Yet another water source option ...
From the Chronicle (annotated):
Water from NSW tipped for Toowoomba
29 September 2006
By Greg Berghofer
Toowoomba Water Task Force member Dave McEvoy has revealed pumping water from the New South Wales Northern Rivers is being strongly considered as a solution to the problems of Toowoomba and surrounding shires.
Mr McEvoy, Crows Nest Shire Council's chief executive officer, sits on the Water Task Force as the shire's representative and was responding at yesterday's general meeting to a councillor's query on the body's progress.
Mr McEvoy said Federal Parliamentary Secretary on Water Malcolm's Turnbull's promotion to head the Office of Water Resources offered real hope of federal intervention in South-East Queensland's water crisis.
Being in charge of the new office, Mr Turnbull could be in a position to bring about water transfers across State borders, he said.
"The prospects of getting water from New South Wales are now a lot better," Mr McEvoy told his council.
"It could come from the Clarence or from the Tweed, although it's salty a fair way up." Mr McEvoy said the task force had six months to come up with the solution for Toowoomba city and its client shires.
Other solutions being discussed were underground water, a medium-term possibility of water from Wivenhoe Dam, and a longer-term solution of desalination or recycling [but not for drinking].
Bringing water from the Northern Rivers is a further possibility being mooted after Australian Transport Energy Corridor chairman Everald Compton last week proposed pumping water from the yet-to-be built Nathan Dam near Taroom.
See - There are so many water options.
posted by Concerned Ratepayer at 7:42 AM
7 Comments:
While a possibility, it would be preferable to also examine the water source options closer to Toowoomba.
Council should access the new bores rather than using the reduction in dam levels to move Toowoomba to level 5 water restrictions.
The Task Force should also examine the Norwin irrigator proposal.
9:04 AM, September 29, 2006
I would be interested to read more analysis of the much-promoted Norwin Irrigators ‘water swap’. Water trading is set to become a massive and highly controversial issue in Australia over the coming decade. Some key questions to investigate would seem to include:
1. How much irrigation-allocated water exists in reasonable proximity to Toowoomba?
2. What price/compensation would the irrigators expect to give up their allocations for the city of Toowoomba?
3. Could Toowoomba afford to pay it or would State Government compensation be required?
4. What quality would the irrigators expect to receive recycled water at (what level of salinity would they accept?).
5. What infrastructure and pumping-requirements to transport water in both directions?
6. What would it cost Toowoomba to reliably produce and deliver water of an acceptable quality to the irrigators?
All of these questions will obviously impact on how realistic such proposals are. Since potable water recycling is now off the agenda in Toowoomba, perhaps this would be a logical area for the authors of this blog to focus their investigative skills?
2:58 PM, September 29, 2006
Stuart This just shows me how much you know.
The Norwin water is to come in and we buy it at a reasonable price. It is safe as the towns around there have been drinking it for 40 years.
No water is going back out there!
The farmers intent to do dry land farming.
You are on the same page as this stupid Council and State Government. Please check the facts and see what is proposed.
10:36 PM, September 29, 2006
Thanks Waterwoe,
You may be right, -I asked for more information because I am interested in learning more (so shoot me). However, my understanding is that the proposal that was originally made by the irrigators involved a swap of groundwater for recycled water. This is certainly how the proposal was presented on this blog earlier in the year (eg. see comments quoted from Lawrence Springborg in March). Such a “swap” was also considered in the Parsons Brinckerhoff review of Toowoomba’s water options (costed at around $200 million). A quick Google to ‘educate myself’ informs me that the irrigators lobby group has since to proposed to lease 5000 megalitres per year to Toowoomba for $40 million.
The idea of a small group of irrigators leasing water to a thirsty city of more than 90,000 people is interesting to me. So I’d be interested to learn more about the proposal. Is this considered to be a good price for the volume of water involved? What happens if/when it rains? Would Toowoomba be bound to keep paying the irrigators? Who would build and maintain the infrastructure? Who’s problem is it if 5000 ML/year turns out not to be sustainable? What do the farmers intend to grow with “dry land farming”? Regardless of whether you support the proposal, I would think every reasonable person would see that there are some very important and interesting issues to be investigated here.
