Australian water murder

Mayabird · Post by **Mayabird** » 2007-11-02 03:51pm

At least it's not murder for a drink of water...yet.

Suburban murder over water shocks Australia

From the outback to the cities death stalks Australia as the drought bites harder with each passing month.
by Staff Writers
Sydney (AFP) Nov 1, 2007
Drought-stricken Australia has been shocked by the killing of a pensioner in an argument over suburban water restrictions as he hosed his lawn.

A 36-year-old man, Todd Munter of the south Sydney suburb of Sylvania, appeared in court Thursday on a charge of murdering Kenneth Proctor, 66, who lived in the same suburb.

Police allege an argument about water restrictions erupted as Munter walked past Proctor's home on Wednesday afternoon and the pensioner turned the hose on the younger man, soaking him with water.

Munter is then alleged to have punched Proctor in the head and knocked him to the ground before kicking him. The older man suffered a massive heart attack and died a short time later in hospital.

Stunned neighbours and colleagues described Proctor as a popular and helpful family man.

"Everyone in the neighbourhood is shocked," Bruce Buscombe told Seven Network television. "We're all good friends. We all do everything to help each other. We just can't believe it."

In court, Munter appeared distraught and close to tears as he sat in the dock, supported by at least six members of his family including his elderly parents, the national AAP news agency reported.

He did not apply for bail and was remanded in custody until November 15.

A Sydney Water spokesman said that if the time stated in the police report was correct, the dead man had not been violating water restrictions.

The restrictions, enforced as the country suffers the worst drought in living memory, allow residents to water their lawns and gardens with hand-held hoses before 10.00am and after 4.00pm on Wednesdays and Sundays.

The water restrictions are highly publicised, with members of the public encouraged to report neighbours who break the rules and council rangers patrolling streets in Sydney with the power to levy on-the-spot fines.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2007-11-02 03:53pm

Don't worry. We'll build desalination plants that are solar or nuclear powered when it gets really bad. Carry on, nothing to see here, move along.

Einhander Sn0m4n · Post by **Einhander Sn0m4n** » 2007-11-02 03:56pm

Yes, let's keep hugging our magic Someone-Else's-Problem teddy bears. It'll alll beee ooookaaaayyyy...

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2007-11-02 04:16pm

Water is something that can be dealt with on a region by region basis, its global problem but it cannot have a global solution because it’s just not practical to ship clean water long distances.

Kanastrous · Post by **Kanastrous** » 2007-11-02 04:35pm

Although distributing the necessary technology, suited to each region that needs it, would make for a laudable global project.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2007-11-02 05:08pm

Or the technological expertise...or the finances...to say there's no global role is ignorant.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-11-02 07:40pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:Don't worry. We'll build desalination plants that are solar or nuclear powered when it gets really bad. Carry on, nothing to see here, move along.

Public so ignorant the resist both major desalinisation efforts *and* reuse of treated waste water? GO AUSSIE GO!

When they all die, it'll be their own stupid fault, and people in Brisbane will say 'how could anyone possibly have known this would happen, where'd all the water go'.

Kanastrous · Post by **Kanastrous** » 2007-11-02 07:46pm

Stark wrote:When they all die, it'll be their own stupid fault,

And the Aborigines get their land back.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2007-11-02 07:51pm

ok, when are you guys deploying the sentient tanks or the genetically engineered Roos.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-11-02 08:26pm

Kanastrous wrote: And the Aborigines get their land back.

And then suffer a major dieback. Being 'aboriginal' doesn't give '+5 desert survival' if you were born and raised in the welfare state. Given their overall lower health levels they'd probably die first. No karmic justice, I'm afraid.

The real comedy for me is that this problem has been obvious for almost a decade, and yet bogan idiots resist EVERY option to mitigate it. These same people will be shocked and amazed when it gets worse, and wave their fists and say SOMETHING SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE. I fucking hate hypocrites.

Clearly the Kiwi's need to get back into the towing icebergs industry.

Kanastrous · Post by **Kanastrous** » 2007-11-02 08:34pm

Stark wrote:
Kanastrous wrote: And the Aborigines get their land back.
And then suffer a major dieback. Being 'aboriginal' doesn't give '+5 desert survival' if you were born and raised in the welfare state. Given their overall lower health levels they'd probably die first. No karmic justice, I'm afraid.

