Outgoing Mayor lying until the bitter end ...

Toowoomba's outgoing Mayor will do anything and say anything to try to commit Toowoomba residents to drinking recycled water before she leaves Toowoomba and heads to Tasmania next March.

Excerpt from the Australian (annotated):

Residents again face recycled water

31 August 2007

It turned the stomachs of most Toowoomba residents just a year ago, but drinking their own recycled sewage is back on the agenda for the water-deprived city.

[What turned more stomachs was the bullying approach of the outgoing Mayor and the failure to consult with the community.]

The local council is again seeking millions of dollars in funding from the federal and Queensland governments to build a wastewater recycling plant.

Alternative sources of water have failed and despite recent rain, dam levels are worryingly low, the council says.

[Toowoomba City Council says alternatives have failed. They are referring to the Wetalla bore fiasco - see - Bore Wars. The Council has not examined the other options. A new regional Council will.]

Public concern about drinking recycled water had eased since a toilet-to-tap fear campaign scuttled Toowoomba's plans in a July referendum last year, Mayor Di Thorley said yesterday.

[Put it to a vote and see.]

But anti-recycling campaigners are ready for a fight. "We have the capacity to fight and win -- and we are prepared to make this an issue during the federal election campaign," Citizens Against Drinking Sewage founder Rosemary Morley said.

The southeast Queensland city would be much better off producing its own recycled water than relying on recycled sewage pumped in from Brisbane, which is the other alternative, Ms Thorley said.

[The outgoing Mayor fails to disclose that a stand alone recycled water plant in Toowoomba would not produce sufficent recycled water to make it viable.]

The council voted seven to two on Tuesday night to investigate funding sources for a stand-alone waste water recycling plant.

Under the resurrected plan, treated waste water would be pumped to one of the town's reservoirs, Cooby Dam, and then treated again before being piped to homes.

Ms Thorley will today meet Queensland Deputy Premier Anna Bligh to assess the Beattie Government's view on the resurrection of the scheme.

She has already contacted federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull and is awaiting a response.

"If there is no support, the council will not consider the option any further," she said.

"The costs have probably gone up $30 million since we first looked at the option, to around $90 million."

[More misleading information from the outgoing Mayor. She has no idea what it would cost. First they told you $68 million. Then they said costs had gone up to $72 million, then they said $100 million and now it's back to $90 million. Any proposal would need to be independently costed - the original proposal never was - no-one will accept the Council's word on what it would cost.]

Brisbane will become the first Australian city to use recycled sewage for drinking by the end of next year, with recycled water to be pumped to Wivenhoe Dam through a $1.7 billion western corridor pipeline, the biggest project of its kind in Australia. Toowoomba will get recycled water from that pipeline in about three years.

[Any pipeline from Wivenhoe is not scheduled to be built before 2011-2012.]

To pump water from Wivenhoe Dam over the range to Toowoomba would be more expensive than treating water locally, Ms Thorley said. "This would be a cheaper option with the same result."

[Will the Toowoomba City Council get the stand alone plant independently costed? No - it's something they avoided at all costs last time around. They don't want the proposal independently costed because it would reveal its true cost and how much of a white elephant it would be - it would be a financial millstone around Toowoomba ratepayers' necks for generations.]

Although 70mm of rain fell over the local catchment recently, dam levels rose just 0.1 per cent because the dry earth soaked up most of the water.

See - Toowoomba recycled water - outgoing Mayor lies again.