1 August 2008

Stormwater storage?

| johnboy
Join the conversation
32

Andrew Barr’s having a busy day. He’s just announced that the ACT government is going to start pumping stormwater into aquifers for use watering ovals.

    The Government will tomorrow release a draft variation to the Territory Plan which will allow for storm water to be stored in aquifers and recovered for irrigation use when required.

    Members of the community are invited to comment on the draft Variation which can be viewed from tomorrow at www.actpla.act.gov.au. The period for public comment closes on 11 September 2008.

Soooo.

1) They’re going to re-cycle our wee for drinking but the storm water can only be used on ovals?
2) This worse-than-wee storm water is going to be pumped into the water table?
3) At the moment the storm water makes up a percentage of our environmental flows. Are we going to have to release drinking water from storages to make up environmental flows because we’ve diverted stormwater into aquifers for putting on ovals?

Join the conversation

32
All Comments
  • All Comments
  • Website Comments
LatestOldest

That is my point exactly!

: )

They decided to detonate the hospital after 100,000 drunks had brought in the new year watching a casino come down.

There was a lot to suggest it would be a fun event worth promoting.

It went wrong because the damn building had been built to withstand a nuclear explosion within line of sight.

It went doubly wrong when the demolishing crews realised how strong the building was but refused to revise their tender.

It was a complicated problem gone wrong.

Maybe my brain is hardwired to get it wrong, but my family were nowhere near the hospital implosion that day. It sounded stupid to me. Everyone said I was being silly. I’d rather be silly.

Caf. We should have had the Tennent Dam online years ago. It is a much better economic option than the ones Actew keep proposing. See here

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/opinion/editorial/general/well-drink-to-that-unlimited-water-for-150-a-year/135465.aspx

I went on a tour of an overseas nuclear reactor, and the guide spent the whole time raving about the safety of that particular reactor, while slagging off most other reactors in other countries as dangerous.

It didn’t make me a fan of nuclear power.

Not every nuclear reactor is going to chuck a Chernobyl, but I would not house my family anywhere in the vicinity of one ever.

All that shows is that you suffer from the same well-documented inability to dispassionately evaluate risks as the rest of us (the human brain appears hardwired to get this wrong). The same reason we tend to be more afraid of dying in a aircraft accident than a car accident.

miz: Part of the strategy is indeed to build a new dam wall about 50 metres downstream of the existing Cotter Dam wall, which will increase the volume of the Cotter Dam from about 4GL to about 78GL. See here.

“If there’s more than one possible outcome of a job or task, and one of those outcomes will result in disaster or an undesirable consequence, then somebody will do it that way” – and then the government will charge everyone for the privilege.

eg, let’s think of any number of complicated and expensive ways of having a so-so water supply, instead of *gosh!* building a dam and letting it fill it up with pure, clean rain from the sky.

Fair dinkum. Where’s ockham’s razor thinking in all this crazy ACT government water policy?

smokey4 said :

Has anyone info on how HQJOC has gone with their bores? I still feel this is a risky path to rely on.

The HQ Joc bloke told us that primarily, they’re capturing their water from the roof and routing it into tanks and a couple of dams. Roof is pretty big. We expressed doubt that enough rain fell out here to do the job, and he said they’d studied some lenght of time’s rainfalls (forget the time period) and it should be ample.

However, where they are is down on the flat, which looks to be a river valley, so there’s probably a good underwater source too (like Canberra, which has an underground river called The Red under it). Although I imagine they’d use that for the toilets and grass, as bore water tastes like…. bore water. Bores out here are pretty good I must say, the big mountains around have water coming down off them through the rocks.

If a bridge is going to collapse, there is an excellent chance that I will not be driving on it at the time.

If somebody buggers up the water supply, it is almost inevitable that I will be affected.

If this system is vulnerable to human error, then I consider that the risk outweighs the benefits.

Not every nuclear reactor is going to chuck a Chernobyl, but I would not house my family anywhere in the vicinity of one ever.

Sorry, but I’m with Murphy on this one:

“If there’s more than one possible outcome of a job or task, and one of those outcomes will result in disaster or an undesirable consequence, then somebody will do it that way”

Although of course to do so, you’d have to use a car (designed by “experts” so clearly not to be trusted) and drive over bridges (designed by more “experts”, it’s a wonder they haven’t collapsed already).

Granny: Why don’t take a short drive and ask the burghers of Gundagai how they’re going with it?

It’s the Titanic principle really.

A bunch of experts reckon they’ve got a ship that won’t sink. Should you believe them?

A bunch of experts reckon its completely safe to implode a building. Should you believe them?

A bunch of experts reckon the Chernobyl nuclear reactor is failsafe and foolproof. Nothing in this universe is proof from fools!

And now a bunch of experts would have us believe it’s completely safe to drink the contents of our own toilets … and worse still, other people’s! Should you believe them, I say! Should you believe them! And again I say, I even ask very rhetorically, should you believe them!!

