we buy water pay whoever owns the pipes for delivery and clip the ticket but only just so that we can get our price below the other guy.

Yep Well anyway that is OK but things like big dams that farmers have. You can say we will charge you for what you have there but what do you do about the rest that is in the dam?

Perhaps someone pays for it and the farmer gets paid for his infrastructure? Might be that he just has to release it into the River going past but gets to clip the ticket on that.

Yep there would have to be nuts and bolts to work out but what we have now is a Government monopoly, just like telephones used to be. Just like when you couldn't get connected, couldn't get your own handset, had no choice of supplier and so on

No reason why the same thing can't happen with water. In fact it must for there to be any hope of a reasonable future in so many ways in this country.

Studley

[balquhidder]

Get your facts right man! Cubbie Station takes no water from the Darling River. The water is pumped out of the Culgoa river if and only IF it is in flood. As for your other comments that farmers are damming up all the rivers, HA! Have you ever left surburbia? Most rivers in this large dry land only run when there has been big rains somewhere. I have seen rivers way out west that are just a sandy bottom a few metres wide. After large rain they can become 5 kilometres wide overnight. A week later the water has run and they are just sandy bottoms again. We don't have big fast running rivers in this country. The murry is just a drain. Has been for millions of years. Cubby and all the others have spent millions of their own money to develop their dams to catch some of this flood water before the normally dry river becomes just that, dry again. Cubby rarely has their dams full, I have know of the station for 20 years and the dams have only been full twice. And for those that say that we should get rid of cotton and rice, fair enough. But if a farmer has an allocation for 300 megalitres of water then he will use that 300 megalitres to grow something, whether it is cotton, apples, hemp, trees or grain. So lets start paying big dollars for imported cotton and have a glut of apples and almonds! Oh and the same amount of water has been used! Yep, people are smart in this country!

[Studley 2436]

Mate if you want to get a South Aussie upset just mention Cubbie Station and Cotton. They pay almost nothing as I understand it for their water. They got a good deal from the QLD government.

What I was saying about one single national market stands. If water were priced by the market then everyone would pay a fair price. The Federal Government could decide how much water to allow pumped and how much for the system.

Obviously I have you riled up enough to join and make a post although I think I was completely reasonable in what I said. Water is a commodity and it must be properly priced to ensure it will be used efficiently. Figures I have seen vary but range between 80% and 93% of the total use of water in Australia being used by farmers for irrigation. However the irrigated land produces the vast part of Australia's farm wealth.

If water were priced on the market there would be other problems. Orchardists and Vine growers would do OK because they get about $10,000 of produce for each megalitre. Cotton and Rice growers get about $110 of produce for each megalitre. So we would very quickly see everyone trying to grow grapes and oranges. This would then lead to a glut crash the market and nobody would be good.

The solution is still a long way away on this but we must decide which farms and what type of farming we are going to have in this country so that everyone can have a sustainable future.

Studley

[AlexS]

Cubbie Station takes no water from the Darling River. The water is pumped out of the Culgoa river ...
and the Culgoa runs into...?

[weisyboy]

we live in a rural area so have no town watter.

we have always depended on rain watter for all the indor use we have a 20,000 gallon tank on the house and a 5,000 gallon tank atop the hill. the water gets pumped from teh 20,000 up to the 5,000 every coulpa months and gravity feeds back to teh house, this was done due to the large number of power outages. we also have a gass hot water heater and gass oven/griller and cooktop so wee have watter hot and cold and can cook if the power is out. we have never even come close to running out of watter in teh 20 years the house has been here even with 5 of us living here.

we also have 3 large dams that are used for all outside watter as well as around the farm. also pumped up to teh top of the hill.

[weisyboy]

Obviously I have you riled up enough to join and make a post although I think I was completely reasonable in what I said. Water is a commodity and it must be properly priced to ensure it will be used efficiently. Figures I have seen vary but range between 80% and 93% of the total use of water in Australia being used by farmers for irrigation. However the irrigated land produces the vast part of Australia's farm wealth.

Studley

how dare they use al that watter to produce food for the rest of you buggers to eat when it can be got from over seas where they are so enviromentaly minded they even recycle human waste to fertalise it.

