"If they are going to end up drinking recycled water ... then frankly they've got to have certain rights and I'm not going to leave them out."
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=65741

What is this right that bereft Beattie is talking about.

When all the water in the world is currently locked up in the oceans, why do certain aristocrats believe that recycled water is going to save the nation. Surely they can come up with something better than that.

And with the health crises already knocking on the doors of the Queensland health system, whos to say it wont get worse when they return toilet water to Queensland homes. This sort of anti-logic looks to me like some contemporary, tehcnological neo-agrarianism. Like in the days when old societies used too fertalise the garden vegetables with you know what.

Just because this idea is being touted by those on high, doesnt mean that it should be accepted by Mr and Mrs Average. Beattie should be informed of his right to provide the best services his Government can produce. Governments have acess to the best knowledge in the country, and they should be forced by the populations to use this knowledge base to develope parrallel lines of supply to homes in need of water, and not just rely on the murkiest solution.

Pooralcy i say.

Maybe John Howard could offer some of his billion dollar surplus instead of saving it to hand out like lollies to win the next election.

Generally, I support the idea of using desalinated water for our costal towns. However, Toowoomba is not a coastal town. It's 115 km from the coast, and also 800m up.

Of course, in reality, one wouldn't pipe desalinated water from the coast. Instead one would desalinate water on the coast for Brisbane, and use one of the nearer reservoirs as the source for Toowoomba's water, such as Wivenhoe.

Still, that's still 65 km away, and the water would still have to be pumped uphill for 700m. That gets expensive. Lifting water through that distance requires about 2.5kWh per kilolitre (75% pumping efficiency), even before frictional losses are dealt with.

The technology used for recylcling water produces a product that is cleaner than ordinary tap water. If Toomwoomba residents really don't want to drink it out of some misguided sense that water molecules can somehow be tainted, then they're going to pay a significant price for their water, even assuming that a suitable pipeline could be built in time.

Sylvia.

What's the problem? All water is recycled. Does everyone think that water that falls as rain and runs into dams isn't ? It then runs through and over ground that is saturated with dung and detritus to remain in a stagnant pool before being cleansed and piped to homes. What is the difference between that and purefying used domestic water directly. It gets recycled naturally anyway. Even the people that have used tank water for generations drink water that has run over roofs and into gutters where possums and birds crap and isects die.

From my research it appears that it costs more, & uses more energy, to recycle water, than it does to desalinate sea water.
I can therefore see no reason, other than to appease greenies, to even consider recycling water on the coast.
There are plenty of uses that the currently treated water can be put to, aith advantage.
Toowoomba would not have a water shortage, if they were allowed to dam one of the rivers up on the downs.
They were not allowed to, because it runs into Wivenhoe, & thus supplies Brisbane. Obviously much more important than allowing those bushies to use it, even if it comes from there.
If we can ever get the city to take responsibility for its own water supply, [as destinct from taking other peoples water] Toowoomba will be able to harvest their own water, & supply themselves, with out any problem

Sylvia, I generally support recyling water with one reservation. It's easy to imagine the day that the government put's a CEO into the organisation responsible for recyling the water with a focus on cost cutting.

We've seen the kind of debacle which that can lead to in other government run organisations when the CEO's performance pays are based around short term cost savings. When the managers around that CEO are on a similar deal, when the minister(or treasury) does not want to hear that they can't cut costs even more. When the staff who know what needs doing and who care about the quality of the water are made redundant because someone has an artificial financial target for their department.

I don't know how we protect ourselves against that kind of mismanagement and it seems all to much a part of the political cycle.

R0bert

Snake

Many thanks. Most ineteresting post.

Cheers
Kay

Gadget,

Thanks for the link. The news item (if accurate) makes it clearer what Beattie is about, and I'll get to that. First, however, I would suggest that the recent Toowoomba referendum was not about the acceptability or otherwise of recycled sewage for domestic supply. It was about dereliction of duty, and policy hijacking by vocal minorities, at State and Federal government level that had had the cumulative effect of a failure to have ready in place a water storage and supply infrastructure sufficient to sustain this inland city throughout the sort of droughts that are quite foreseeable in Australia.

