Letter whets appetites Powerbrokers support Burdekin- Ross pipeline

FORMER water board chairman Ian Hamilton has plumbed an “immediate” solution to Townsville’s water supply crisis and three civic leaders agree in all but the delicate matter of who pays.

Townsville City Council water and waste committee chairman Paul Jacob said State and Federal governments, and not ratepayers, should fund the solution, while State Member for Townsville Scott Stewart believed the council, State and Federal governments should have “skin in the game”, adding the feds should pay the “lion’s share” because they collect most of the taxes.

Herbert federal MP Cathy O’Toole says the costs should be shared between the three levels of government.

In a letter to the Bulletin this week, Mr Hamilton suggested a gravity- fed pipeline be built from the Burdekin Falls Dam to perpetually top up Townsville’s Ross Dam to remove the need for onerous restrictions and the “heartbreak of watching our city turn brown”.

He also suggested a treatment plant be built at Toonpan, as had been suggested by the former Townsville and Thuringowa Water Supply Board, but for which $ 30 mil- lion in federal funding had been “spent elsewhere” by the Townsville council in 2008.

Cr Jacob said be believed the money was spent on upgrades to the Douglas water treatment plant and the Mount St John sewerage plant.

“I believe the need for those was greater at the time,” he said.

But he agreed the Toonpan project would be critical for treating Burdekin water via the Haughton channel and pipe- line and feeding it into Townsville’s reticulated system.

At present up to 30 per cent of water fed to the Ross Dam is lost in evaporation and seepage along a 6km- long earth channel leading into the dam.

Cr Jacob said a gravity- fed pipeline was a “good medium to long- term option”.

But he did not want to spend ratepayers’ money and disagreed with Mr Hamilton’s view that most “ratepayers would prefer to pay extra to avoid Level 3 restrictions”.

Mr Stewart said Mr Hamilton’s letter was “great”.

“A Toonpan water treatment plant, I’m all for that,” he said.

He was also “100 per cent in agreement” with a gravity- fed pipeline feeding into a treatment plant to prevent losses.

Ms O’Toole agreed, saying water gravity- fed into a treatment plant was “exactly what we should be looking for”.

“The Burdekin Dam is where we should be looking for a solution,” Ms O’Toole said.