A Boorowa farm has been the catalyst for a big idea in the water industry.
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John Bradley has developed a small scale water treatment plant for on-farm water after visiting his son-in-law Ryan Simpson’s farm in Boorowa.
“When I looked around I couldn’t see anybody building small economical water treatment plants, if you go to build a municipal water treatment plant they start at a few million dollars and go up to hundreds of millions of dollars,” he said.
“And a farmer can’t afford that but they can afford it when it’s in the thousands.
“What happens when a farmer runs out of roof water, what do they do? Or if they have an animal that’s a bit sick what do they do for clean water, with my plants if they want to, they can provide all their stock with clean water.
“If you chose to clean your own water you can provide your own water at about less then a tenth of the price of town water,” he said.
Mr Bradley said the clean water his plants provided could help increase the weight of a farmers stock by 20 per cent.
“If you want to provide clean water for your stock, you have a much better return and should see an increase of around 20 per cent in stock weight.
“A lot of American and Canadian studies have found that with adolescent animals, which are worthwhile to the farmer, you get at least 15 to 28 per cent of growth with clean water.
“A small plant can produce 2000 litres per day and can be manual or 240 volt, or a bigger plant that can produce 10,000 litres a day up to 100,000 litres a day.
“At those rates, the figures are, after paying for your water treatment and the plant a farmer who sells, say steers and heifers, should be able to recover at least $200 extra per head per annum,” he said.