Hasbeen makes a very good point, if his research is accurate. It appears Toowoomba could have made its own provision for an expanded water supply, but was stopped. Why? Because, it would appear, the available streams and storage sites near Toowoomba from which water could be obtained without expensive pumping are required to assure Brisbane's water supply. Sylvia rightly points to where the real solution lies: coastal desalination for Brisbane supply augmentation. Sylvia makes a rare error, however, in suggesting that it should be Toowoomba residents that should meet the expense of the now short-term fix of pumping from Wivenhoe: that expense should be born at State and Federal government level in recognition of the fact that it has been their inaction and migration policies respectively that have denied Toowoomba the opportunity to provide for its own future in a sensible and inexpensive way.

Not finding the Toowoomba result to his liking, Beattie now wants a re-run in a larger electorate on the same question. Needless to say, most of those asked in this new referendum won't have to face the (immediate) prospect of pissing in their own water supply should there be a vote in favour of this form of recycling. If ever electors, other than those in Toowoomba, should sabotage a referendum, they should sabotage this one. Campaign for a 'No' vote in Toowoomba and an informal vote everywhere else. Show Beattie, Turnbull, and the environmentalist witch-doctors where they can get off!

Forest Gumpp

On my understanding, the next 'practical' place to build a dam that would supply Toowoomba is at Emu Creek. That's about 60 kms from Toowoombah. Since the natural flow of the water doesn't take it in the direction of Toowoomba, it would involve a pipeline and pumping, though less pumping than would be required from Wivenhoe. On the other hand, a dam has costs, so extra pumping might be cheaper. Emu Creek is in the catchment for Wivenhoe, so either way the water supplied to Toowoombah would have to be replaced by desalinated water for Brisbane.

There is going to be a cost. While I have no objection to Brisbane users having to pay the entire cost of desalination to liberate water for Toowoombah - fair shares - it still seems to me that the cost of getting the water from Emu Creek, or Wivenhoe, should be born by the people who are using it. They would have the same costs even if Brisbane didn't exist.

Sylvia.

Sylvia,

That Toowoomba residents should bear the cost of what they were going to have to do in any event seems fair enough. I profess no detailed knowledge of the topography, and was working on the basis that Hasbeen was more or less correct in his claim of practical storage site availability and adequate catchment near Toowoomba. Given that such practical storage sites are within the Wivenhoe catchment, it would seem a pity to now make a duplicate outlay unless both storages could be easily filled under normal rainfall conditions. But Toowoomba has already been penalised by the delay imposed by its preclusion from development of expanded storage in a location convenient to it, and is due compensation for the results of this oppressive policy. So perhaps pumping from Wivenhoe should be subsidized.

A point that bears making in respect to desalination is that, notwithstanding the cost involved, the actual available supply of fresh water is increased. Re-use of water already in short supply does not necessarily solve that problem, especially if supply remains scarce or non-existent. Desalination increases reliability of supply, even if at increased cost. Increased reliability of supply makes other managment decisions easier, and may mean that fewer restrictions in regard to water use need be made.

In a wider context, there is probably no purpose more suited to the development and application of renewable energy sources than desalination and pumping of seawater. For those concerned with sustainability, this is where the opportunity is, and this is where the focus should be. It is interesting to hear the chorus of opposition to desalination from the environmentalist witch-doctors on the central coast of NSW, where like dereliction of duty at State government level with respect to water supply has occurred. Desalination, once achieved, and especially once achieved with sustainable energy sources, offers the prospect of water supply independence from the artificial restrictions of the environmentalist witch-doctor class. Let's hope there's more traditional Australian imperialistic developmental arrogance left in Queensland with which to sustain a witch-doctor free society! Be innovative. Desalinate now!

Forrest Gumpp

The thing is that towns do not really consume much water, in the sense that the water disappears from the system. Most of the water is used, and then returned via the sewerage pipework.