[Studley 2436]

Go easy Carl, I grew up in the country. How water was a big big issue back then in the 70's and 80's and still is. I think it always will be and a better solution will be to get as much of it's allocation out of the hands of politicians as possible.

Most of the problem with water use is that a lot of it was allocated by National Party politicians buying votes in Country NSW. The vast part of the water that comes out of the Murray Darling system is taken by NSW irrigators.

Many of these farmers are on land that is not really viable whatever is done.

I think it is fair that some sensible corrections are made. Like taking less water for dryland farming in places like Hay, I would like to see a bit more for orchardists here in SA at present their whole orchards are likely to be lost forever due to being dried out. I would like to see some more water get down to the Coorong for some so called environmental flow.

In the times when I was a kid there was a really big flood every couple of years. I reckon in ten years on the river I saw three big ones when the River was up into the main street of Berri. You don't see that anymore. People are building houses and farms on the floodplains which used to be left as scrub due to the frequent floods. I don't think I am being reckless to say that there is too much water being taken. Flood and drought used to be part of the cycle but the flood part has largely gone now.

I will stand up and say market pricing on water will be good for everyone. Good farmers will prosper, the environment and thus tourism will benefit and downstream in SA we will get enough to manage which we don't at present either our farmers or Adelaide.

It would be pretty dumb to say just stop farming and there will be tons of water and I am not saying that. The fact is though that most of the water taken is taken for farming. Everyone should tighten up I think.

Stephen

[Waldo]

Get your facts right man! Cubbie Station takes no water from the Darling River. The water is pumped out of the Culgoa river if and only IF it is in flood.

Hooray, someone else who knows the facts about Cubbie Station. :2tsup:

And the point is that it's pumped when only in flood, otherwise the rest of their water comes from their own dams. As Alex points out it flows into the Darling. It's like telling my FIL, a beef farmer, that he can only collect 10% of the water that falls on his 900 acres, the rest has to be allowed to flow into the creeks, but those creeks only run within his property - sounds stupid doesn't it.

My late Dad, like Alex was a hydrographer for many years - his last field area area he worked included Roma, Cunamalla, Blackall etc. and the surrounding western corner of Qld. so he knew the area well, then when his health went he went into water licensing (still with Queensland Water Resources) and was responsible for giving Cubby their license after a very long and lengthy approval process - I'm not saying anything about anyone - just to say that there's a lot of carp going on about Cubby and misinformation and that Cubby's license was all above board - but nowthe Qld gov' has decided to play politics with it - as they do when the public gets aroused be it rightly or wrongly - in this case wrongly. there my 2¢.

[AlexS]

I won't buy into the Cubbie station argument, as I don't know enough about it to give a considered opinion.
In NSW in the 70's, 80s & 90s, it was common to come up with a set of operating rules for regulated rivers that would allow a water allocation to irrigators that ensured that there would always be some water for irrigators and the environment - maybe not as much as they wanted, but enough for them to keep going. Inevitably, the irrigators would put pressure on the government of the day to change the rules so there was a higher allocation, and the government would give it to them. This was water that, in the long term, simply didn't exist. Then, even with the new rules, when things got tight, they would demand 'emergency releases'. All this does is ensure that sooner rather than later, you will run out of water.
This wasn't confined to irrigators. I was intimately involved in developing a set of operating rules for a river which included irrigation areas and a large significant area of wetlands which, under natural conditions, was subjected to long droughts. The rules included provisions for emergency releases if there hadn't been a flood big enough to trigger bird breeding for 5 years, and also releases to maintain breeding if there was a flood at the start of the breeding season. The rules were agreed to by irrigators, National Parks and other interested organisations. After a long (but not 5 years) drought, the government succumbed to pressure to make an emergency environmental release. Naturally, the irrigators also demanded an emergency release. So much for the operating rules.

Just for your interest, the attachment shows pretty graphically the flood and drought periods we've had over the years. The graph is for the Murrumbidgee at Wagga Wagga, but it's pretty typical of NSW and the whole of south-east Australia. Put simply, if the graph is rising to the right, it's above average flows, if it's falling, it's below average flows. I make no comment, other than to say that if you think we're in the worst ever drought now, look at the start of last century.

[weisyboy]

Go easy Carl, I grew up in the country. How water was a big big issue back then in the 70's and 80's and still is. I think it always will be and a better solution will be to get as much of it's allocation out of the hands of politicians as possible.

