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Melbourne's water
storages are currently at:
34.4%
breakdown by reservoir
(you can click on each reservoir
for more information)
Thomson: 21.4%
Cardinia: 34.4%
Upper Yarra: 65.8%
Sugarloaf: 60.0%
Silvan: 86.9%
Tarago: 57.5%
Yan Yean: 29.9%
Greenvale: 72.5%
Maroondah: 86.6%
O'Shannassy: 75.7%
toilet to market gardens
From the toilet
When you flush your toilet, a whole lot of clean water pushes the waste out through an S-shaped pipe, and into another pipe that is deep under the ground.
The S-shaped pipe stops any dirty water coming back into your toilet. It also holds the clean water in the bottom of the toilet bowl, and this stops nasty smells coming into the room from the pipes below.
From toilet to market garden
Travelling through sewerage pipes
The dirty water - or sewage - you have flushed down the toilet runs into a much bigger pipe under the street outside your home. This pipe is called a main sewer. It has been built so that it slopes very gently downwards away from your house. It keeps going gently down, so that gravity keeps the sewage flowing.
But it can't keep going down forever, so at different points the water is pumped upwards - still in a big pipe - and then it starts another long gentle slope downwards. All along the way it is joined by more sewage from other people's homes and businesses, so after a while it needs to be transferred to an even bigger pipe.
This bigger pipe is called a trunk sewer. A trunk sewer is so big that you could easily drive a car inside it. Finally the sewage arrives at one of Melbourne's two big sewage treatment plants.
At the sewage treatment plant
The Western Treatment Plant treats sewage mostly from Melbourne's central, northern and western suburbs. The Eastern Treatment Plant treats sewage mostly from Melbourne's eastern and southern suburbs.
It can take as long as 12 hours for sewage to reach the treatment plants.