State governments ignore water recycling in favour of desalinatio

As water levels in all the big city reservoirs except Hobart's (87%) and Darwin's (77%), fall to seriously low levels, it seems state governments are more content to spend big dollars on desalination plants than tackle more difficult recycling and storm water harvesting projects.

However in Queensland's south east, Premier Peter Beattie is going ahead with two dams as is NSW with one on the go for the Hunter Valley near Newcastle.

The Marsden Jacob Associates report commissioned by the Federal government and published in November, said the water crisis in all cities except Perth, had been imposed by water authorities having to focus on paying dividends to state governments instead of investing in recycling infrastructure.

As Services Sydney director John van der Merwe says, desalinated water still gets used just once, before being pumped out to sea. The NSW government gave Services Sydney a hard time through the courts before the company won a ruling in the Australian Competition Tribunal allowing it to negotiate access to Sydney's sewerage with a view to recycling it for industrial use.

Now the state is to change the laws to still keep the company at bay, so it can keep its hands on the $150m or so Sydney Water generates annually for the state's consolidated revenue coffers. Bugger the public seems to be the attitude.