Most of the problem with water use is that a lot of it was allocated by National Party politicians buying votes in Country NSW. oviously not a national party fan.
The vast part of the water that comes out of the Murray Darling system is taken by NSW irrigators. and so it should be there would be a big problem if most of it was taken for the people in town to have a bath .

Many of these farmers are on land that is not really viable whatever is done. no land is unviable it just needs to be farmed in the right way. there is no point in trying to grow lettice in the semi desert when you can breed and run camels verry well.

I think it is fair that some sensible corrections are made. Like taking less water for dryland farming in places like Hay,there are hay shortages right accros austraila as it is this is pressing the price of beef up and up.
I would like to see a bit more for orchardists here in SA at present their whole orchards are likely to be lost forever due to being dried out. most orchids are not run in a verry watter savvy way. sprinckler iragation is used the trees are not mucched properly. grass is left growing up to teh buts of the trees sucking enourmous amounts of watter outof the ground.
I would like to see some more water get down to the Coorong for some so called environmental flow.

In the times when I was a kid there was a really big flood every couple of years. I reckon in ten years on the river I saw three big ones when the River was up into the main street of Berri. You don't see that anymore. People are building houses and farms on the floodplains which used to be left as scrub due to the frequent floods. I don't think I am being reckless to say that there is too much water being taken. Flood and drought used to be part of the cycle but the flood part has largely gone now. we are simply going threw a dry period i think you will find in the next few years at least we will have normal wet seasons.

I will stand up and say market pricing on water will be good for everyone. Good farmers will prosper, the environment and thus tourism will benefit and downstream in SA we will get enough to manage which we don't at present either our farmers or Adelaide. and supermarket wil have a nother reason to up the prices of groceries and the farmer will have to battle even harder to keep his farm going.

It would be pretty dumb to say just stop farming and there will be tons of water and I am not saying that. The fact is though that most of the water taken is taken for farming. most of the watter should be taken for producing food for the 20 odd milion people living in this country. more and more of the best farmlands are being taken over by suburbs.

in qld at least there has been no dams built and no major roads put in since joe went and the population has exploded.
what is happening now is due to the lack of infrastructure put in by the government (we all know who the governmet has been) there are big problems with roads, watter and hospitals.

Everyone should tighten up I think.

Stephen

carl

[Studley 2436]

Actually Carl I usually cop a bucketload for being a free market Liberal. That is Liberal in the school of thought of greats such as Menzies. John Hyde was likewise a great Liberal thinker. One of his memorable essays could have been titled, "Who Pays?" which sums it up pretty well. To ask that of people who are baying that money must be spent normally stops them in their tracks. Generally they want public largess to give them either cosy high paid jobs or direct benefits to themselves in other ways at the larger community's expense.

It annoys me a lot that soft and snivelling left wingers are at present stealing the name Liberal.

You will struggle to find someone who hates the ALP more than me. Due to my desire for real solutions that worked in the real world I moved away from my family's rusted on adulation of the ALP and ended up being ostracised for it. Family means so much more than something as pathetic as politics but not in my family or ex family if you like.

The scorn and great spite I feel for people such as Mike Rann who scuttled Howard's attempts at water reform only because he did not want Howard to enjoy any good headlines at all is immense. NSW takes such a huge proportion on the water coming out and was prepared to allow Federal management of it's water use. SA would have been the major beneficiary but guess who scuppered that one. The SA Premier or should I say the ALP's representative in South Australia.

At every step down the river system people take water based on their own needs desires and so on. South Australia gets whatever is left over. At present that is basically nothing.

Points well made about Orchardists and their watering techniques. I having lived there as a teenager had seen how they did it there. Flood irrigation seems such a dumb dumb idea. Open Irrigation Channels are not good either. Getting some heavy mulch down on the red sand they have there would do the world of good for water retention and soil quality but I don't know that anyone does it. However this type of poor use of water is endemic right throughout Australia. In Hay they use vast sprinkler systems to irrigate RICE! Rice which needs so much water and such a huge amount of their water is evaporating before it hits the ground.

Which only makes my argument for a single water market all the stronger. If farmers had to pay the real price of water they would be much more efficient with it. They would be much more innovative in finding ways to maximise the utility they got from it. The single water market would lead to better outcomes all round.

