Toowoomba City Council ties itself in knots ..

If you look at one of the Council's justifications for forcing Toowoomba residents to drink recycle sewage and then look at one of the reasons that an alternative can't be adopted, you'd be forgiven for being more than a little confused.

To explain:

The Water Futures PR campaign relies heavily on unplanned potable reuse to justify its recycled sewage project for Toowoomba.

The Council's Water Futures website states:

Toowoomba discharges into Gowrie Ck, which flows into the Condamine River.

Dalby takes some water from the Condamine, and discharges treated wastewater into the Condamine.

Chinchilla takes water from the Condamine downstream of Dalby.

See - Water Futures confusion.

Unplanned indirect potable reuse is generally considered "bad science" and a practice not to be followed.

In fact, aren't Dalby and Chinchilla working towards using gas water as the main water supply for each town?

Doesn't Dalby have State and Federal government funding for an innovative project to use the gas water for the town's water supply and use recycled sewage for the town's parks and gardens?

Isn't there a NWC funding application by Qld Gas Corp to create a similar situation for Chinchilla's water supply?

So it seems the Water Futures website is misleading as it conveniently ignores the facts - Dalby and Chinchilla are adopting gas water technology to solve their water source issues.

Now here's how the Council really gets itself in a knot:

It ignores Chinchilla adopting gas water in order to use unplanned potable reuse as a justification for the Water Futures project but on the same page uses Chinchilla's use of the gas water as a reason that Toowoomba can't gain access to this water.

"Queensland Gas Company has a potential 3000-5000ML per year of water available as a by-product of coal seam gas production at Chinchilla. This is not enough to meet Toowoomba’s needs, and Chinchilla will also need this water."

You can't have an each way bet.

Either Chinchilla is going to use the gas water (in which case the unplanned reuse argument doesn't work) or it's not going to use the gas water (in which case Toowoomba could access the water).

The problem is that the Toowoomba City Council spends so much time thinking up reasons not to adopt the other water source options, they tie themselves up in knots and then put in on the rather misleading Water Futures website for everyone to see ...