A way we can store water so that water supplies will not be stressed during hot dry periods Urban water usage research: Australia is a dry continent and urban communities use a lot of the available water. CSIRO has been working on an urban water program. The objective is to find out how much water use is costing the environment and what are the opportunities to improve its use. Mike Young from CSIRO Land and Water believes we take water for granted. Mike Young: "Something which we all see: we turn on a tap let it flow out without thinking through what happens when we do. Important things like think about how wide a street should be. If you have a wide street out going past your house you have a lot more run-off and that run-off flows actually though changes all of the ground-water systems and can cause lots of pollution. Changing the way these streets are laid out, the way they're designed can bring about some pretty important improvements in water use." Question: "Should we be looking at alternatives to centralised treatment systems?" Mike Young: "A lovely example of the alternative approach is in South Australia and Adelaide at Morthorn Lakes where the community is moving towards a system where every house has actually two pipes coming in. One is the fresh water that is being treated in the normal way. The second is recycled water. And the quality of that is very very good. It can be used for flushing toilets, for watering gardens, and a lot of the things that we normally pay a lot to get clean water for. Changing the way we think about water and how we actually use it is an important step forward. We don't have a lot of it in Australia. And as we've said in the past we are taking it for granted and we shouldn't." Question: "Does storm water have an economic value?" Mike Young: "The economic side of which, which actually fascinates me, is that people in the past thought the storm water wasn't a useful resource. And suddenly people are finding that it has actually value and they're starting to hold it and claim it as theirs. With tradeable water taken into the equation and with high water prices ariving, people are starting to argue over who actually owns the storm water and that is a fascinating debate. You can imagine the local council saying: 'it's ours' and the sewerage treatment authority saying: 'no, it's ours'. There's a lot of detail been actually sorted out in law as well as in the environmental management bill. A fascinating area. And that was Mike Young from CSIRO Land and Water. For more information on that story call the CSIRO on 1300 363 400.