Consider this page from Sydney Water

http://www.sydneywater.com.au/OurSystemsandOperations/

It says that Sydney water provides 1.4 billion litres of fresh water per day, and collects 1.2 billion litres of waste water. These figures presumably relate to the time before restrictions were introduced, and both would be lower now. Anyway, the implication is that only about 15% of the water is lost in the process (and this includes Sydney Water's pipe leakages).

If the same figure applies to Toowoombah, and I cannot see why it wouldn't, then its catchment areas would only have to provide 15% of the water it uses if it recycled it. I imagine that the current catchment areas would be more than adequate, and would remain so for the forseeable future. There could even have some decent environmental flows. The same would be true of Sydney.

If one can overcome the 'yuck' factor, the only thing that should drive the decision is a financial one, albeit including any relevant environmental external costs.

I haven't been pushing for potable water recycling in coastal towns simply because I think doing so would be flogging a dead horse, and desalination is a viable alternative. In Toowoombah it's not.

Sylvia

Sylvia,

That town waste water can be 85% recycled is not in dispute. That it may be possible to re-process sewage water to a standard safe for human consumption is also accepted. Your rider concerning the 'yuk' factor, and the point made by RObert in relation to trustworthiness of ongoing managment in controlling exposure to a now ever-present disease risk that is simply not there if sewage reprocessing for human consumption is not accepted, are the keys to the relevant argument here. The point is that the electors of Toowoomba have already made their decision with at least these two factors in mind, and that decision was to not accept the affront to sensibilities and exposure to risk involved.

Undoubtedly Toowoomba has been having to endure restrictions as to how much and upon what its available water supplies may be used. The ratepayers of Toowoomba may well consider it prudent to recycle that 85% of water usage that is not lost from the system for purposes OTHER THAN domestic use. There is undoubtedly an already foregone use for all that could be recovered. Whether it is recovered, however, should be left up to them as they should not be obliged to do this, if they think the cost excessive, as part of the price for an available replacement supply wrongly alienated from them in the first place.

To state that desalination is not a viable solution in Toowoomba is subtly misleading. Of course its not! There is, I think, no salt water anywhere near the place! But there is near Brisbane, and Brisbane is presently taking fresh water that was and is viably collectable near Toowoomba. Toowoomba should not be having to go without a drop of what it might normally have expected to prudently use, without recycling even entering the picture. Brisbane should not necessarily have to cut back either, as it does have the option of desalinating if it requires more water and is prepared to pay the price of getting it. The decision is in! Beattie should take on the environmentalist witch-doctors and desalinate.

Forrest I'll waive my concern about management of the recycling if laws are put in place that make it a capital offense for both the relevant CEO and minister should it be found that cost cutting has contributed to a safety risk with mains drinking water.

The finding would be the outcome of an investigation with the terms of reference staffing etc for the investigation set by the opposition party for the relevant period.

I'm still more for the recyling than against it but would like serious thought given to minimising the risks from the potential pitfalls (political as well as technical).

R0bert

Capital punishment, ROb? Not overstating your anxieties here, are you?

Quite a few major urban areas use approriately treated recyled water, notably London and Singapore.The breakdown of systems that ensure the safety of drinking water are no more likely to pose a threat from water processed from recycled sources than those from "natural" catchments (which include feces ridden farmlands, open aqueducts with dead wombats in them, etc). My guess is that properly treated former sewage is probably the safest of the lot.

Despite the yuk factor.

Snout, you are probably correct about the safety factor in which case a really clear and significant penalty for placing that at risk should not cause to much distress.

I don't really like capital punishment - the comment was somewhat tongue in cheek but I would like us to find a way to make it abundently clear to the those making the real decisions that public safety is the biggest of them. Some way to get the pollies and bean counting management to ensure the engineering people don't have to take the wrong shortcuts.

I've seen how little respect maintenance and reliability get when you have a managment focussed on short term cost savings above all else in another industry.

Other suggestions on how to keep safety at the forefront of non engineering managements minds are welcome.

R0bert

I don't have a personal interest in this problem, you see, despite living only 55Km from the Brisban GPO, I do not have a town water supply, & neither do thousands of my neighbors.

