Maureen Francis
The NSW Labor government's planned $2 billion water desalination plant in Sydney's eastern suburbs has produced an interesting group of opponents.
The state Liberal opposition may perhaps be discounted: they see it as their duty to oppose everything the government proposes. But the state Liberals are joined in their opposition by NSW Greens MLC Sylvia Hale and environment groups such as the Central Coast Community Environment Network. Predictably, Malcolm Turnbull, the federal Liberal member for Wentworth, has expressed his opposition, but there has been a deafening silence so far from Peter Garrett, the federal Labor member for Kingsford Smith, the electorate in which it is proposed to locate the desalination plant.
The desalination plant proposal raises a big question: what water problem are we trying to address? Sydney's current water management strategy seems to be based on seeking more water while ignoring the urgent need to make better use of the water we have.
Critics say that a desalination plant is not the solution to Sydney's water crisis. Hale, the Greens infrastructure spokesperson, said: "Water recycling and stormwater harvesting are cheaper, more energy efficient and far easier to purify than salty sea water."
The government claims that recycling is too expensive because it would require "17,000 kilometres of piping" to put recycled water into every home. But the great advantage of recycling is that it can be introduced into one community at a time, and each introduction produces immediate water savings. With desalination we get no gains until the plant is online.
Sydney's beach-side suburbs send much of their stormwater directly into the ocean, polluting the beaches after every rainfall. Lots more stormwater makes its way into the sewerage system, causing huge flow fluctuations into sewage treatment plants. Surely making use of stormwater is a necessity given the falling average rainfall. Stormwater is, after all, the same rain that fills our dams.
Another element of a new water strategy for Sydney should be re-examining our sewage management. Despite media stunts implying otherwise, the drinking of water recycled from sewage was never envisaged by any proponent of recycling. But using drinking water to flush the loo was never a smart idea and, given climate changes, is a foolishness we can no longer afford.
Recently on ABC TV's New Inventors program a gadget that prevents waste while waiting for the hot water tap to run hot was demonstrated. We need all the gadgets we can think of to save, re-use and manage household water, just as farmers are now managing agricultural water better.
Sydney's water problems are not fundamentally caused by drought. The climate changes accompanying the present phase of global warming are affecting all of Australia's southern cities, which have experienced long-term falling average rainfall. Our greed for energy has led to global warming, yet both the NSW and Western Australian governments are turning to the most energy hungry solution — desalination!
If we can afford to even consider spending $2 billion on a fossil-fuel driven desalination plant, we should at least work out how much water we could save by spending that amount on recycling and reusing.
From Green Left Weekly, August 3, 2005.
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