Regional Water Assessment update

To recap a recent post, the Queensland Department of Water has said that the Council should be updating residents on the progress of the Regional Water Assessment (RWA).  Our reluctant Council has shown no enthusiasm for providing updates, notwithstanding the clear intent of the Local Government Act which requires transparency and meaningful community engagement.

Given this vacuum of information, and particularly as other groups involved in the RWA are updating their members, POW! steps up to let residents know what’s going on.

The RWA had already shortlisted the Warwick to Stanthorpe (via Connolly Dam) pipeline and the expansion of the Stanthorpe Recycled Water Scheme.

Emu Swamp Dam had made no progress on securing its funding, had not applied for its planning approvals, had not produced an updated Business Case and has now terminated all of the land and investor contracts for the dam.  As there is therefore no certainty that it will proceed, it was removed as a “given” in the RWA and was included as simply another option in the RWA process.  It has now been through an initial filtering process, together with 6 previously shelved options.  Of these 7 options, 4 have been selected to progress to a multi-criteria analysis to determine which are shortlisted.  These projects are:  

• ·Ballandean Dam

• Granite Belt Irrigation Project (Emu Swamp Dam)

• Raising Storm King Dam

• Severn River Offstream Storage

The multi-criteria analysis of these 4 new options commenced this week.  We’ll update you once we know which of them, if any, are short-listed.  Any such project would then join the Warwick to Stanthorpe pipeline and the expansion of the Stanthorpe Recycled Water Scheme for detailed analysis in the RWA.

1 April 2023