Studley

[Studley 2436]

I haven't looked at Alex S's sheet but I do remember earlier when Media Mike declared this a one in 1000 year drought thinking that he couldn't remember the drought of the early 1980's which was pretty savage. I learned also of the Federation Drought. There was also another really big one I think in the 1930's which I noticed in a very casual glance at previous droughts.

What I did notice is that each one was different in it's own way and had different effects and so it was not really possible to compare any one of them.

But no this one is not a once ever drought it is largely the result of Politicians mismanagement. Actually it has been some months now since you could argue that it is still a drought more a situation of extreme water crisis.

Studley

[woodbe]

Without getting deep into political idealogies, Cubbie has always struck me as strange for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, we are a dry country, always have been. Why we allow people to use that water in the most wasteful methods to grow Rice and Cotton is beyond me. It doesn't matter that we might have the most efficient cotton or rice growing methods, it's still a wasteful exercise when compared to traditional Australia dry land farming. The current drought brings that waste into sharp focus.

Secondly, whatever happened to Riparian Rights? The river system is dying dammit, and flood is a natural behaviour of river systems, not an excuse to remove all the water from the system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riparian_water_rights


Riparian rights also depend upon "reasonable use" as it relates to other riparian owners to ensure that the rights of one riparian owner are weighed fairly and equitably with the rights of adjacent riparian owners.

woodbe.

[Waldo]

G'day,

I'm not looking for an arguement over Cubbie either, I think I posted earlier what similar to what I did a few posts up, I just wanted to make some facts known.

Any attack on Cubbie isn't taken against the memory of my Dad, just to make that clear. Times change and the climate has changed, so there are bond to be a whole raft of issues which may/may not need to be addressed in water allocations.

One thing that peeves me is governments jumping in or not as the case may be. An example Qld and Vic. I didn't like Beatie, but he had the guts to do what was best for the population, in this case water restrictions. Now Qld, in this case greater Brisbane, has more dams and can collect more water. On the otherhand, Brax/Brumby in Vic has fewer dams/reservoirs, yet is on Stage 3A while Brisbane in on Stage 6. Now what the heck? One politican had the guts to do what was best in the interest of the public/industry and Brax, who wouldn't make the call for fear of public backlash, with more rain than S.E Qld has had over the period only went so far as Stage 3A, don't call it 4, some people mighn't like it, so we'll call it 3A. ::

S.E. Qld with a lot of rain over the past few months, is still on Stage 6 (last I knew) even though the catchments have received very good rain.

My point is, the public realise that water conservation is paramount, some politicians do and act accordingly. What gets my fire up is politicans who play politics with water, opposite to the greater good.

[woodbe]

Haven't looked at the numbers for Victoria, but last time I checked for SA, Domestic use of water is in a minority. By Far. They could eliminate domestic use, and there would still be a problem.

One thing for sure is domestic users are going to cop it in the hip pocket regardless of the restrictions and rights they may enjoy. Largely because of the lack of adequate planning by our elected governments of both major parties. Perth was the only state that had been adequately planning for the future last I heard, and the rest are struggling to get up to last year.

Makes you want to put in a decent water tank.

woodbe.

[Clinton1]

Flood irrigation seems such a dumb dumb idea.


I seem to remember that cotton farmers in Qld were getting 70% efficiency through flood irrigation (I was doing research at the time and came across a Co-op Research mob's papers)... which meant that it competed on underground drip irrigation very, very well... at the time.
At the time, sub-surface drip systems were achieving 98% efficiency, surface drippers 90% and overhead irrigation was @ 70 - 80%.

The trouble was that underground systems require very significant 'per Ha' installation investment, and at the time were delivering up to 15% per Ha yield loss!

A 15% yield loss for some of the most competitive farmers in the world, in a totally unsubsidised production market, meant that you'd install sub-surface drippers and then go broke in 2 years. :oo:
Of course you could just by cotton produced eleswhere... heavily subsidised and which isn't really competitive and is very 'environmentally unfriendly'.
Hell, some Latin/South American cotton producers pay so little the workers have to garden, after hours, to be able to eat!