For 18 years our domestic water has come off the roof via a tank system. We have never even come close to running dry, & that was with 6 people, including 2 teenage daughters with long hair.
Outside water comes from a small dam, & that struggles from time to time, particularly 93 & 94, when, each year, we had less than half this years rainfall.
We have green grass when it rains, & brown when it doesn't, & a lot of shrubs, trained to handle dry times.

The majority of Brisbane people could do the same, & harvest ALL their domestic water requirements off their roof. In the event that Brisbane goes to recycled water, those who don't want to drink it, do have this choice, as do Toowoomba people. You would still require town water for outside use, if your allowed to use town water, outside, ever again.

Forest Gumpp

Perhaps we're slightly at cross purposes here. My point about recyling was simply that water is not, technically, in short supply, either in Towoomba, or in any other metropolitan area of Australia, because the potable recyling option exists.

Yes, certainly Brisbane could desalinate more water, and thus make water available to Toowoomba, either from Wivenhoe or from Emu Creek.

It appears that the government's refusal to allow either solution relates to its concern about Brisbane's water supply. I think we agree that to the extent that that's a problem, it should be addressed by more desalination.

However, that still leaves the issue of the cost of the rest of such a project, which we seem to agree should be born by the users in Toowoomba.

It's true that the government has ruled both solutions out primarily because they would impact on Brisbane's water supply, but that doesn't mean they'd necessarily be practical. Not only is there the cost issue, but also the problem of lead time. While it's easy to to claim that the lead time issue could have been addressed by timely action, I'm less clear that the problem has been recognised for that long. It has always been easy to hope that the drought would end.

R0bert

We can address the problem of ill-considered management cost cutting by requiring that the senior management live in Toowoomba, and not use a rainwater tank.

Sylvia.

Recycling of water is already a reality for many communities right across Queensland. Toowoomba, for example has a sewerage treatment works outleting its partly treated water into a creek and river system that flows to, and provides water for Dalby. The kind of recycling proposed is already happening and has been for as long as Toowoomba has had sewerage treatment. There is no Yuk factor, nor is there a public health issue. The proposal to provide water back into the water reservoirs was to be of a high quality than that currently being sourced by the Dalby community.

Centralised water requires Government to manage and control treatment and provision of water. Perhaps a decentralized model of investment in local water storage and treatment might work better. How about the Government providing a $7 billion dollar package (recently quoted number to build 4 dams) of $5,000 to each and every home in Queensland (1.4 Million). That would buy (from a quotation I received recently) about 40,000L of storage. Even in drought we have had 9 rain events in Brisbane that would fill this volume. Nine times 40,000L is more than my total annual usage.

While this is simplistic and is taking averaging to extreme it does indicate a potential to avoid serious water shortfalls. Even if only half of this was possible that is still in the hundreds of gigaliters and the cool thing is there is almost no energy cost.

Woodyblues, I agree with most of your post.
I have 55,000 liters storage, & even in 93, & 94, with less than
500 ml of rain each year, it was adequate.

I do suggest that you try to throw off the brain washing you are suffering from. Don't be ashamed to have fallen for it, our leader is a master of the art.

This year we are at, or slightly above average rainfall from the Gold coast, to the Sunshine coast, & throughout Brisbane.

Sylvia, don't forget to add the minister as a new resident.

Actually the ones who concern me most are the types who stay for one or two terms and leave before the poo hits the fan (or tap in this case). They've done all the easy cost cutting and move onto the next easy mark before it all falls to bits.

I also expect that human nature being what it is the lure of the big dollars will override the warnings of boffins insisting on the continuation of some maintenance program the people getting the big money don't understand anyway. Either that or they will make sure they have some tame boffins to tell them what they want to hear.

I think my point is on topic becaause for those of us who are not to bothered by the yuk factor and who accept that properly treated recycled water is cleaner than runnoff water that point, cost and lead times seem to be the main remaining issues. And also the viability of alternatives such as better use of rainwater tanks.