Requires a bit more than a piece of ag pipe Thumper. An area about 3 metres square in each street. Black polly sheet at the bottom, some ag pipe and a thick layer of course gravel. I watched the guys setting this up in Sandringham. Have seen similar work being done at Edithvale. Not sure of the results as I cannot find more info on the net.
Is the recycled water at Southwell Park up to Class A standard Thumper? My assumption is that it would have to be at least class A.
Has anyone info on how HQJOC has gone with their bores? I still feel this is a risky path to rely on.

If we can use stormwater on our gardens, there should be plenty of drinking water for inside the house. Why then do we need to imperfectly recycle sewage, then drink it, at great expense? This seems more like a conspiracy to me!

GottaLoveCanberra7:07 pm 01 Aug 08

Call me naive but how on Earth are the Govt ever going to be able to justify taxing water that falls from the sky into a bloody water tank?

What’s next, green grass tax? Oxygen tax?

Currently most storm water is not finding its way to the rivers due to the drought. Any that does occur is going to the aquifers. Is this just a ploy to pump the depleted aquifers dry? What happens when HQJOC is unable to pump bore water and our defence heroes are without water? I believe HQJOC is supplied by 2 Bores.
In Melbourne some areas ie Sandringham and Chelsea have constructed filter areas in the streets to filter and capture storm water to water ovals etc. This water would normally go out to sea. Instead of a gutter in the street an area of gravel is constructed with slotted PVC underneath to capture the filtered storm water.

tylersmayhem said :

Peterh, like I mentioned in my previous post, they might use the water tank rebate as a guide, plus analysing water usage levels to look for particular drops in usage. I’m sure they could do that.

As for Google Earth – would you really be that surprised?

not really, but I would love it if they went after unapproved structures first – neighbor would lose 4 or 5 aviaries.

tylersmayhem1:46 pm 01 Aug 08

Peterh, like I mentioned in my previous post, they might use the water tank rebate as a guide, plus analysing water usage levels to look for particular drops in usage. I’m sure they could do that.

As for Google Earth – would you really be that surprised?

johnboy said :

Ahh now you enter the brave world of water abstraction.

Short answer is yes they do, sort of.

yes they do, sort of?

how does the government know? are they using google earth to check out whether dams are visible?

Aren’t some ovals in Canberra being watered with recycled sewage water (Reid Oval springs to mind)?

If so, why don’t they continue expanding that program instead of starting a stormwater recycling program?

caf said :

I reckon the charging-for-tank-water thing is just a run-of-the-mill conspiracy theory.

I bloody well hope so.

Ahh now you enter the brave world of water abstraction.

Short answer is yes they do, sort of.

caf said :

I reckon the charging-for-tank-water thing is just a run-of-the-mill conspiracy theory.

considering that the other states let you collect what you can from the sky, store it and use it, why the hell would you expect anything less from the ACT govt?

does a farmer pay for dam storage?

I reckon the charging-for-tank-water thing is just a run-of-the-mill conspiracy theory.

I guarantee you that every day worse things are being put down sewers than a bit of road dirt.

tylersmayhem12:50 pm 01 Aug 08

bugger that. I will definitely need my tanks now. (looking at one for drinking, and one for the gardens)

Don’t get too excited. I’ve heard future plans to charge owners of tanks for the water they capture. Obviously that now we are in drought they are less inclined – but once the drought breaks…

Apparently it’s been done before, and although quite absurd, I can see it happening. I’ve heard opinions from landscapers that the Gov will use the water tank rebate details to help identify who has a tank and who does not?

Like I said – this is not my theory, but rather one I have heard. Thoughts?!

I believe the answer to 1 and 2 is along the lines of:

Neither stormwater nor sewage is suitable for drinking as-is. Sewage is suitable for neither, however minimally treated stormwater is safe to use on ovals. On the other hand, if we’re going to build a plant to fully purify either type of water for drinking, we might as well use the most plentiful of the two, which is the sewage.

As for the environmental flows, the only ones that matter in terms of our drinking water supply are the ones upstream of us in the Cotter and Queanbeyan River catchments – which our stormwater doesn’t contribute to anyway, since it doesn’t flow uphill. The downstream environmental flows in the Murrumbidgee (where our stormwater goes) is more than covered by the hundreds of gigalitres of Murrumbidgee water that flows in and out of the ACT unmolested.

Stormwater is worse than wee. Wee doesn’t contain anything that will kill you or make you sick (quickly). Storm water can contain any sort of road runoff (think oil) fetid organic matter, animal shit, business waste, you name it.

Here’s a not entirely unbiased but useful description.

If given a choice between the two, I’d wee in a wine glass and describe it’s characteristics like I had a clue if I had to.

I am hoping that Andrew will come along and strut his SimCity stuff.

Can we give him a cholera disaster, johnboy?

Go on, you know you want to.

bugger that. I will definitely need my tanks now. (looking at one for drinking, and one for the gardens)

not drinking recycled water, not when it can come from the sky….

Funny, this is the third time comrade Barr has announced using stormwater for ovals.

Daily Digest

Want the best Canberra news delivered daily? Every day we package the most popular Riotact stories and send them straight to your inbox. Sign-up now for trusted local news that will never be behind a paywall.

By submitting your email address you are agreeing to Region Group's terms and conditions and privacy policy.