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Comment by sytringy05 | Hacker News Reader

This is how you do a real drought - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000s_Australian_drought

Basically 10 years of below average rainfall. Melbourne's water storages got down to about 25% at one point and I seem to recall you basically can't use the last 20%.

There were terrible bushfires in 2002, 2006 and 2009 and farmers needed a fair bit of relief from the government but life went on (with water restrictions).

The worst part of the drought was the Victorian government decided to build one of the worlds biggest desal plants (will cost the state about $30b over its lifetime), which was delayed in being finished because the drought broke.

They have not used any water from it.

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I just looked it up.

Cost of the plant was around $4 billion and the 30 year operating costs are apparently around $1.5 billion.

It was only finished in 2012 and so far it has not been required to be used.

Over the course of the drought the government handed out $4.5 billion in drought assistance to farmers and the economy overall had over $5 billion in losses per year. 2002-2003 alone cost $6.6 billion.

To be honest, this looks like a good insurance plan. Australia should build more of them.

The Victorian desal is a bit more expensive to the taxpayers than that to the tune of $24B, but has been embroiled in financial problems mostly due to the dodgy tender process.

http://www.theage.com.au/environment/water-issues/desalinati...

Sydney also has a desalinisation plant. Like Victoria, the NSW government copped flak for building this as the drought broke as it finished. Personally I think the detractors are very short sighted. They seem to forget how our dam was almost empty despite heavy water usage restrictions. Running out of water is simply not an option for a major city so it seems pretty handy to have this backup IMO even if it isn't used for 50+ years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Desalination_Plant

A desal plant in Australia is a good idea because it is an arid continent and is prone to drought. The biggest desal plant in the world was not a good idea. It was not required at the time and probably wont be required for another 20 years, especially given how well water restrictions worked during the drought.

Over-building on infrastructure is almost as bad as not building it at all. And as someone else pointed out this particular project was beset by dodgy builders, unions drinking at the trough and grandstanding politicians who wanted to be seen doing "something". All up, massive waste of money.

Fair enough. I must say from looking into it more that there seems to be an absurdly wide range of cost estimates being quoted, as well as a lot of mixing up of prices and costs, so the figures I quoted are probably bullshit.

Edit - I am not sure I agree with you about overbuilding on infrastructure though. A good example of this is the London sewer system by Joseph Bazalgette, that was massively overbuilt to the tune of twice the maximum requirement from what was considered the highest possible population density, just in case. Which was very lucky, given the development of the towerblock 100 years later.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Bazalgette

Years of lower than average rainfall have made this a necessity in WA.

We've now got two desal plants here that currently provide 27% of our supply. The supply drawn from dams now only makes up 33% of the total.

The plan is to transition to a 50/50 mix of desalination and underground sources (with groundwater replenishment) by 2030.

I'm reminded of Hong Kong, which has dual plumbing - fresh water for drinking, cooking and washing, and salt water for the toilet. I understand most of Hong Kong's fresh water is piped from the mainland (and has been done for decades).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_...

Aside from it stinging if it gets in your eyes, is there a reason why one couldn't use saline water for showers?

Either way, I would suspect the dual plumbing required to pull off a setup like that would be horrifically expensive.

> there a reason why one couldn't use saline water for showers?

Yes. Water sent to a municipal sewer is usually recycled by sending it downriver to the next city. If you used salt water you couldn't do that.

Even the last city on the river before the ocean can recycle their sewer water for farming (although I'm not sure they do).

And with a septic system salt water would severely harm the septic system, and the land around it.

For the most part it's really hard for a regular home user with a sewer system to waste water. Water is "used up" mainly for watering plants (either residential or farming).

Or if you have a septic system.

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