Aussie water bills to spiral thanks to desalination plants

HOUSEHOLDS will pay hundreds of dollars extra for water as state governments splash $9 billion of taxpayer funds on energy-guzzling desalination plants that will produce nearly a third of capital-city supplies within two years. The seawater purification "factories" - which can pump out enough drinking water each year to fill Sydney Harbour - will operate around the clock at taxpayer expense, even when high rainfall means their expensive output is not required. SOURCE for full article Via Greenie Watch Again, I suspect that we are seeing politicised "science" spooking politicians and bureaucrats into bad policy choices. Maybe not here in Western Australia. Our average rainfall does indeed seem to be declining and has been for thirty or more years. But elsewhere I'm still not convinced that we are not mistaking natural variability as long term trends produced by climate change. But of course, this is the problem when people decide to jump on a bandwagon. However, by the time people start to realise that maybe they jumped too soon, (and I think that is starting to happen now), it will be too late. So much money will have been spent on such projects and it will be impossible not to use, no matter how expensive. Not saying that as our population rises such plants wont be necessary, and I suppose you can say that at least they are there to cater for this, but I still reckon we could have done much more to use water more effectively and reuse and recycle it more completely.

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