Councils in Sydney,well in the North anyway,are doing it already Kincella.
A part of the infrastructure spend no doubt.
I know of 2 local main ovals that have dirty great holes in the middle atm with Stormwater tanks being installed.
So it is happening.
I have been looking to install tanks at the side of our house as we are in the northern Sydney storm belt and it wouldnt take too many of these occurences to fill a 5-10K tank system.
I notice that tanks have reduced in price as of late by around 25-30% as we come off the high demand that was initially created by some councils making it manditory to install such tanks.
One of the probs that western Sydney properties have is the space required on the small blocks being approved for building.With the Macmansions being built this leaves little space for a tank facility of more than 5K ltrs and to be realistic one must be looking at twice this for a decent amount of water for general use.So councils really need to look at being realistic as to where they stand in terms of such enviromental policy.
Do they want more rates coming in from greater housing density or do they want to be more environmentally sensitive by raising the minimum size building block or raising the ratio of unbuilt upon land on those blocks(and no doubt reducing rates) to enable such stormwater retention on individual properties.
The council region we live in has DA regulations that require installation of such a tank system and has much better land use ratios that the west of Sydney.The big problem being that there is a perception that Sydney is running out of buildable land and they are forcing councils,even in the Nth,to comply with medium density regulations.
They governments really need to look at both the water issue as well as the major infrastructure problem to the west of Sydney and may even be able to coordinate them to take advantage of the stormwater catchment that would exist in any rail infrstructure upgrade.
But then you need a viable NSW governemnt first!!!
