Council required to raise dam spillways ...

The Toowoomba City Council must be wondering whether they will ever get a break on water issues.

After spending the past 9 months trying to scare the community into accepting its controversial recycled sewage project - the rumours about the water running out by last Christmas were interesting - Council has now been asked by the State government to raise the dam spillways to protect against future floods.

The Council Committee meeting minutes for the meetings on 21-22 March 2006 show that, under the State government's proposed "Guidelines for Acceptable Flood Capacity for Dams", the Council will be required to undertake the following work:

- Cressbrook dam - dam must be upgraded as soon as possible (with 5 years) - upgrade cost - $25-30 million (with a subsidy of $10-12 million).

- Cooby Dam - dam must be upgraded by October 2015 - - upgrade cost - $10-15 million (with a subsidy of $4-6 million).

- Perseverance dam - no analysis to date as it is immediately upstream from Cressbrook dam.

The Council believes this work will have severe impacts on its forward financial plan - i.e. they don't have the money - too busy spending it promoting ill-conceived recycled sewage projects - and will need to ask ratepayers to pay for it.

Council will try to renegotiate the timing for completing this work.

See - Council minutes.

Postscript - seems the Chronicle reads blogs - see related article 31 March.