GAB - Toowoomba City Council slips up ...

... inadvertently gives the game away.

You've heard the Toowoomba City Council official line.

Toowoomba's dams are running out - we can't rely on groundwater - not reliable - not enough.

Well, that's the line when they're trying to justify things like reviving the failed Water Futures project.

When the Council is trying to justify water use, it's a completely different story:

The total usage of non-potable water for the entire The Chronicle Home Garden Competition will equate to 1.05 ML. This is only 3% of what Toowoomba residents are currently using per week.

Fifteen of the 30 entrants in the 2007 competition are utilising private bore water meaning that this amount of 1.05 ML is only notional with the total water usage likely to be significantly less.

Toowoomba’s bore water supplies are drawn from the Great Artesian Basin which contains 64,900 million megalitres of water. The Carnival of Flowers bore water use constitutes approx .00006% of the Great Artesian Basin water supply.

See - GAB - there's plenty of water.

That's on the Carnival of Flowers website. What's the bet that gets revised before too long?

So the Council is happy to state that the GAB water supply is plentiful when it comes to justifying water use during the Carnival of Flowers but if you ask about Toowoomba's ability to rely on groundwater supplies to get us through the drought, you'll get a completely different response.

You can't have it both ways ...