Pity. I guess I enjoyed The Last Wave a little too much.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2007-11-02 08:34pm

Australia has had some major droughts for years now, only this year it's coming to a criticality which is affecting grain and fruit harvests. If the farmers can't even grow enough food to feed themselves, then exports are dead and so is a major source of income for them. I hear they've had to import basic foodstuffs for the second time since the colony was formed.

If only people weren't so short sighted and NIMBYish, what with their "ZOMG!!1 Powerplants are BAD and UGLY!" and their laughable ideas that being surrounded by water means it's A-OK to use as much as you want ("But it rains in England all the time, so fuck the hose-pipe ban. God puts water in the ground for my drinking and ceremonial Sunday washing of my Ford Mondeo"), for it is your right. If they cared half as much about these issues as they did celebrity worship and had half a clue even, then no one on Earth in the First World would be facing what Third Worlders have to.

Post by **weemadando** » 2007-11-02 11:51pm

Its a goddamn retarded situation in Australia.

We have a horrible public mindset that anything other than "natural" water is no good. Any recycling or desalination concepts are shouted down, because how will you get the poop out of the water, or guarantee that we won't get fish in our pipes!

Lowest. Common. Denominator. And the election is just pandering to it.

Kanastrous · Post by **Kanastrous** » 2007-11-02 11:59pm

We're no better, over here.

For whatever that's worth.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-11-02 11:59pm

The lamest part is that even politicians are retarded, like that woman who refused to drink recycled water, even though it's chemically exactly the same as the treated shit you get out of a dam.

It's great talking to these people, though. They say 'lol it's dirty', but they believe there is some magic which cleans dam water (that has shit LIVING IN IT) that obviously can't work on human shit.

Because there's new water right? Water that human shit has never been in? Clearly, homeopathy is right and the water 'remembers' the shit!

So let's all fucking die instead.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2007-11-03 02:14am

So how long before they will be buying bottled water for everything that's just treated recycled water....

Chris OFarrell · Post by **Chris OFarrell** » 2007-11-03 02:57am

If I had my way, I'd order the Desalination plant full speed ahead, albeit mostly as a proof of concept to get all the bugs out of it and design it for mass production, get economies of scale going.

Then plonk at least one in every major city, while systematically rigging all the urban centres for large scale water recycling (FFS we invented a huge amount of modern water purification technology!) and to HELL with the fucking bogan morons.

I mean they don't want the desalination plant cause its EVIL for some reason. They don't want to even HEAR the word 'recycling' because they are aghast at the idea of drinking water that used to be waste water (fucktards, the Earth is effectively a CLOSED SYSTEM FOR WATER, where do you think 'natural water' comes from?).

All the while they watch Dam levels keep dropping and demand SOMETHING be done about it....unless that 'something' involves doing something other then making more rain fall magically from the sky....

Walsh · Post by **Walsh** » 2007-11-03 04:05am

It's a bizarre situation, at the moment people on the SE coast of New South Wales are drinking treated water sourced from here:

But for some reason, treated sewage is "icky". Fucking unbelievable.

tim31 · Post by **tim31** » 2007-11-03 08:55am

weemadando wrote:Its a goddamn retarded situation in Australia.

We have a horrible public mindset that anything other than "natural" water is no good. Any recycling or desalination concepts are shouted down, because how will you get the poop out of the water, or guarantee that we won't get fish in our pipes!

Lowest. Common. Denominator. And the election is just pandering to it.

Cracks me up when you consider how good the tap water is down here compared to the stuff that comes out of the pipes in other Australian cities(Adelaide tapwater can be described for taste as 'geological'); everyone's already drinking chemically treated water, how can they nitpick??

Tsyroc · Post by **Tsyroc** » 2007-11-03 09:04am

Stark wrote: Public so ignorant the resist both major desalinisation efforts *and* reuse of treated waste water? GO AUSSIE GO!

When they all die, it'll be their own stupid fault, and people in Brisbane will say 'how could anyone possibly have known this would happen, where'd all the water go'.

The stupidity isn't all in Australia. We currently have a proposition on the ballot to make it illegal to use recycled water in our drinking water. Never mind that the absurd restrictions of the proposition would likely prevent using even treated Colorado River water that we recieve an allotment of through the Central Arizona Project (CAP) which diverts water from the Colorado river and transports it via canal all the way down here.

