Australia

Australian town bans bottled water sales
Residents of a rural Australian town hoping to protect the earth and their wallets have voted to ban the sale of bottled water. Residents of Bundanoon cheered after their near-unanimous approval of the measure at a town meeting Wednesday. It was the second blow to Australia's beverage industry in one day: Hours earlier, the New South Wales state premier banned all state departments and agencies from buying bottled water, calling it a waste of money and natural resources.

Boil-Water Alerts in Australia's Largest Metropolis
2/14/2003 - For two months in 1998, more than 3 million residents of Sydney were forced to boil their drinking water to kill parasites. While blame for the contamination was never established, a government-commissioned probe showed that a private water company's operational practices had risked the safety of the water supply, and critics accused the company of cost-cutting. Both claims were denied by the company, Australian Water Services, a consortium of the French utility Suez and Australian real esta... 

The Big Pong Down Under
Fifteen months after Adelaide signed a contract turning over its waterworks to a private consortium controlled by Thames Water and Vivendi, the city was engulfed in a powerful sewage smell, which became known as “the big pong.’’