R0bert

It is easy to be at cross-purposes in this discussion. Sylvia makes the pertinent observation "It has always been easy to hope that the drought would end.". This provides the lead-in to a focus upon the level of past attention to fundamental duties by governments, and the emphasis upon their taking of the easy option in order to enable continuing avoidance of address of the underlying issues. The underlying issue is population pressure and standard of living expectations, and these issues none of our governments have been addressing.

The point is that in Toowoomba the fundamental level of representation-the electors-has been formally consulted and has given its verdict. That verdict is against recycling of sewage water for domestic use. This verdict closes off the easy option for the State government of pretending the problem is Toowoomba's alone, when, with the State government taking all the Toowoomba catchment rights for security of Brisbane supply, the problem rightly should not be Toowoomba's at all! This brings us back to Gadget's initial questioning as to what Beattie's seemingly magnanimous offer of choice to the wider electorate in SE Queensland (and yet again to Toowoomba electors) is really about. He wants a re-run of the referendum in a wider electorate, most of whose electors he believes can be persuaded will face no foreseeable prospect of having to do what Toowoomba has already rejected, in the hope that the 'easy option', recycling of sewage, will be open to his government again. If he can secure by whatever means, the referendum result he (and the Federal government) wants, he can ride roughshod over the decision the Toowoomba electors have already made and tell them to either recycle sewage or go without water.

Bad as that outcome would be for the residents of Toowoomba, it would be worse for SE Queensland and Australia at large. The focus would be taken off the underlying causes of shortage, the many ACCEPTABLE alternatives for water supply, and appropriate demand managment techniques for the growth areas that most contribute to this problem.

Hi I am a Toowoomba Resident

1. Demand mangement; Autralians have a right to choose when and where they live, this resonates much deeper than how they get their water. As a Toowoomba resident I would love to see the Day we have 200,000 people here and when Brisbane/Gold Coast are seen as corporate alternatives to Melbourne. Last year South East Queensland had net migration of just over 1000 people a week.

2. All water is recycled water.

3. There are ONLY 2 cost effective options 1. Recycling, 2. Farm diversion. The second option could be in the form of universal water charges that would shift farm produciton away from inefficent uses such as cotton & rice towards more productive crops and grazing. We as a country need to accept that we possess a competitive advantage in land and soil quality not water, each Ha of Cotton costs australia lost $$ in food export since good land is forced to remain idle elsewhere. People seem to forget that we the taxpayers pay for.

4. Desalination, or piping water from north queensland are dreams, which if ever entertained would be regarded as ingenuous by posterity

4. If people don't want to drink the water that is their prerogative. In most of developed Asia and Europe, residents will habitually buy drinking water not because of recycling but because of industrial pollution of the water systems. Synthetic chemicals are MUCH more difficult to remove from water than biological contamination (typical residential waste water)

Reports by the Queensalnd government have found no clear cut alternative to recycling and has highlighted that neither desalination or long distance piping are prudent policies.

The refferendum will work, but not now, Australians cannot be told that the water is going to run out. They have never experienced dry taps and cannot imagine it as a possibility. When we get to the last 10% of water reserves the dams water quality will deteriorate and people will demand blood from government. The only option which will stop taps from going dry at this stage is rationing and recycling THE END

I have been reviewing some of the material on Toowoomba Water's website.

http://www.toowoombawater.com.au/media-releases/inthenews.html

As regards concerns about cost cutting compromising the safety of the sytem, I think particularly telling is this diagram showing how the system would work

http://www.toowoombawater.com.au/dmdocuments/HowWillOurWaterBeRecycled.pdf

It indicates that the purified water would not be fed directly back into the distribution system, but into Cooby dam, which is the nearest of Toowoomba's three dams. When water is extracted from a reservoir, it's not just a matter of opening a tap at the bottom. Instead, water is extracted from a level that is providing water of the optimum purity. One would expect any contamination arising from failures of the recycling plant as a result of misguided cost cutting to be detected long before the water ended up in consumers' taps. Given what the wildlife are doing in the water, the recycling plant should be the least of a person's concerns.