It really fucking pisses me off dealing with people here who have no concept about water usuage anywhere else. In general people are comparitively very good about conserving water but they get all wiggy about anything that isn't pristine water from some deep ass well. It never crosses there minds that the vast majority of the country drinks treated water from rivers, lakes and reservoirs. The old joke about people downstream drinking the piss of those upstream comes to mind.

That's just the way things fucking are with water.

thejester · Post by **thejester** » 2007-11-03 07:04pm

Chris OFarrell wrote:If I had my way, I'd order the Desalination plant full speed ahead, albeit mostly as a proof of concept to get all the bugs out of it and design it for mass production, get economies of scale going.

Then plonk at least one in every major city, while systematically rigging all the urban centres for large scale water recycling (FFS we invented a huge amount of modern water purification technology!) and to HELL with the fucking bogan morons.

No offence guys, but I think rather than screaming your head off about ignorant bogans blah blah blah, you might want to actually update yourself on the situation. The desalination plant is going ahead full speed, but even then:

Located at Kwinana, some 25km south of the city, the new plant has an initial daily capacity of 140,000m³ with designed expansion to 250,000m³/day, making it the largest of its kind in the southern hemisphere and the biggest in the world to be powered by renewable energy. Ultimately supplying 17% of Perth’s needs, the plant will be the largest single contributor to the area’s integrated water supply scheme and provide an annual 45GL, to help serve the 1.5 million population.

It's the biggest plant in the Southern Hemisphere and it can only supply 17% of the water needed for a population of 1.5 million. The one being built in Sydney will be bigger but deliver just 15%. Meanwhile AFAIK one can't be built to service Melbourne because of the effect on the Bay. Desalination is part of the answer, and recycled water should be used in country areas (fuck, like you could tell with some of the water we drink anyway), but in major metropolitan areas it shouldn't be needed. This guy was watering his lawn, legally. Wtf? Here's an idea, put in some cooch and stfu. Meanwhile ultra-water-intensive crops such as cotton continued to be grown with water from the Darling, with massive knock-on effects for the rest of the country. At the moment treating sewerage is the least of our concerns, it's the basic ideas of what we think we should be able to use water for that's the problem.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2007-11-03 07:58pm

And we run smack into the problem that "We'll simply Manhattan Project our way to VICTOLY!!1!" is not feasible for all places. You simply cannot magick money, workers and energy for such vast projects which should have been started decades ago. Even the US cannot hope to sort out its water problems with anything short of an Apollo programme in desalination of aquifer replenishment.

At least Australia, unlike the US, has a reasonable modern infrastructure. The engineering reports on the US' are scary.

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2007-11-04 03:39am

Stark wrote:
Kanastrous wrote: And the Aborigines get their land back.
And then suffer a major dieback. Being 'aboriginal' doesn't give '+5 desert survival' if you were born and raised in the welfare state. Given their overall lower health levels they'd probably die first. No karmic justice, I'm afraid.

The real comedy for me is that this problem has been obvious for almost a decade, and yet bogan idiots resist EVERY option to mitigate it. These same people will be shocked and amazed when it gets worse, and wave their fists and say SOMETHING SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE. I fucking hate hypocrites.

Clearly the Kiwi's need to get back into the towing icebergs industry.

We sent an iceberg your way not too long ago. Not sure if it ever arrived, they don't tend to like tropical waters much.

Unfortunately we don't have any practical solutions for you guys at the moment. I only hope people in our own government are paying attention, we're doing pretty well for water at the moment but I would like to know what steps the powers that be are taking to make sure it stays that way.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2007-11-04 03:50am

Remind me to never use the tap in Australia.

Fingolfin_Noldor · Post by **Fingolfin_Noldor** » 2007-11-04 04:23am

DPDarkPrimus wrote:Remind me to never use the tap in Australia.

Erm, with the right amount of filtration and membranes, that water can be made 100% pure.

And it can be done.

weemadando wrote:Its a goddamn retarded situation in Australia.

We have a horrible public mindset that anything other than "natural" water is no good. Any recycling or desalination concepts are shouted down, because how will you get the poop out of the water, or guarantee that we won't get fish in our pipes!

Lowest. Common. Denominator. And the election is just pandering to it.

I wonder what they would say about Singapore's Newater.