Give a dam
Tuesday’s article “Toowoomba to Emu Swamp pipeline?” by Elizabeth Voneiff of the Stanthorpe Record showed that it’s not just POW! that’s concerned about the cost to ratepayers of water infrastructure proposals. The Stanthorpe & Granite Belt Chamber of Commerce is also concerned, although possibly only about options that compete with Emu Swamp Dam.
In its one and a half page submission on the Toowoomba to Warwick Pipeline Feasibility Study the Chamber worried that:
The Southern Downs Regional Council has a low ratepayer base, an aging population and a lower average annual income compared with the broader Darling Downs region. The feasibility of running or owning the scheme may prove to be too high of a cost and the burden placed on the ratepayers of the Southern Downs would not be manageable.
Strangely the Chamber has had no such concerns about the burden on Council and ratepayers of investing $3.5 million (and counting) of capital in Emu Swamp Dam or the $250,000 of estimated annual operating costs (again, likely much higher), payable whether or not the Council takes any water from the dam.
In its letter to the Premier of 1 July 2022 the Chamber went further, warning of a rates rise if Council was involved in a pipeline:
The ongoing operational costs, whether the pipeline is delivering water or not, will require the Southern Downs Regional Council (SDRC) to provision for depreciation and maintenance in its annual budget which comes from the ratepayers. It is highly likely that all water rates across the SDRC Local Government Area will need to rise significantly to pay for the pipeline.
Look, I get it that reading a 193 page feasibility study is boring, and hard going at times. Maybe Chamber didn’t make it to page 188. Because if they did they would have noticed that the Toowoomba pipeline feasibility study said
As the preferred treated water pipeline option is a shared pipeline, the following ownership options are possible ... a third party such as Seqwater ... owns and operates the pipeline and the two Councils pay for access to the pipeline.
Putting that in plain language for the Chamber, COUNCIL DOES NOT HAVE TO OWN AND OPERATE THE PIPELINE. Nor pay for its annual operating and maintenance costs. Page 189 of the feasibility study says
The funding arrangements for ongoing O&M costs have not formally been established at this time. Funding arrangements could involve ... funding wholly [by a] ... third-party entity with cost recovery from bulk water customers or funding by government.
Even clearer? The State government may provide the funding. Or a third party entity (such as a State government owned water company) might pay, and simply charge a fee to SDRC and TRC as bulk water customers.
It’s not just the Chamber that’s worried about the costs of any option that competes with Emu Swamp Dam. Emu Swamp Dam is also a pet project of Mayor Vic Pennisi, and during his interview with David Iliffe on ABC Southern Queensland on 29 April 2022 the Mayor seemed quite vexed by the cost to Council of owning dams. He said:
Connolly Dam … we need to find $20 million to maintain it at the current standards of engineering that’s imposed on us. Storm King Dam is having an assessment as we speak. We don’t know how much that’s going to cost us to maintain at the current standard.
Do most Queensland councils have these worries? No they don’t. To put it in context, only seven of Queensland’s 77 local government authorities own and operate dams for town water. And for three of those seven the dam is not the main urban water supply. Right here in Southern Downs, Sunwater owns and operates Leslie Dam which is Warwick’s main supply. Council pays a bulk water charge for water from Leslie Dam. Council is not responsible for any operational or maintenance costs or for safety or other upgrades to Leslie Dam. That’s all done by the owner, Sunwater.
Similarly the Brisbane City Council doesn’t pay any of these costs for the dams that provide water to Brisbane. Brisbane City Council simply pays a bulk water charge for the water used.
So I’ve got a big bold idea for the Mayor. Maybe he should “give a dam” and let a water infrastructure expert own and manage Connolly Dam and Storm King Dam. After all, that way all of these enormous and frankly worrying costs won’t be paid by ratepayers. We’d become like almost every other Council in Queensland, paying a water operator based on a bulk water charge.
Who would you trust more to own, manage and maintain your large water infrastructure? An expert water operator or our Council? That’s a no-brainer for me.
More to the point, who do you think is best placed to pay for water infrastructure and upgrades – a properly funded State government entity or SDRC ratepayers? Maybe the time has come to hand the ownership of large water infrastructure over to organisations that know what they are doing. And who knows, our urban water supply might even last us a little longer in the next drought under the management of water experts!