Water Conservation

[Oakland Raider]

Boganvillia ie-Kwinana is full of cashed up home owners forced to water restrictions, courtesy of the moronic bourgeois.

 

[The Grand Admiral]

Put simply; I'm happy to pay the same price for water as the corporations. I don't care if a company produces millions of bottles of CocaCola, or employs thousands of miners. Their rate should also be my rate. Until this is the case I will personally disregard any restriction on water.

 

[Wally Carter]

Put simply; I'm happy to pay the same price for water as the corporations. I don't care if a company produces millions of bottles of CocaCola, or employs thousands of miners. Their rate should also be my rate. Until this is the case I will personally disregard any restriction on water.

They don't pay the same % tax as you so why should they pay the same price for water?

 

[1jasonoz]

Is actually a requirement imposed/agreed upon by all government under the NWI that amongst other requirements that costs to users is moved towards a true reflection of the cost of water.

 

[1jasonoz]

Water should definitely be more expensive. Regardless of sprinkler bans etc. if it costs 50c to run your garden hose for an hour then people aren't going to realistically value water as a resource.

What staggers me is Perth (the poster city for urban sprawl - big blocks, single storey 4 x 2's etc.) receives plenty of rainfall (on average around 150mm more per year than Melbourne) and more sunshine than most places on the planet and yet there are no requirements for new dwellings to have solar panels or water tanks...

The Perth/Peel region will require the desal plant to have doubled its capacity by about 2018 to avoid water shortages. Then that will only provide enough supply until about 2025 when new sources of water will have to be found. Also over the past 30 years the amount of average rainfall in the region has reduced by 10-20%.

The greater southwest demand for water will exceed supply in 2013, lucky for them the desal plant will come on line in Binnigup in 2011 allowing supply to be met until about 2020 when the plant will also have to be doubled.

The Pilbara region will have a situation of greater water demand than supply from the Harding dam by 2012-they are currently investigating new water sources as the resource industry is the driver behind this demand.

The rest of the regions in WA (5 others) have enough water supply at currnt forecasts to last till about 2030.

 

[Oakland Raider]

Imagine how much water they could tap into on earth with that money spent on the moon. Idiots.

That would be a lot of well placed catchment area's, Pipelines similar to that from Perth to Kalgoorlie, bore water compulsory for home owners etc.. with still change left to knock down the desal dinosaurs.

 

[Scotland]

The Pilbara region will have a situation of greater water demand than supply from the Harding dam by 2012-they are currently investigating new water sources as the resource industry is the driver behind this demand.

There is no shortage of water in the Pilbara.

Whether or not the population and water sources are in close proximity is another matter altogether.

 

[Hawk Dork]

I have 3 tanks(11,000 litres) and recycle my grey water, but have been on town water now for 2 weeks.(its killing me and tastes like crap)
I grow my vegies and fruit trees and it doesnt rain for a good 6 months.
Just waiting for the wet season to top me up (got a little Last night).
We have the highest water rates in Australia
$500 to be connected plus usage at the highest rate per litre in Australia.
We are getting a desal plant being built at the estimated cost of $40 million.
To service 1500 odd people,cant wait for the next bill.
A 10th of that could have either recylcled the sewage or provided more tanks with minimal ongoing cost or both.
I will put another 2 tanks in when I excavate for a carpark and connect another section of verandah to the tanks.Will also set up alot of my vegetable garden to hydroponics and eventualy aquaponics,have done tomatoes and strawberrys so far.

 

[bit_pattern]

There is no shortage of water in the Pilbara.

Whether or not the population and water sources are in close proximity is another matter altogether.

Where? I assume you're talking about groundwater?

 

[Scotland]

Where? I assume you're talking about groundwater?

Mine de-watering.

 

[bit_pattern]

Which is?

