The Water Crisis in Toowoomba
While Hervey Bay, Maryborough, Gympie and the residents of the Mary Valley face the threat of a dam being built on the Mary River Toowoomba faces a water crises that no dams will fix.
For the people in Toowoomba the question is whether or not to use recycled water and the debate is getting very heated. Here is one youg Toowoomba residen’t view of the debate.
The town of Toowoomba lies in South East Queensland, and is currently effected by a devastating drought. This drought has emptied the dams that supply water to the city, and has split the local population in two. This is due to the local governments plan to introduce a water recycling plant, but some people fear that their health may be effected.
The Toowoomba City Council, led by Mayor Di Thorley, plans to introduce a plant which uses reverse osmosis to clean waste water. This process creates water which has a six star rating for quality (five star is drinking quality). Yet, even with overwhelming support from the state government, scientific experts, and overseas precedents, some citizens refuse to accept this new age method.
They have organized themselves into a group known as CADS, or Citizens Against Drinking Sewage. They consistently ignore all professional advice and continue to threaten Toowoomba’s only viable option to preserve its water supply.
The sole purpose of CADS is to criticise all the suggestions that the council puts forward. Rather than try to come up with possible solutions of their own, they seem to be content with making all other plans fail. With this sort of attitude, there is no way that any water saving methods will be put into practice.
Toowoomba cannot continue to wait for the rain to refill the lifesaving dams. To much water is being lost in the city itself, and there seems to be only one practical method to combat the drought.
Reverse Osmosis is used in several cities throughout the world with no health problems resulting from it. No matter what evidence is put forward to support this view, the citizens of CADS dismiss all scientific facts.
It seems that they even make up their own facts to further disrupt the council’s plans. Hormones getting into the drinking water supply, sewage leaking through the process, and all manner of viruses are being invented by this disorderly organization.
Besides, if people are really that worried about what they are drinking, perhaps they should take a look at the dams themselves. They are not the cleanest pools of water, but they serve their purpose, and the processes that clean them are sufficient.
Water is the life blood of a rural town, and Toowoomba is the hub of a series of farmlands. Without water the entire town will slowly die. There will be no water for washing, construction, landscaping and even drinking. Barriers must be put in place so that the future of Toowoomba is confirmed.
Until the citizens of the town of Toowoomba are united, there can be no solution to the water problem. The battle between CADS and the rest of the population continues. A practical application that will reduce the amount of water wasted must be implemented, and yet, it cannot until a firm decision has been made.
The future of Toowoomba is not yet certain. There will come a time when the town agrees on a single, viable option, but until that time comes, uncertainty will continue over the water problems.
Russ Egan
July 19th, 2006 at 2:21 pm
More misleading information:
“This drought has emptied the dams that supply water to the city”
Toowoomba’s 3 dams are just above 20% full with backup water available from bores and the great artesian basin.
“The sole purpose of CADS is to criticise all the suggestions that the council puts forward. Rather than try to come up with possible solutions of their own, they seem to be content with making all other plans fail.”
Completely wrong. It is the Toowoomba City Council which continues to ignore the other options. Council now dismisses the irrigators’ plan to supply water to Toowoomba. This could be done quickly. Council’s excuse - it would mean a change of policy.
“Reverse Osmosis is used in several cities throughout the world with no health problems resulting from it.”
No other city in the world uses planned indirect potable reuse at the 25% level proposed by Mayor Thorley. None! It is an experiment.
“Without water the entire town will slowly die.”
With the Water Futures project, there is insufficient water produced. It means the surrounding farming community dies as water flows are cut to the Gowrie-Oakey Creek farmers.
Why won’t Mayor Thorley tell us where the RO waste stream is going?
Acland Coal don’t want it. She will need to resume land and build evaporation ponds which will double the project costs. But she won’t tell you that.
August 5th, 2006 at 4:37 pm
Hello John
Thanks for your comment and please accept my apologies for not posting it sooner. Sadly it was buried under a ton of spam about everything from poker games to some fool in China who kept posting huge lists of links … in Chinese.
The amount of spam comments Hervey Bay Gossip gets is huge and despite the fact that none of it ever reaches anywhere people can see it spammers never give up trying to slip something through.
I was interested in your comments and it’s a shame that they didn’t get posted before the referendum last weekend. It would have been interesting to pursue some of the points you raised but now there doesn’t seem much point.
However one thing does concern me about the whole debate that we saw from a distance. The pro vote presented their points logically and calmly. The people who were against the scheme seemed to become rather hysterical in their attempt to get their point across.
Maybe I’m wrong but that was just the way it appeared to from Hervey Bay.
August 20th, 2006 at 12:05 am
The pro-vote was anything but logical and calm. Some of the No campaigners were on the fringe I admit(!) but it was the no campaign in general which was handled with dignity. Not being in Toowoomba, you wouldn’t be aware of the threat campaign that underscored the Mayor’s attempts to introduce recycled sewage for drinking.
Individuals and businesses were clearly threatened in attempts to get yes votes. Council employees were threatened with the sack if they voted no. Part of the no vote was the city passing judgement on the Mayor. Who in their right mind would vote themselves $460,000 for their campaign and nothing for the no campaign led by the 3 dissenting councillors?
We joked that Mayor Thorley was secretly working for the no campaign. The PR campaign run by TCC was a disaster from the start and didn’t help them.
PS I agree about the spammers - will they ever be defeated?
August 20th, 2006 at 5:34 am
Hi John
Thanks again for your comments - they certainly do throw a different light on the situation. I don’t think that most people outside of the town even realised that there were unresolved technical problems.
As for spam … well there are basically two types. One is a blatant attempt to attract people to something that the spammers are trying to sell and the only way to combat that is if merchants refused to take sales from spammers. While every merchant has a ‘motherhood’ statement about spammers in their terms of service few pay any attention to it. Merchants like to make sales and spammers certainly send them plenty of surfers who want to buy.
The only way for that type of spammer to be stopped is if people stop clicking on their links - sadly that’s never likely to happen.
The other form of spammer is the one who attempts to boost the popularity of his or her site by getting as many links to their site from as many other sites that Google likes as possible. Basically that’s an exercise in futility but people still keep trying and ther’s probably nothing that will stop them.
John I’ve been trying to email you too but they keep bouncing - I wonder if you might contact me at stuart at herveybaygossip.com - just change the ‘at’ to the usual symbol.