Regarding concerns that a future referendum would allow Toowoomba's decision to be made for it by voters who do not have a real risk of using this recylcling technology, that would clearly be wrong. It should be made clear to any people who get to vote in such a referendum that a yes vote would mean that they should reasonably expect to end up drinking recycled water.

From my minimal research, it appears that this technology is significantly cheaper than desalination (not surprising - desalination involves very high pressures), so a rational decision would be to use desalination only to make up losses in the system, and otherwise use this recycling technology not just in Toowoombah, but Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, to name a few.

Sylvia.

What helpful links, Sylvia. The first one is particularly revealing when considered in relation to some of the statements made by Daz, a claimed Toowoomba resident. As such, his statements should perhaps carry more weight than those of us who are not residents of either Toowoomba or SE Queensland.

Daz says "Au[s]tralians have a right to choose when and where they live, this resonates much deeper than how they get their water.". Seemingly so, and I don't think anyone would propose otherwise. It also seems, however, that Australians demand their right to live in a democracy, rather than an autocracy or witchdocracy, and that this resonates even deeper than their choice of just where to live or whether they can get a reasonable supply of water. For look at Sylvia's first link: there is not a shadow of a 'No' case anywhere! And yet a clear majority of those stupid Australian Toowoombanites voted 'No' in the referendum. The hide of them, in the face of all the information provided by the bureaucracy and countless Environmental Resposibilitists at public expense that they should vote only 'Yes'!

Daz says "The refferendum (sic) will work, but not now, Australians cannot be told that the water is going to run out." Too right, in both respects. It takes time and substantial electoral manipulation to make a referendum work, especially if it doesn't give the 'right' result first time. The majority of Australians in general, and Toowoombanites in particular, damn well know that if water is running short in such a soundly based community it can only be because the two tiers of government above its local government have been derelict in their duty. In this case available water has been diverted to other less entitled users.

Daz says "When we get to the last 10% of water reserves the dams water quality will deteriorate and people will demand blood from government." Wrong. People are demanding blood from government now, and Peter Beattie knows it. Lay some pipe, Peter. Make salt. Sacrifice a few witch-doctors to the rain gods!

There was a "no" case published. It can be found on the council's web site

http://www.toowoomba.qld.gov.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=784&Itemid=270

A lot of it consists of the claim, repeated in different ways, that the process is not safe.

Point 26 says that "sustainable supplies of underground drinking water in the Condamine alluvium are being ignored by Council" appears to be untrue, because its estimate cost is shown here:

http://www.toowoombawater.com.au/dmdocuments/WaterForRichFacts22July06.pdf

Point 19 caused a double take: "It is possible that demineralised water returning to Cooby Dam will damage that ecosystem. That effect has not been studied."

Wait a minute, that ecosystem, that's the one IN Cooby Dam. OK, it's an ecosystem, but it was created by man for the purpose of providing Toowoomba with water. If it's changed (I reject the word damaged in this context), so what?

In summary, the "no" case was a perfect example of that tried and trusted method of influencing public opinion - the scare campaign.

The next cheapest method is a pipeline from Wivenhoe. However, that's been rejected by the state government, as has the Emu Creek dam.

This seems to leave the cheapest option being the previously referred to Condamine alluvium, which is estimated to cost each household $900 extra per year. Somehow I doubt that course will be persued.

The people of Toowoomba had better go back to hoping that the drought will break.

Sylvia

What a ripper job you are doing for the rest of Australia, Sylvia, ferreting out these links! How could I ever have missed the 'No' case? Silly me, thinking it would be up front on a Toowoomba Council 'media releases' web page. But you found it for me, and Point 32 of that 'No' case may even answer directly my question as to how I could have missed it. Point 32 of the 'No' case is "Why has Council voted itself $460,000 of your money to advertise their case [the 'Yes' case] only?" Click on Sylvia's link if you don't believe it!

