Most water recycling works by catching what you do not want. Filters and membranes hold the unwanted things back, which leaves you with clean water on one side and a concentrated mess on the other, still to be dealt with. Troy Warry, a water treatment scientist, went the other way. His system uses a titanium dioxide catalyst that stays put rather than being used up, and under it the contaminants simply come apart: pesticides, petroleum residues, pharmaceutical traces, antibiotics, hormones, the persistent things that usually survive everything. Nothing is left concentrated because nothing was collected in the first place. Running it takes sixteen times less energy than the systems it replaces, and it was trialled across three European countries before it came home.

Now it stands beside the sewage treatment plant at Dubbo in central New South Wales, an Australian first, built for 7.8 million dollars and able to handle 700 megalitres a year. Dubbo Regional Council went in with Squadron Energy, which contributed 3.6 million, and the recycled water goes to work so that the town's drinking supply is left alone. Mayor Josh Black puts the point better than any brochure could: it means Dubbo will not have to choose between drought and development. Professor Stuart Khan, who heads civil engineering at the University of Sydney, watched it come together. For a country town in a dry part of a dry continent, this is the quiet kind of progress that changes what is possible, and it is running now, not one day.

Our short take: the full story is by Catherine James for ABC Western Plains (12 September 2026). Photograph: to be chosen, three options on the photo page. Read the full story: Australian first water recycling technology goes live in regional NSW, by Catherine James, ABC News | https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-12/nsw-regs-dubbo-wastewater/107134970