 

[Fossie 32]

I have 3 tanks(11,000 litres) and recycle my grey water, but have been on town water now for 2 weeks.(its killing me and tastes like crap)
I grow my vegies and fruit trees and it doesnt rain for a good 6 months.
Just waiting for the wet season to top me up (got a little Last night).
We have the highest water rates in Australia
$500 to be connected plus usage at the highest rate per litre in Australia.
We are getting a desal plant being built at the estimated cost of $40 million.
To service 1500 odd people,cant wait for the next bill.
A 10th of that could have either recylcled the sewage or provided more tanks with minimal ongoing cost or both.
I will put another 2 tanks in when I excavate for a carpark and connect another section of verandah to the tanks.Will also set up alot of my vegetable garden to hydroponics and eventualy aquaponics,have done tomatoes and strawberrys so far.

Good on you - we just bought a huge assed 22,000 litre tank which cost $2,200 and have been quoted $3,500 extra to install and connect it to the house supply.
You can get $1,000 or so rebate apparently - not sure on the exact figure.
I am against the desal plant too [near where we live] but where do you get that it will supply only 1,500 people? That would be crazy, its going to supply Melbourne as I understand. Apparently it cost like 5x as much as the one in Perth - nice work.

 

[Scotland]

Which is?

There are large deposits of iron ore located below the water table.

In order to get the iron ore out, you need to first remove the water.

Discharges in excess of 100 ML per day over the life of one mine is around the mark.

 

[1jasonoz]

There is no shortage of water in the Pilbara.

Whether or not the population and water sources are in close proximity is another matter altogether.

Yes there is in the current Water Corporation system required to meet the planned demands. It will have excess demand for water by about 2012 from the current Water Corp supplies, thats why they are investigating new sources of water under the Royality for regions process.

 

[1jasonoz]

Mine de-watering.

Huh?

 

[Frodo]

The problem is lack of infrastructure. The population should not be fiscally punished because of bad past governments.

 

[Scotland]

Huh?

Discharged water from a BWT orebody.

 

[1jasonoz]

Discharged water from a BWT orebody.

Yeh i know what it is, i was just wondering how it is going to be used to supply the water demands in the Pilbara region past 2012 for industry and residential?

There are much cheaper alternatives to water supply in the Pilbara region, like piping some of the 11Billion g/la of water from the Kimberly to the East Pilbara for use.

 

[bit_pattern]

I heard a piece on Radio National the other day where a scientist was pointing out the massive evaporation rates in the Kimberley can on some years completely negate the huge rainfall levels, making it an incredibly inefficient system.

 

[1jasonoz]

http://www.istp.murdoch.edu.au/ISTP/casestudies/Pilbara/environment/Water_Sustainability.html

Water Supply, Use, and Sustainability in the Pilbara

Ramon Gregory

Introduction

The area of the Pilbara in North Western West Australia is a major producer of primary resources. Petroleum and mining activities are the prime movers for current development. These industries use large amounts of water throughout their operations, usually for mine dewatering operations, treatment processes and process cooling, dust control, or for potable water supplies for conjunctive communities. Often, mine-dewatering wastewater is returned to downstream areas of the aquifer, or recycled during processing[1].



There are also many population centres, which require water for urban and industrial use. These are supplied via company or Water Corporation schemes.

Additionally, there are many less developed settlements in the Pilbara area: Aboriginal communities, where water is pumped from groundwater via dedicated schemes, or occasionally via town water supplies. Stations and grazing situations have not been considered, mostly due to lack of information.

Due to the scale of the Pilbara area, the associated infrastructure for gathering, treating, and distributing water supplies is inherently large and energy intensive. The aim of this section is to ascertain the sources of this water, and how it is procured, treated, and to a certain degree, how much is used.

 

[Scotland]

Yeh i know what it is, i was just wondering how it is going to be used to supply the water demands in the Pilbara region past 2012 for industry and residential?

There are much cheaper alternatives to water supply in the Pilbara region, like piping some of the 11Billion g/la of water from the Kimberly to the East Pilbara for use.

There are mines which will come on board post 2010 which each require hundreds of GL of water to be removed.

Surely if the region needs water and operations in the region are discharging massive amounts of water than there is a slim chance common sense will prevail?