REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE

ON February 28, 2017, The Chronicle published a letter from myself under the heading “Water recycling may become compulsory” in which the penultimate paragraph was … “I urge Toowoomba Regional Council to dust off the Water Futures report of 2006, review it and bring it up to date with the latest technology, and then bring it back into the public forum for discussion”.

Exactly one year later, on February 28, 2018, The Chronicle published another of my letters in which I raised a number of issues including the curious fact that council’s adopted operational procedures were to start pumping out of Wivenhoe when its dams fell to 40% but that the next severe level of restrictions on water use would be applied if the dams ever reached 30%, and asked “… if this means council would rather ‘pump and charge’ than involve its ratepayers in the co-management of dwindling water resources through the progressive application of restrictions”.

I’m pretty sure we all now know the answer to that one.

On September 2, 2019, The Chronicle ran a story “Pipeline cost revealed” which outlined the council’s apparent sudden awareness that using Wivenhoe water as a matter of on-going necessity is going to be very expensive. Duh!

The feature also touches on the “pie in the sky” ruminations of how our future long-term water security might be underwritten e.g. a new dam (Emu Creek?) or another pipeline this time from the Clarence River (”Where?” I hear you ask).

So after cast iron assurances by essentially the present bunch of councillors over three terms in office, that Wivenhoe was the answer, suddenly the council has been forced – by nature – to own up to its own lack of foresight in allowing rampant development to ravage and jeopardise our water security while at the same time not having the intestinal fortitude to have tightened water restrictions years ago, as a precautionary measure.

From time to time, ratepayers have been bombarded with the mantra “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”, a worthy and necessary maxim, which as far as this council is concerned applies only to solid waste. Witness the money spent on a transfer station at O’Mara Rd with another recently announced to be built at Kleinton.

But why does “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” not apply to the water supplies?

Clearly the council is reluctant to “reduce” demand (and revenue?) by applying restrictions (not a vote winner); is only “reusing” by selling part treated waste water to Acland (easy option that does nothing for the demand for potable water); and is “recycling” absolutely nothing (lack of understanding or confidence in the capability of engineers, as opposed to the pseudo-politics of being a councillor).

As I wrote in the last paragraph of my letter of more than two years ago about recycling waste water… “You know someone’s going to have to do it one day, so why not start the process now?”

TONY LAKE, Meringandan West