Just before new year, i was listening to the heaviest rain i’d heard in melbourne for years. Such a delicious sound. i revelled in the delights of pounding water.

But of course, most of that water was going down many drains into the bay, because we don’t have a huge embedded system to catch, keep and recycle storm water.

The smart guys at the top of town want to throw billions of dollars at private companies, to build a desalination plant which is going to use coal-fired electricity, add pollution and greenhouse gases, and line the pockets of those private investors for years to come

.. when research shows you’re so much better off catching what falls out of the sky.

(um, evidence, michael? Well, Bob Brown and the Greens say so. Average households receive 8 times the water they consume, apparently.)

Here’s Bob talking to a rally against desalination.

Bill Mollison once said that all the solutions are there already. It’s just the political will, and getting past the stakeholders.

One of my dreams for ’08 is that the people of Victoria will demand intelligently innovative, sensible and truly sustainable solutions to the water crises, and that we’ll be rewarded with the best new system in the world.

And i reckon that means we collect and recycle storm water.

Oh look, here’s a bunch of sane and clear-thinking locals investigating the whole DeSal/PPP setup (or maybe they’re commie free radicals?). Apparently we pay for the desalinated water even if it turns out we don’t need it.

(The weirdest thing .. the herald sun editorial agreed with me.)