Councillor taps into a refreshing solution

A TWEED Shire councillor wants to bottle tap water to put an end to the long-running water-mining wars.

Pryce Allsop will propose the motion at Thursday’s council meeting. He says bottlers will continue to demand water, meaning they will go elsewhere if council simply bans water mining.

“If our local businesses were to cease the extraction of water it would seem that we would be simply passing the baton and allowing the opportunity for ground extraction from aquifers outside of our own valley,” Cr Allsop said.

“It would seem logical that to alleviate some of the demand away from the water extraction industry that we bottle good old-fashioned purified water. Ideally, we would utilise recycled glass to bottle package our product.”

Four northern NSW businesses are extracting water and selling it to bottlers in Queensland.

Environmentalists have reached boiling point, protesting again yesterday because the council has not shut down the area’s water mines.

The protest was held outside Tweed Shire Council’s Murwillumbah office as representative of two anti-water mining groups met with Green mayor Katie Milne and council officers.

Cr Allsop said the succcess of his plan would depend on consumers.

“The consumer would have the opportunity to make this product of Tweed a success or a failure,” the motion reads.