In relation to your comment on Point 26 that refers to the claimed ignoring by Council of the water in the Condamine alluvium: the 'No' case point is not necessarily untrue. The link you provided is not a costing at all, it is just an assertion in an advertisment for the Council endorsed 'Water Futures' consortium. The page is even labelled 'advertisment'. I'd want much more detail before I'd call it 'costing'.

You're dead right about the 'No' case being a scare campaign. It surely would have scared me. I had no idea the whole proposal was effectively to graft a multi-national into a position of privatised feather-bedded monopoly over a public asset, Toowoomba's rights to existing water. No wonder Beattie wants a re-run. The State government must have been hand-in-glove from the outset with the 'Water Futures' consortium in this attempted 'oligopolization' of water supplies. First you make the problem by legislatively preventing the local authority from overcoming its own shortage, then you graft in private interests to charge for a solution. I wonder whether any of Malcolm Turnbull's past banking associates have any interest in this 'enterprise' model, undoubtedly intended for the rest of Australia? What a blue-print for funding political incumbency! What a lot of money must have already been outlaid to get this far, only to get knocked back by the dumb local yokels!

Nah, gotta be a re-run!

Perhaps the optimimum remaining solution then is suggested by a comment by Mr Beattie in this advertisement:

http://www.toowoombawater.com.au/dmdocuments/YesorNoCase.pdf

He talks about pumping treated water into Wivenhoe for residential use. So start building that straight away. Then Toowoomba can have a pipeline to Wivenhoe without compromising Brisbane's supply. Both Toowoomba and Brisbane will be using recycled water.

Toowoomba residents would have to find another $200 per year to pay for the pipeline.

(BTW, I earlier misstated the increase for Condamine alluvials, because I misread the chart; it's $435 extra per year, not $915, because the numbers cited are totals, not increases).

Sylvia.

Gee I must be thick, or inarticulate, or both. Why does the construction of a pipeline from Wivenhoe to Toowoomba's Cressbrook dam have to wait upon the construction of a pipeline from a Brisbane recycling treatment facility to Wivenhoe? Any degree of compromise of security of supply to Brisbane resulting from restitution of supply to Toowoomba from a catchment more properly Toowoomba's than Brisbane's is a matter that should have to be addressed by Brisbane, not Toowoomba.

Since the State government has effectively forced Toowoomba to have to use a shared reservoir (as a consequence of its having prevented construction of the Emu Creek dam) it in fact has an obligation not to contaminate Wivenhoe reservoir with recycled water unless and until the Emu Creek dam has been built and filled at State government expense. When the Emu Creek dam is filled and the necessary pipeline connections to the Toowoomba storage and reticulation system made, then Toowoomba's pumping from and dependence upon Wivenhoe can go into abeyance.

This of course raises another matter. Maybe I am simply uninformed, but when did Brisbane have a referendum on whether or not to re-introduce treated sewage effluent into its reservoirs and reticulated supply? If there has as yet been no such referendum, why should there be any presumption that Brisbaneites, much less Toowoombanites, will agree to such a proposal?

Rather than casting around trying to purloin other communities' water catchments (and land for dam sites) the State government should be providing leadership in not only increasing total supply for the community that has the real impending shortage, Brisbane, but for the first time in Australia providing a truly dependable water supply. The potentially largest source of that is right on Brisbane's doorstep. It is the sea.

"We do not choose to do these things because they are easy. We choose to do them because they are hard." Words that could well be taken to heart by the Queensland government. There has been far too much selling of Australia short by its governments. Time to lift the game.

From the costings quoted by the council in their advertisement [see * below] it appears that building a dam at Emu Creek, and its associated pipeline, is more expensive than piping water from Wivenhoe. As I commented before, Emu Creek is not exactly close to Toowoomba.

Further, since Emu Creek is in the catchment for Wivenhoe, building it does not provide that much increase in sustainable yield overall. The only time it provides a benefit is when there is a flood that is sufficient to fill Wivenhoe.

So either way, the solution has to involve some way of increasing the supply into Wivenhoe, or reducing the demand on it. It would certainly make no sense to build the Wivenhoe pipeline AND the Emu Creek dam with a view to ceasing to use the pipeline once the dam is full.

