Thank you Brandon7 and others for commenting on this subject. Speaking of "black plastic", Oregonwoodsmoke, it is even worse material to use, in my opinion. Over years, it tends to become semi-disintegrated, so if you pull it, it falls into pieces. Oh, it was such a mess, such un-sighting! We gardeners like to dig around, try around, move things around from time to time, and it was such a sinking feeling to put a forceful dig into the ground and felt a sturdy fabric underneath it. Basically, we are tangling the unnutrual material with the natural soil, and that makes it very un-natural to gardening with it even if it works somewhat. But I think I had said enough on this point.

Ameriprise - the company I work for - builds a house for a Habitat family every year. I didn't work on the house this year but at the dedication I brought six pots of pink coneflowers. The family is from Ethiopia. They were thrilled to get them for the side of the house.

Daniel, We are in Brisbane in the same area as you and have had an onsite system for 12 years. The initial cost was about $8k. We chose an Envirotech aerobic sand filter system. Over that time we have had to replace three pumps at a cost of approx. $560 each. We have had to have annual inspections at a cost of approx $120 pa for the last 8 years. We now also have to supply chemists reports each year at an average cost of $160 pa. and this is for a system which was "state of art" We do not pay any sewerage rates (I dont know if others do) The system has been trouble free - just general maintenance when pumps wear out and we are glad we chose the one we did. I have heard from neighbours who are less than happy with the performance of some other systems. You do have to be careful of the cleaning products you use(not a problem - I am too busy gardening to get precious about cleaning) and when we installed BCC would not allow the water to be expelled above ground so could not move water to where it was needed,had to have in fixed contoured position (This may have changed) I was disappointed by this as the water goes to trees which no longer need it - so I am using water on plants that I would not normally water, and the water is not available to use in other areas on more needy plants. All in all I would say it is not a cheaper option - but you might get a warm feeling knowing that your sizeable expenditure has helped save valuable resources, and then you may not!!! $8000 will buy a few well sized tanks, but then BCC will probably bring in a levy for anyone with their own water storage. If I had the choice of connecting to the sewerage and with the water situation I would go for connection to the system and use the money saved to install tanks to harvest water. I like the idea of being nearly self sufficient with water and at least I could choose where I watered.

I had the misfortune to walk around Walmart Garden center today. I don't have anything against Walmart, I shop there regularly, I'm not ashamed of being seen there like some people are. Anyway, they had several of those movable racks loaded with brand new plants from the nursery, about half of the plants were dead or dying. The plants already in the display area the same situation, but about 1/4 of them were in that shape. So me being a plant and garden fan, I was just horrified to see all these wonderful plants being wasted like this. I spoke to the poor guy (only one person in the whole area and he was the cashier) and he said yes he realized the problem but the store was just understaffed. He said those new plants had been delivered 4 days ago and they were still sitting where they were left the day they came in because there wasn't anyone to take care of them. I asked him if there was any management in the store to talk to and he said yes but that he doubted that they could do anything because the corporate office ran staffing and hiring, etc. While we were talking a woman that I had noticed was out there came in, she was totally rude and irate, insisting that a manager be sent to her and that she was demanding to be able to buy these plants at a deep discount or all hell was to pay. When she went back out I told the guy, hey, I'm upset but I don't want to be spending money on dead or dying plants, either. So I went back into the customer service area and spoke to some kind of a lower-ranking manager and she said she was going to try to speak to someone higher up about it. Man, to see that waste is such a bummer. But it does no good to be rude to the underlings about stuff they can't do anything about.