Can recycled water be the 'next frontier' for towns running out of drinking water?

Southern Downs regional council mayor
Tracy Dobie on a marooned jetty at
the near-empty Storm King dam near
Stanthorpe in regional Queensland.

Right now, country towns in New South Wales and Queensland are heading for that fateful “day zero” where the supplies of drinking water end and the desperate contingency plans begin.

Pipelines are one solution and daily truck arrivals are another.

But unlike about 35 cities around the world, one thing none of those towns will be able to draw on will be drinking water recycled from local wastewater.

That option, used in parts of the United States since the 1960s, has been off the table thanks, say some water industry experts, to poor planning, politicisation and the legacy of a 2006 referendum in the rural Queensland town of Toowoomba.

Read the story from The Guardian by Graham Readfearn - “Can recycled water be the 'next frontier' for towns running out of drinking water?”