Queensland wasting its most precious resource ...

Excerpt from ABC News:

13 September 2006

Queensland wasting its most precious resource

Queensland isn’t in the midst of a critical water shortage — we’re in the middle of a critical water wastage. At least that’s what Mackay man William Beale, managing director of Queensland’s largest water drilling contractor, believes.

While Queensland’s south-east and Toowoomba impose increasingly stringent water restrictions, 438 billion litres of water from the Artesian Basin is being lost to soakage and evaporation every year.

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The wastage is a result of about 450 free-flowing bores that were sunk more than 100 years ago and have not been capped, their clean drinking water instead spilling out onto the land.

"Water has been in the news so much but the reality is Queensland is wasting one of the greatest resources it has," he said.

Mr Beale and his Mackay-based Queensland Drilling Services team have recently been contracted to drill for water in Toowoomba as a way of alleviating the city’s water woes.

On Saturday, they will take the company’s biggest drilling rig to sink the first of what may become many town bores in the area.

While he said the only long-term solution to water shortages would be to build more dams, Mr Beale said Queensland was overlooking the difference the Great Artesian Basin could make to the issue.

The Department of Natural Resources has begun capping the free-flowing bores, however the voluntary process requires landowners to contribute 20-40% of the cost and many are unwilling to do so.

See - Wasted resources.