Wivenhoe pipeline - from one white elephant to another ...

Letter to the Editor, the Chronicle:

5 August 2008

Two years after Toowoomba voted against a toilet-to-tap machine the city hasn't run dry and won’t for yet another two years. This debunks the water panic put forward by Council during the water debate of 2005-2006. With just a trickle oozing from Wetalla, predictably, it wouldn't have supplied any meaningful amount of water. The processed sewage plant would now be standing as a $100 million monument to mindless bureaucracy.

From one potential white elephant to another, a $180 million pipeline from Wivenhoe Dam to Cressbrook Dam. If it was built would we be using it today? No, because we still have dam and bore water to last until April 2010 according to our Council experts. In fact we won't use the Wivenhoe pipeline at any time unless our bores and dams are first bone dry.

The greenhouse cost of pushing Brisbane effluent up hill will result in using our local dam and bore water first and resort to the pipeline only in droughts much more extreme than our current circumstance.

The scarcity of water supply was planned to push up the price, introduce toilet-to-tap schemes and make your water supply financially much more attractive for the Queensland Water Commission and Ms Elizabeth Nosworthy's to privatize and sell to the highest bidder at your expense.

Snow Manners