Toowoomba's recycled sewage debate gets expanded coverage ...

Excerpt from Time magazine:

Not a Drop to Drink?

Dry Australian towns want to put purified wastewater on tap, but some people find the idea hard to swallow

By Lisa Clausen

29 May 2006

Rosemary Morley doesn't deny that Toowoomba's water problem is grim. Like everyone else in this parched southeast Queensland city, she's been living with tough water restrictions for nearly three years. But the 60-year-old former president of the local chamber of commerce is sure she's being duped by Toowoomba authorities when it comes to a solution—and she's not alone.

More than 10,000 people have signed a petition rejecting the local council's proposal to make the 95,000-strong community the first in Australia to supplement its drinking water supply by adding its own treated effluent. "We'll be the lab rats for the rest of Australia," says Morley. "But this is not a road we need to go down."

Source - Time - Not a drop to drink? (Jun. 05, 2006 issue of TIME Pacific Magazine.)


One of the fundamental points of the debate in Toowoomba is the missing DNRM&W hydrology report. This is the report which the State government used to justify reducing the effective yields of Toowoomba's dams and the report which the Toowoomba City Council has used to justify needing to force Toowoomba residents to drink recycled sewage.

Toowoomba City Council say they have never read the hydrology report - yet they use it to justify their position. The State government is unable to produce it - yet it forms the basis of the apparent need for the Water Futures project.

The problem is - neither the State government nor the Toowoomba City Council will have any credibility without producing this report ...