Written about in university publications and famous water books, including Blue Gold by Maude Barlow, the Medusa Corporation has been involved with global water transport for the past 20 years. The cost of building a fabric bag that carries potable water is a fraction of the cost of building a steel tanker. The bags are pulled by tug boat, and delivery of water over large distances is more economical than water from a desalination plant or transport by land, with far less environmental impact.

The inventor Barnes Wallis initiated the concept of large bag transportation in the 1930’s, but the first practical manifestation was the Dunlop Dracone, invented at Cambridge in 1958 by Sir William Hawthorne. These are still in use by US forces and NATO for moving oil. It is not a question of if, but when the Medusa Bag will provide a cost effective long-term solution to water shortages.

The Medusa Bag was conceived in 1988 to meet the anticipated requirement for large scale water imports to California as well as to Israel, Jordan and Palestine. Others at the time were looking into tanker conversions and pipelines, but no practical economic embodiment of these ideas was found. The bags size and shape have been optimised and the first prototype bag will be built using industrial polyester fabric and special straps. Patents over aspects of bag design and fabrication are owned by the Medusa Corporation and MH Waters. A bag containing 0.5 gigalitres of water would be 465 metres long and 110 metres wide, while a 1.5 gigalitre bag would be 670 metres long and 160 metres wide.

With MH Waters owning the worldwide license to develop the Medusa Bag, Australia has the opportunity to become the international leader in water transport technology. Currently the West Australian government is considering the technology to solve Perth’s long-term water supply problems using water from the Kimberley. The technology has equal applications on the east coast of Australia, where the transport distances are equally suited to towing the fresh water by sea.