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.