Coalition & Labor Both Get it Wrong on Water

As usual the Coalition  and Labor have both got it wrong on the water issue.

We don't need a desalination plant and we don't need recycled water. Both of these take enormous amounts of electricity,  and we will go on paying for them for ever.

For the same result and initial cost we could  give every house in Sydney rainwater tanks.

Assuming there are 1,000,000 houses in Sydney, and each has 100 square metres of roof, if all the rain that fell on the roof was collected, Sydney's annual rainfall being 1.2 metres, the roofs  would collect 120 cubic metres of water per house which is  120,000 litres and 120,000,000,000 litres a year from 1,000,000 roofs.   This is disregarding the water-harvesting capacity of all public and commercial buildings.

The desal plant produces 125,000,000 litres a day or 45,625,000,000 litres a year, less than half of this.

Allowing $2000 for each house as a cost of installing the tanks this amounts to $2bn, about the same as the desalination plant.

But unlike the desalination plant, once a rainwater tank is in place, apart from minor maintenance or the cost of running a pump, there is nothing more to pay.

Of course, no matter what the greenies might tell us, there are still plenty of  rivers we could dam anyway.

New South Wales voters should ask what's in it for the major parties to foist on us such uneconomic and ill-advised options.

For more information on One Nation Water Policy. Click here