Sewage news round up ...

As reported in today's Chronicle:

- Jondaryan Shire Mayor Peter Taylor says it is a democratic principle that all people who will be drinking water recycled from sewage have a say in the matter and a third party should be called in to run the vote.

"All people impacted by the decision should be allowed to have a say: that's the role of democracy," Cr Taylor said.

- Crows Nest Shire has indicated that it will hold its own formal count of residents who would be affected by the proposal to recycle sewage and add it to Cooby Dam. Mayor Geoff Patch said his council would hold a workshop to gauge opinion in Highfields and Blue Mountain Heights where residents are on the Toowoomba water supply.

- Rosalie Mayor Noel Strohfeld said his council was less inclined to hold a vote because of the cost and because there appeared to be little opposition to recycling sewage in the shire.

Mayor Strohfeld should talk to some of his councillors - there is a real feeling in Rosalie that the shire is being shafted with Toowoomba Mayor Thorley's plans.

- Toowoomba developer Clive Berghofer has taken to task Mayor Thorley's claim that the only solution needed to people's concern about drinking recycled sewage was for them to buy bottled water or install a rainwater tank.

Mr Berghofer told last week's Water Facts meeting the ramifications went much deeper than personal consumption, and that food producers such as Darling Downs Food Limited (formerly KR Darling Downs) would face new problems in relation to using recycled effluent in their food production processes.

Jondaryan Shire has also written to its major industries, including food producers such as Oakey Abattoirs, requesting information on how recycled water would affect their operation and their markets.

Darling Downs Foods Limited site manager Simon Taylor said the company had no comment on whether recycled water would affect its operations or markets because not enough facts are known as yet. (Seems the Toowoomba City Council is keeping businesses in the dark as well.)

- Jondaryan Shire Mayor Peter Taylor said that recycling water for human consumption was not the pressing issue, but solutions to the short-term possibility industry and the whole community might have no water within a year.

- Toowoomba City Council now has to deal with a new petition - this one over their new metered parking spaces. Seems that no-one in Toowoomba is happy with the current Council's decision making.

- And somehow Councillor Englart managed to get lost in Japan - needing to take 17 trains in one day in Tokyo - and taking 36 hours to return from Korea.