It's true that Brisbane has not had a referendum on using recycled water. In someways, I think that holding the referendum for Toowoomba has set a bad precedent. Our system of government is usually based on allowing our elected representatives to make the required decisions on our behalf, rather than to ask the electorate as a whole to decide. While the latter seems more democratic, it has the downside that it only works properly if the electorate are willing adequately to inform themselves as to the issues (and indeed that they are capable of so doing). There seems little evidence of that.

I do not see that water has a special place in our democratic system. The Government should just do what is required, and if the electorate really object that much, they can express their views at the next election.

Sylvia.

[*] As far as I can see, the only reason the documents state that they are advertisements is because they were published on newspapers, and such journals require such statements to distinguish the documents from editorial comment. I have no reason to think that the "advertisment" tag means that the content is not to be trusted.

Sylvia,

Re your first paragraph: I concur.

Re your second paragraph: I concur.

Re your third paragraph: I concur, subject to the rider that treated effluent never be returned into Wivenhoe dam from any future Brisbane treatment facility. Emu Creek dam was only ever at this stage proposed to provide for the contingency of segregation of storage of Toowoomba's share of water in the event that Brisbane ever decided it must return treated sewage effluent into Wivenhoe dam.

Re paragraph four, sentence 1: I thought not.

Re paragraph four, sentence 2: Too right, especially if the idea was to ram the proposal down people's throats.

Re paragraph four, sentence 3: Indeed. And the relevant representatives (a Toowoomba Council) proposed a decision (the building of Emu Creek dam), but were blocked by the State government, who proposed no alternative decision or solution. The State government, having abdicated its responsibilities of decision-making, forced the ball back into Toowoomba Council's court. Council, having already made its representative decision and been blocked, knowing the 'Water Futures' option would be highly contentious, chose a referendum as the basis of decision-making. That verdict is now in, and should be binding upon both Council and State Government.

Re paragraph four, sentence 4: The only downside to a referendum process that is possible is that of insincerity in acceptance of the verdict by the authority upon which it is supposed to be binding. The willingness to become informed, or the degree to which electors choose to inform themselves, is irrelevant. Once submitted to the electors, the right of decision is theirs.

Re paragraph four, sentence 5: That there is little evidence of willingness or ability of electors to understand the issues is a matter of opinion.

This discussion has, however, highlighted the widening gulf between the electors and the elected in Australia today, and a contest that must shortly be resolved between unrestrained elitist autocracy on the one hand, and constitutional propriety on the other. With water being of such importance to life, the contest may as well be over that as anything.

I don't see what the big deal was to begin with. If Toowoomba (and every other council for that matter) had simply done something about their water supply earlier on, they would not have ended up in a predicament.

What people fail to realise, is that recycled water is cleaner than purified dam water and that's BEFORE it's ADDED to the dam supply. Purified recycled water isn't just pumped to households, it's added to reservoirs including Lake Wivenhoe and Lake Somerset and then along with the rest of the dam water, purified for drinking and supplied to the region.

As for desalination - sure, it sounds good in theory. There's endless amounts of water in the ocean so why not use that to supplement our supplies?
It's simple: it's expensive for both the government and hence consumers, it's environmentally degrading and it tastes bad! (This is from personal experience - Hamilton Island has its own desalination plant and I do not recommend drinking the tap water.)
As Sylvia has mentioned, it is also impractical to use in terms of supplying Toowoomba with water.

I don't think it's a good idea for Toowoomba or South East Queensland to build any more dams because meteorologists have given us a grim outlook in terms of adequate rainfall in the short and long term.

We simply need a government that can stop messing about organising meetings about future meetings on what we could do in the distant future about a water crisis that's upon us now. Instead, we should have a government that doesn't worry about what general public opinion is, but rather what general public needs are and which acts upon those needs as quickly and accurately as possible.

Recycled water is beneficial in the eyes of governments and generally (from recent Australian polls) consumers in terms of meeting demands and achieving economic objectives.

So, to the people of Toowoomba, I say, stop your complaining!