South-east Queensland eyes with alarm the receding water levels in its major dams. As it does so, increasing attention has focused on one reliable water source, in fact the only source that increases with escalating population...... recycled water.

Premier Beattie has just announced that the situation is so dire that he has no choice but to scrap the proposed March referendum and press ahead with plans for water recycling.

While the technology to treat wastewater back to potable standard is not new, the water industry in Australia has long adopted the paradigm that the public won't accept recycled water as part of its drinking supply. The first test of this assumption came in Toowoomba last July. Although the recycling option was defeated, it nonetheless garnered a far greater level of support than initially predicted. It has only grown since then.

Moreover Brisbane's Courier Mail weighed heartily into the debate with stance strongly supportive of recycling. In the lead-up to the Toowoomba poll, its editorial revealed that EPA maps and figures showed that some 1 in 4 Queenslanders were effectively already drinking recycled water, or, rather, inadvertently recycled water. This is water that has been through a wastewater treatment plant before being released into a waterway, only to be taken in further downstream as supply for another locality. The irony is that the quality of recycled water proposed for re-use in Toowoomba was considerably higher than anything currently released from wastewater plants.

A recent article by Courier Mail water writer Tuck Thompson ['It's a farce' CM Jan 27] examined the absurdity of conducting the planned March referendum given that circumstances may necessitate recycling anyway, regardless of referendum results. Beattie's announcement could easily have been in response to this, or to the chorus of similar sentiments from local authorities. A 78% percent support rate cited by The Sunday Mail may also have assisted his decision.

In discussing attitudes to recycled water, mention is often made of the "yuk " factor, something obviously heightened by the insistence of some to refer to recycled water as "recycled sewage". The suggestion is that existing water sources, by contrast, are natural and of high quality, two assumptions that are woefully wide of the mark. Apart from the previously described prevalence of inadvertent recycling, waterways and dams are frequently contaminated by animals, by agricultural practices and other human activity. Despite this, there is a high level of public trust in water supplied by local authorities. This is not due to the quality of the water source but rather to the effective operation of water treatment plants.

The accompanying photographs are not intended to cause alarm among water users but rather to provide a visual challenge to any assumptions of purity of our raw water sources. They also underscore the public's confidence in drinking-water treatment plants, a confidence which should plainly be extended to the operation of recycling plants.