11:22 PM, September 29, 2006
By the way, the lobby group proposing the Norwin “swap” published a newsletter with the following paragraph in ‘winter 2006’:
“So why is NUWater opposed to Toowoomba Water Futures? Put simply, there is a better option - a broader, regional approach which is a true win-win for all. It involves a clean water swap between Oakey Creek Groundwater licence holders, drawing on the vast artesian reserves below the Norwin district, and treated Wetalla water" [Wetalla being the Toowoomba sewage treatment plant].
I accept that the proposal may have since been revised, but I would still be interested to see some details and analysis of the current proposal.
11:56 PM, September 29, 2006
There is nothing strange about the revised Norwin irrigator proposal. The Norwin irrigator proposal is merely one of a number of water source options that need to be examined by the Toowoomba Water Task Force. The No vote on 29 July put all these options back on the table. Remember Mayor Thorley's and the Council's main argument - there are no other options. Suddenly, there were other options but they were too expensive - but please don't examine the costing for the Water Futures project.
The Parsons Brinckerhoff review
has little credibility. While their review was most likely subject to the constraints of the brief handed to them, the report is skewed towards justifying the Water Futures project. While there is a review of the costings of several other options, there is no review at all of the Water Futures costs. Parson Brinckerhoff assumed the Council's costing are correct and merely add 10% on top to account for price increases. It is hardly a credible review of the likely cost of water source options for Toowoomba.
What is so wrong with irrigator water being purchased as an intermediate step - one which would resolve Toowoomba's water source issues in the short-term while long-term solutions are being considered? Toowoomba City Council tried to scare Toowoomba residents by telling them the city's water would run out (by Christmas 2005 - and of course it didn't). Here is a proposal from irrigators to supply 5000 ML of water to the city - sufficient to ensure the city doesn't run out of water. Isn't that worth examining? Accessing the available bore water is another option. Council of course said there wasn't enough bore water and then, one month after the referendum, suddenly there was enough bore water for the city. How convenient!
One of the fundamental flaws of the Water Futures project is that it sought to address Toowoomba's water source issues (and not particularly well at that) isolated from the rest of the region. Toowoomba would have been the only city to drink recycled sewage as other towns (e.g. Dalby) adopted other water source solutions. Toowoomba City Council would have lost its water contract with surrounding shires. Jondaryan shire, in particular, is unlikely to have continued its water purchase contract with Toowoomba City Council. It was illogical not to look at solving the region's water issues. But given Mayor Thorley's approach to regional council meetings, her approach in ignoring surrounding shires is not surprising.
It is interesting that a conspiracy theory is hinted at regarding the Norwin irrigators and their support for the No vote. Those close to the No campaign would be aware that there was no particular solution which was favoured over others - it was a matter of defeating Mayor Thorley's 'take no prisoners' approach to drinking recycled sewage so that all the options were back on the table. Toowoomba voters weren't voting for the Norwin proposal - nor were they particularly influenced by comments form the Norwin irrigators - they were voting against drinking recycled sewage.
The political conspiracy theories are also interesting - some key No campaigners hold an equally skeptical view of both sides of politics.
11:22 PM, October 02, 2006
Further example of Mayor Thorley's inability to talk to regional councils:
From ABC News
Rail group exclusion upsets Warwick Mayor
4 October 2006
The Warwick Shire Mayor says he is unhappy he has been left out of a new group that has been set up to lobby the Federal Government to build an inland railway.
Toowoomba Mayor Di Thorley and her counterparts from New South Wales and Victoria have formed the national Local Government Alliance to have the Melbourne to Brisbane line built by 2014.
But Warwick Mayor Ron Bellingham says he did not know the alliance was being formed.
"The Darling Downs Regional Organisation of Councils (ROC) did not get an invitation to attend, neither did the Border ROC group of councils," he said.
"I think that would have been an appropriate approach because both those ROCs have transport plans at least that we have generally agreed on."
6:36 PM, October 04, 2006
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