Queensland Premier Anna Bligh in backflip on plans for recycled water ...

Excerpt from The Australian:

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh in backflip on plans for recycled water

26 November 2008

A collapse in community support has forced Queensland Premier Anna Bligh to backflip on plans to use recycled waste water regardless of dam levels.

"The attitudes of people have changed," Ms Bligh said yesterday.

"The growing preference of people is that if it is not needed as a permanent supply, then we should take it from other sources."

Ms Bligh admitted circumstances had changed since last year, when the Government cancelled a proposed plebiscite on the issue and announced that recycled waste water would be pumped to Brisbane's Wivenhoe Dam from early next year.

At the time, the Government said the Queensland Water Commission had advised an average storage level of 40 per cent should trigger the addition of recycled water to drinking water supplies.

The level has risen from 22 per cent to 45 per cent since then and is expected to rise further this summer if the wet conditions continue.

Ms Bligh said southeast Queensland's 2.6 million residents had also "dramatically" cut water use, from about 180 litres to 140 litres per person per day.

The Government's water grid had become a reality, with more than 400km of pipe laid, the completion of the Gold Coast desalination plant, the approval of the Wyaralong Dam and the supply of recycled water to the Tarong and Swanbank power stations.

Ms Bligh said that in the light of these changes, she had asked the water commission to provide urgent advice on whether the 40 per cent trigger still applied.

She hinted at a policy reversal last week when she backed down from her longstanding position that the recycled water scheme was necessary to secure supplies in the future, saying then that she would accept the advice of the commission.

In response, commission chief executive John Bradley insisted the scheme would be deferred only if dams were 100 per cent full and it was not possible to add further water to them.

"If it is safe when dam levels are low, then it would continue to be safe when they are high," Mr Bradley told The Australian last week.

Mr Bradley would not be drawn yesterday on whether he and the commission had been embarrassed by Ms Bligh's move.

The commission issued a brief statement announcing that a meeting of commissioners today would review its assessment of an "appropriate trigger point based on updated developments". Government sources said the commission was expected at the meeting to endorse Ms Bligh's suggestion that the trigger for recycled water be 40 per cent, a move that would postpone the scheme indefinitely.

Labor MPs said that Ms Bligh, for political reasons, had accepted the view of Australian National University microbiologist Peter Collignon and other critics of the scheme -- reported in The Australian in recent weeks -- that recycled waste water should be added to reservoirs only as a last resort.

Professor Collignon yesterday welcomed Ms Bligh's stand.

"The essential principle of putting sewage in drinking water is that it should be an option only if other options are not available," he said.

"A last resort is certainly not when dams are 100 per cent full."

Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg said Ms Bligh was responding to the results of polling by the water commission last week that asked residents at what dam levels should be before recycled water wasadded.

"This is just poll-driven," Mr Springborg said.

Ms Bligh said she was responding to public opinion.

"I've been listening to what people are telling me, and while they think it is a good insurance policy, they are uneasy about it."

See - Backflip Anna.