Great to see council acknowledging the fine support provided by the ADF’s Combat Engineer Regiment in setting-up a water purification & desalination system in Brogo to support the provision of 400,000 litres of fresh water to Quaama, Cobargo & Bermagui, during this month’s water restrictions.
Not so edifying is council’s corresponding effort to bask in the ADF’s reflected glory by providing a detailed account of its own efforts in trucking large quantities of drinking water from Bega for the same purpose.
According to the latest edition of
Council News, during this month’s
Level 4 Water Restrictions, our heroic council trucked around 10M litres of drinking water from Bega in support of that effort, providing up to 1M litres of water a day at a cost of $30,000.
Council claims that the cost of the exercise amounted to $300,000.
Based on the council’s numbers, the cartage costs amounted to $0.03 per litre. Given that a typical water tanker moves 12,000 litres per load, those same numbers would suggest that council has been paying $360 per load to move water that it already owns.
The association suggests that would be an exorbitant price to pay, give local communities dependent on tank water have been paying around $260 a load, which includes the cost of the water.
The association can’t imagine why the state government would pay council for its water, as well as for the privilege of carting it, which suggests that council appears to have been overly generous in the amount it was prepared to pay for the water to be carted (on the basis that the state government would be picking-up the tab), or it may actually have overstated the cartage costs in the hope of pocketing a profit from the exercise on the way through.
Looks like somebody did.
John Richardson
Secretary/Treasurer
Bega Valley Shire Residents & Ratepayers Association
Tel: 0264945669
Email: secretary@begavalleyshireratepayers.asn.au
Website: http://www.begavalleyshireratepayers.asn.au