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“The Mayor of Toowoomba, Di Thorley, says the case for water recycling in Australia has been dealt a severe blow as a result of yesterday’s poll in the south-east Queensland city.

Around 60 per cent of residents have voted ‘no’ to a plan to draw 25 per cent of the city’s water from recycled effluent.”

… reports ABC Online.

Luke left the following comment earlier this morning at an earlier blog post on this issue:

“And there you have it – should put the sword through any other politicians trying to run the agenda for some time. A powerful option gone from the toolkit.”

Yet the front page of today’s The Sunday Mail includes the headline:

“Recycled Water Vote No, But Beattie sets date for new southeast referendum”.

Last Friday, before the vote was lost, Graham Young blogging at Ambit Gambit, suggested it was not a bad election issue for the Premier to run on.

It is interesting to ponder why Toowoomba voted against waste water recycling.

The ‘no campaign’ played on the ‘yuk’ factor and it is unclear to what extent the push was supported by local irrigators who have been using the city’s sewage to water their lucerne for about 60 years.

Perhaps the outcome could be seen as one group of resource users out-smarting a city council so they retain access to ‘cheap water’ so they can keep growing lucerne for their cows?

My understanding is that Goulburn will soon be drinking recycled sewage and that there will not be a referendum.

Economics and science would suggest that recycling waste water is the way to go for places like Toowoomba and Brisbane, but now it seems politics is getting in the way?

Interestingly I support the Australian Greens on this issue. Since 2004 it has been their policy to:

“Implement national policies that facilitate a decrease in per capita consumption of fresh water and expand opportunities for its re-use.”

………………………….

Update next day, 31st July

I expanded this blog piece into an article titled ‘Democracy versus leadership in Poowoomba’ published this morning by On Line Opinion which you can read by clicking here http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=4742 .

Was it former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, Australian Democrat Senator Andrew Bartlett or Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull?

Who convinced Queensland’s Premier Beattie to change his mind on recycling sewage as a source of drinking water?

They have each visited my home town of Brisbane over the last week and each publicly announced their support for the concept.

Now the Premier says he’s going to put the idea to the people of Brisbane.

That is quite a back flip.

Until recently Peter Beattie had been promising new dams, desalination plants and even piping water over 1,000 kms from the Burdekin to fix Brisbane’s water shortage, but had ruled out waste water recycling. Now he says recycling is a possibility – that he will make it an election issue.

You can read about Andrew Bartlett’s petition in favor of recycling at his website and Mikhail Gorbachev and Malcolm Turnbull’s comments in The Australian here, here and here.

I attended the Brisbane Institute last night to hear Malcolm Turnbull speak and he really was eloquent. On the subject of recycled water he suggested that:

“We must learn to judge water by its quality, not its history”.

He also commented that permanent water restrictions in Brisbane make no more sense than would permanent electricity restrictions. He indicated that the current water restrictions reflected a lack of investment in infrastructure by state governments and spoke about the referendum on waste water recycling in Toowoomba this Saturday.

I wrote in support of sipping sewage in last week’s The Land and blogged on the issue last August.