Researching exactly what goes into our effluent has become his passion. Jones spends much of his time trawling the internet and reading books and says he has uncovered evidence proving waste water is too contaminated to recycle.

Most startling of his claims is that dangerous chemicals in our sewage will feminise men and shrink their genitals. The evidence can be found in overseas studies on the effects of synthetic hormones in polluted water that have shrunk alligator penises in Florida and affected reproduction in rainbow trout and carp in Wales and England, he claims.

Jones also believes there is a conspiracy between environment groups, government and the water industry to hide the truth from the public about the risks of recycled water.

"I am a licensed plumber and drainer and I know what goes into a sewer," says Jones, who says treated water should only be used to flush toilets but for no other domestic purpose, nor for agriculture, industry, or irrigation of sporting ovals. Not even for washing the car.

The Sunshine Coast plumber - who has no scientific or water treatment expertise - represents the extreme end of anti-recycling sentiment that has toppled more than one government's plans, both here and overseas, to supplement water sources with treated effluent.

According to water experts, people should ask questions about the safety of any treated effluent being injected back into a city or town's water system. They also say no major health risks have arisen from the use of recycled water overseas although that should not lead water authorities or governments to be complacent about treatment processes.

However, governments ignore the Joneses of the world at their peril. Their message that recycled water poses long-term health risks taps into our fears of contaminated water. Modern treatment systems are designed to remove contaminates, but for some people no amount of information about the safety of that process can overcome what academics call the yuk factor.

As the NSW Government's research revealed, the public's long-held resistance to using recycled water manifests as a "psychological barrier" thrown up by a feeling of disgust. Some people can't move beyond the mental image of raw sewage even when they know sewage is no longer present in the water that is produced by sophisticated treatment plants. For others there's a general sense that the water is "dirty" and could lead to illness and disease, according to work done last year by the Australian Water Association and the CSIRO.

It doesn't help when politicians, both for and against recycling water, confuse the debate by suggesting people will be drinking human waste.

"Surely we have to accept we have to drink our own excrement," was how Chris Harris, a Sydney City councillor and a member of the NSW Greens, phrased it at a recent council meeting convened to discuss Sydney's water shortage.

Governments only need look at Jones's track record to realise the yuk factor is alive and well in Australia.

Over the past decade the plumber from Buddina has helped scuttle plans by three Queensland councils to recycle water. Now he has his sights set on Toowoomba, where he has rallied residents to oppose the council's ambitious plans to serve up recycled water to its residents in the face of a dire water shortage.

It is an emotive issue that cannot be easily resolved by facts and figures, says the University of NSW's Associate Professor Greg Leslie, who has worked with Orange County in the US and the Singapore Government on water treatment plants.

"The water is safe," Leslie told the Sydney Morning Herald. "I would have no problems with my five-year-old drinking the water from the type of plant Toowoomba is proposing."

Leslie, who, along with other water experts, has been helping Toowoomba Council with its water treatment proposal, says the chances of becoming ill from water recycled to drinking level standards is minuscule.

"You have more chance of being struck by lightning or of winning the lottery," he says, adding that no government authority enters into the issue lightly.

"What we are dealing with is a cultural conditioning that has been traced back to every anthropological group to separate your waste from your clean food and water.

"We teach our children to wash their hands after they go to the toilet. It has been programmed into us by our parents and we did it because it was a way of keeping us healthy," he says.

However, the truth, he says, is that modern treatment processes remove so much material from effluent that it can no longer be identified as waste water.

The deputy director for the Centre for Water and Waste Technology at NSW University, Professor Nick Ashbolt, says it is reasonable to raise concerns about treated water but points out some Australians already drink recycled water.

In NSW, for example, tertiary treated effluent from nine Sydney Water treatment plants is discharged into the Hawkesbury-Nepean river system, upstream of the North Richmond water filtration plant.

The plant treats up to 50 megalitres of water a day from the river that is used by people in the Hawkesbury region including Windsor and Richmond and towards the Blue Mountains as far as Kurrajong.

"Despite concerns about gender bending [from chemicals in water] there is no evidence of that being associated with what people are drinking," says Ashbolt. "It is easy to be alarmist and to raise these concerns."

A senior research scientist and microbiologist with the CSIRO's land and water division, Dr Simon Toze, agrees.

His own searches of international literature on water re-use found no evidence people became sick from using water from properly controlled treatment plants. Exhaustive epidemiological studies done in four countries where recycled water is drunk have found no risk of infection from pathogens.

"You have a better chance of catching an infection from a day-care centre or a swimming pool than from a properly controlled and properly run reclaimed water system," he says.

Toze says many of the studies about the lack of social acceptance of recycled water show the public's decision comes down to trust.

"I know the technology works but I have to prove to people that it can work. The worst thing that could happen is if we ask people to let us prove to them it works, that they won't let us run a pilot project."

That trust was sorely tested in the late 1990s when a potentially lethal parasite, Cryptosporidium parvum, invaded Sydney's dams and water pipes.

For weeks, the city's residents were forced to boil their water although there was no evidence of anyone getting sick, which aroused suspicion about false test readings.

Disputes between Sydney Water and the state health department about what to tell the public, and secret contracts between the water authority and the then operators of the Prospect water treatment plant, raised questions about whether money and power were being put ahead of public safety.

Which leads us back to Toowoomba.

A local resident and past president of the Toowoomba chamber of commerce, Rosemary Morley, is angry the council has not consulted locals about its water recycling plans.

So convinced was she by Jones that such a plan would put people at risk, she set up a local branch of Citizens Against Drinking Sewage and invited him to speak at a public meeting.

No Toowoomba councillors, council staff or independent water experts were invited to address the estimated 500 people who turned up to the Centenary Heights school hall.

Asked why she places so much trust in a man with no technical or academic expertise in water treatment, or recycling, Morley says Jones is an "ordinary man" just like Toowoomba residents.

"We are ordinary people and if you can't convince us it will be safe...we are not prepared to make a mistake," says Morley, who adds she is not concerned enough about the water shortage to go down the water recycling track. Nor does she trust assurances from scientists.

"There is a big leap of faith to be made," says Morley. "People are in the grip of hysteria...We have a right to be sceptical...people are not prepared to pay the price."