Council to battle recycled sewage lawsuit ...

From the Courier Mail on 18 March:

Council in the poo over wastewater recycling scheme

TOOWOOMBA’S controversial plan to recycle sewage into drinking water faces a legal challenge from farmers who have used the water to grow their crops.

The irrigators support water recycling but claim the current proposal being pushed by Mayor Di Thorley would not work, would expose the council to compensation claims of hundreds of millions of dollars and carried major environmental risks.

“(The recycling scheme) won’t actually deliver any extra water because the 15 megalitres a day it will produce is not enough to recycle when the evaporation rate on Cooby Dam is more than 15 megalitres a day,” Gowrie Oakey Irrigation Association president Rod Sleba said.

“In November last year the evaporation from Cooby Dam was 24 megalitres a day, and in December was 31 megalitres a day.

Several viable cheaper alternatives including underground water and coal seam gas water, which preserved existing irrigators’ rights and posed no environmental risk, had been summarily rejected, he said.

“I can’t see why they are doing something obviously so stupid and are not willing to debate in the open with concerned parties," Mr Sleba said.

The irrigators have given up trying to negotiate and are now preparing to take legal action.

Mr Sleba said the issue would never have come to the prospect of a court- room stoush if the mayor had listened to viable alternatives which he said would eventually need to be adopted.

There are fundamental problems with the Mayor's proposal - where does the RO waste stream go - how to deal fairly with the irrigators etc.

A lawsuit (and possible injunction) against the Mayor's project would raise the stakes.

How will the Council respond?