Now the complexities of underground drip systems are being slowly worked out and it seems to be out competing furrow flood in most cases... both in amount applied per hectare (the easy bit) and in yields per hectare (the difficult part).

Simply put, the new technology had to be integrated into the farming system and had to be studied carefully to work out how to actually make it cost effective and produce better yields.

Funnily enough, continued research into flood irrigation has meant that 'best practice' gets flood irrigation to 98% (and higher) efficiency. :rolleyes:
Next step is to conquer the issue of 'on farm storage evaporation' in a cost effective way.

So, my mate banana farmer near Tully (like all farmers) will be scratching his head and doing the sums to reduce the bore pump running time and if that means he converts to buried trickle tape over the existing combination "on ground micro sprinklers and drippers" then he will.
However the information for this will come from the CRC (Co-op Research Centre) that he funds through a levy 'per carton' of bananas and which is also funded through DPI and CSIRO funding.

When he installs sub-surface irrigation, it is going to cost him $1600 - $5000 per hectare, depending on the model used and how much of his existing infrastructure needs to be changed.
He runs 76 Ha of bananas, so that is a minimum of $121, 600.00 investment... and at a $2 per carton average profit, 60,800 cartons or 45 semi trailers leaving the farm to pay for it. That is a very significant investment for a life span of only 6 years.

He pulls about 625 bunches of bananas off each Hectare per 9 months... the paddock goes for 8 cycles of 9 months (6 years) before needing to be replanted. In replanting the sub-surface tape will be ripped out and ruined.
About 2 cartons per bunch = the full production of 48 hectares over 9 months to pay for 6 years of @5% water saving and 5% less pump running time. Its difficult to have that happen cost effectivly.
Easily paid for... if the farmers can levy the cost onto the consumer, which hasn't happened yet and I can't see consumers being willing for it to happen.

Farm irrigation is a complex issue... well beyond the understanding of me, and dare I say it... beyond the understanding of non-farmers, simply because we are not involved and are not aware of the issues.

Suffice to say, the forces to effect change are in place... but change comes at a cost and with time.
In a heavily regulated and unsubsidised market such as the Aust argiculture market, change comes as it can be afforded.

Change will occur within its own time, and my old mate in Tully is reading things like this (http://www2.dpi.qld.gov.au/fieldcrops/17652.html), this (http://www2.dpi.qld.gov.au/fieldcrops/17648.html) and this (http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/cps/rde/dpi/hs.xsl/26_9822_ENA_HTML.htm)and making changes as and when he can.
He's no-ones fool, and no amount of whinging or 'bright ideas' from enviros and greenies (like me) do him any good... he's the one paying the levy to get the research done to make the change.

[Studley 2436]

The flood irrigation used in the 70's and 80's in the Riverland was just trenches with water running down to the bottom. Hard to know how much water got into the soil, it is all sandy stuff there, and it just seemed to be running past everything.

Studley

[astrid]

I never water my garden, thus trees have deep roots and even european trees are fine

I never wash the car

only wash the boy twice per week:D

have front loader washing machine

my last water bill was over the limit?:?

meanwhile my neighbours have pools, and dont try to tell me there filling with a bucket.

until the gov has the guts to really restrict water use and deny pool permits etc.
then I'll do what I'm doing and no more.

Astrid

[woodbe]

Clinton,

Flood irrigation 70% efficient? Compared to what?

I think the measure might be for getting water to the roots of the plant or something, not efficient use of water. Efficient use of water doesn't include pouring it on the ground and allowing it to evaporate. I've heard similar stuff quoted about how efficient our rice and cotton farmers are, and I'm sure we lead the world, but the point is that these are hugely water intensive crops and with all due respect to the farmers who work hard at growing it, Australia has better things to do with the water.


Total Australian rice exports totalled 268000 tonnes, valued at $171 million over the past 12 months. This figure is considerably lower than the usual $400...http://www.nff.org.au/commodities-rice.html


n terms of the value and volume of Australian cotton exports, in 2004-05 raw cotton brought in $770 million (420 kilo tonnes) and cottonseed $55 million ... http://www.nff.org.au/commodities-cotton.html

Still, I could be wrong, but it sure looks like we as a nation are exporting our precious water overseas by making cotton and rice with it. And yes, there are lots of other problems with water, this is just one of them IMHO.

woodbe