A battle is brewing in South-East Queensland over water. Despite heavy rains and flooding, the water supply authority, Seqwater, has flagged the need to find more water sources to keep up with urban growth.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has already expressed a preference for building a desalination plant on the Sunshine Coast instead of using recycled water. Perhaps her government wants to avoid a repeat of the divisive 2006 debate over water recycling in Toowoomba – dubbed “Poowoomba” at the time.
Our new book, Cities in a Sunburnt Country, traces the fraught history with recycled water in Australia’s biggest cities. A focus on expanding capacity to extract or produce more potable water has dominated urban water policy in Australia. City residents have come to expect abundant water from sources they perceive as “pure”: dams, aquifers and desalination.
