Amber, on 1 August you wrote;

“You might also like to know that if it had not been for the good management and future planning of previous councils…… Toowoomba would have run dry long ago.”

Following responses from myself and Kanga, can you now admit that these councils or at least some them, were highly irresponsible?

You can see the connection between water and money, and the potential for corruption therein. Presumably you can also see the connection between money and real estate or suburban and industrial expansion in general, and the great temptation that many councils have to go all out maximising this sort of development…. without the adequate provision of services.

It appears that this has happened in Toowoomba with the water issue, just as it has in many other towns and cities across the country.

Perhaps Toowoomba should be the test case for taking past councils to task, and thus hopefully improving the accountability of local government and the provision of basic resources with healthy safety margins throughout Australia.

Governments can never make a decision to restrict growth.
Imagine the uproar if a local council or even a state government made a decision that no further development applications would be allowed.

All sorts of groups would be up in arms about restricting their work and business. All the builders for starters would be out of a job.
What would happen to the price of houses ? They would soar in price I imagine. At least the builders houses would be on the market, as well as the local harware and builders suppliers' houses would be on the market. Where would your children live when they married ?

You can see the difficulty from just that small sample. Yet I think everyone on this list can see that there is a limit to the amount of water available. In effect there is need of an economic reconstruction not just a water management program.

Here we go again. The "economic collapse is certain without huge population growth" argument. Go looking for a correlation between population growth and per capita economic prosperity and you will find that there isn't one. But water availibility, traffic congestion and the trade deficit do correlate with population growth. This argument, like many other pro population growth arguments, is regularly presented, debunked, and then recycled, much like the arguments of global warming skeptics. It is little wonder that population growth exponents are so fond of recycling. What would their pro population growth argument be without it?

I have been told, by someone who should know, that there is the opportunity for more water harvesting, [a new dam], up on the downs near Toowoomba.
The water currently makes its way down to the Brisbane dams.
I gather that Toowoomba was given a "flea in the" very qiuckly, when such a suggestion was made.
The water can not be wasted, up there, where it fell.

Bazz

Noosa Council has a population cap in place and it is largely supported by residents.

Of course the workers in the hospitality industries etc. cannot afford to live near their workplaces and property values are inflated. But they do have nice green paint that passes as bike paths and most residents do not have a garbage recycling service, in fact most of the shire is not even sewered.

Bazz

Governments make decisions that restrict growth all the time.

By approving residential developments, industrial sites, individual projects, and by implementing strategic plans, they are regulating growth. In fact, it is one of the main things that local government does.

Yes there are downsides to slowing growth. Builders would be disadvantaged and some would lose their jobs. Businesses that supply materials for new houses would be disadvantaged. Housing prices would in general go up if the demand became significantly greater than supply.

But all of this must be weighed up against the many negative factors of continuous growth. And one of these is the subject at hand – water-provision, with a healthy reserve to tide us through dry times.

We cannot have local government that is beholden to the housing or real estate industry, or the financially well-endowed big end of town. And therein lies one of the fundamental problems – local governments are all too often far too cosy with developers.

Douglas Shire Council (Mossman and Port Douglas) has a development cap, which has been in place for a lot longer that the one in Noosa. The mayor and council there have been re-elected a number of times with that in place, so it is well-supported by the constituency. The Townsville City Council has one for Magnetic Island. And various other places essentially have one, although not stated, by way of their plans as to where development will and will not occur.

But despite these, the concept of limits to growth and development caps is still pretty much brushed off in most places. However, with the water crisis and other resource and service-provision issues, this is bound to change…..soon.

There certainly is “need of an economic reconstruction not just a water management program”.