Its Time To talk About Water...

jlew24asu wrote:

I drink as much water as I can a day. its good for the body. it gives life.

the day someone says i cant have a glass of water im losing it.

I will make a sign that says Macgyver06 so you all will know when the news has got me on the bridge or skyscraper ready to jump

Scubascott wrote:

Wow. Some people here are obviously living a long way outside reality. Jlew, you need to venture outside the little box that you apparently live in if you think governments aren't already restricting water use. Try living in SE queensland, or any metro area in Australia these days.

We do need to seriously rethink our attitudes to water use in this country. You don't realise how much water you waste on a daily basis until you start to pay attention. Occasionally my toilet cistern doesn't refill after flushing. Not sure why, maybe some crap stuck in the pipe or something, but when it happens I have to manually fill the cistern with a bucket. Do that for a couple of days and you'll start to appreciate how much good clean drinking water you use just to flush shit away.

Jeanie - A couple of your points sounded kinda strange to me. Why do you need an electric toothbrush to save water? You don't have to leave the tap running with a normal toothbrush either. And it doesn't matter where you wash your car. At home or somewhere else, it still uses the same amount of water???

Why use treated water on crops? Agriculture uses raw water directly from the river or bore or whatever. Using treated recycled water would just be a waste of energy. It makes far more sense to return that treated water to the domestic supply where it is needed.

I use much less water using the electric toothbrush scott, I wasn't recommending it as a water saving device. Just my personal experience has been I use less water and make much less mess requiring water to clean up with the electric.
As to washing the car, it doesn't get washed, because we're not allowed to wash it at home with our restrictions and I can rarely afford to take it to the car wash where they recycle their water. Does that make sense?
With regard to the treated water on crops, I was simply saying that I have absolutely no desire to wash or drink in recycled effluent so if they're planning to go to all the trouble and waste of energy on this reverse osmosis business I'd prefer they utilized it for other things than putting it in with the catchment water.
Actually edit: I believe they are already using treated water on some of the market gardens around here. And I do wish they'd utilize it for toilets for instance.

Unless you have one of those ultra modern eco toilets, fill a large 2 liter pop bottle with water and drop it in the toilet tank. It displaces and saves 2 liters of water per flush. You can also use a smaller bottle if necessary.

Desalination is not going to be a viable alternative. It is very expensive, requiring huge water pressures, large amounts of energy, precise membrane technologies, and a shit ton of servicing. As well it is slow, a large plant still produces very little potable water.

In North America it will be mandated in the near future that you need duel flush toilets that use very little water to flush away #1. Storage type hot water heaters will be replaced with demand style. Grey water recycling systems will be required. ETC. All this stuff has been around for a very long time, its just typical that North America is one of the last to admit/deal with the problem.

Water is wasted by pollutants. Any above ground water source, like lakes and rivers, are far more polluted than rain water and below ground sources. When water is taken from a lake it is taken from a specific layer of the water/pollutant mixture. As water is used chemicals are added that are naturally coherant to the water molecule, making them more dense and sinking to the bottom. The opposite occurs with molecules that repel the water molecule, they float unless they are naturally more dense. Water treatment facilities work to floculate, scrub or skim most of these impurities out, but the shear amount of waste created makes it impossible for the quality of waste to be where it should be.

The majority of fresh water, recent rain or snow melt, is being used by agriculture. Fresh water lakes are drying up, aquifers are drying up, the glaciers are melting(becoming salinated)... A big ditch is going to be built from Northern Canada to the Eastern USA soon. Maybe along the American Union highway...

catefrances wrote:

how about we get it through our heads that it is unecessary to flush everytime we do a pee.


if it's yellow let it mellow
if it's brown flush it down

Heh. That is exactly what we've often had to do during dry spells when there is no rainwater. You'd be surprised how stinky the toilet gets. . . .

Jeanie, what do have against using recycled water for domestic purposes? It works in Europe. They say that water there has already been through an average of seven other stomachs before it gets to yours. It blew my mind when Toowoomba put the issue to a vote, and there were actually people on the street campaigning against recycled water.

It makes me really sad to think about how much beautiful and unique country is going to be lost in SE queensland when the state government starts building more dams to meet the growing demand for domestic water. I just hope they never act on the ideas to dam the Clarence. The souther parts of the Clarence catchment are one of my absolute favourite places in the world, and it would be heartbreaking to see it all drowned under a dam.

Scubascott wrote:

Jeanie, what do have against using recycled water for domestic purposes? It works in Europe. They say that water there has already been through an average of seven other stomachs before it gets to yours. It blew my mind when Toowoomba put the issue to a vote, and there were actually people on the street campaigning against recycled water.

It makes me really sad to think about how much beautiful and unique country is going to be lost in SE queensland when the state government starts building more dams to meet the growing demand for domestic water. I just hope they never act on the ideas to dam the Clarence. The souther parts of the Clarence catchment are one of my absolute favourite places in the world, and it would be heartbreaking to see it all drowned under a dam.

That's great. I'm happy for Europe.
I'm not interested in showering, washing my clothes or drinking recycled water. I'd be even less interested in utilizing recycled water for those purposes if I was in Europe. I think you'll find that people aren't campaigning against recycled water. They're objecting to it being added to the "natural" water supply. And I know that plenty of them are less than impressed with the idea of more dams too. It's not about not wanting to do what we can to come up with better solutions to this problem, it's about the ridiculous jumps that the governments are making to things like drinking recycled sewerage and Bracksy's little baby, the desalination plant. :rolleyes:
I'll never be for it and certainly not when I know just how much fresh drinking water is being wasted by industry and on crops that just shouldn't be here.
There are so many other options that they haven't bothered with. Tis too stupid for words.

This was a dry summer where I live. Everyone's lawn was brown pretty much all summer long, as they had a few water bans.

Funny how I'm not allowed to wash my car at home, yet I can take it to any one of the numerous gas station car washes or those self serve "pay and spray" places (all of which remained open). I would use less water at home.

Jeanie wrote:

That's great. I'm happy for Europe.
I'm not interested in showering, washing my clothes or drinking recycled water. I'd be even less interested in utilizing recycled water for those purposes if I was in Europe. I think you'll find that people aren't campaigning against recycled water. They're objecting to it being added to the "natural" water supply. And I know that plenty of them are less than impressed with the idea of more dams too. It's not about not wanting to do what we can to come up with better solutions to this problem, it's about the ridiculous jumps that the governments are making to things like drinking recycled sewerage and Bracksy's little baby, the desalination plant. :rolleyes:
I'll never be for it and certainly not when I know just how much fresh drinking water is being wasted by industry and on crops that just shouldn't be here.
There are so many other options that they haven't bothered with. Tis too stupid for words.

jeanie jeanie jeanie you know governments just talk talk talk when it comes to our water situ. they dont want to start anything they cant finish within their term and get credit for. hence no desal plants unless private industry decides to take it out of the governments' hands. and oh boy won't that be a glorious day!

Water raining from the ass of a forest?