Residents of a Queensland town buy water because of its smell and color — ABC News Australia
In the town of Hughenden in Queensland, many residents have stopped drinking tap water because of its unpleasant smell, taste and brown color. Families spend more than A$50 a week on bottled water, ABC News Australia reports.
Marie Christensen, manager of a local grocery store, said customers choose bottled water because of the smell, taste and color of tap water. According to her, local residents buy more than 800 liters of water every week at her store alone. Shelves with 10-liter bottles have to be restocked three to six times a day.
A local cafe has also switched to using bottled water, including for coffee machines, to avoid problems with the taste of drinks and equipment maintenance.
Aging boreholes
Flinders Shire Mayor Kate Peddle said she had run a bath for children and the water was brown. The average service life of a borehole in the Great Artesian Basin is about 60 years, but most of the boreholes serving Hughenden are considerably older. One of the oldest was built in 1902.
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Replacing each borehole would cost about A$1 million. According to Peddle, local authorities allocate available funds each year to upgrade the old network, but mostly have to repair broken sections instead of carrying out planned infrastructure replacement.
Funding for the water system
According to an estimate by the Local Government Association, the cost of urgent work at Queensland water supply facilities exceeds A$5 billion. Queensland Water chief executive Georgina Davis linked the problem to aging networks, much of which were built between 1945 and the 1970s, as well as the end of ongoing funding for water infrastructure in the state in 2009.
Hughenden expects its population to grow by 50% over the next six years. The town is the main hub of the A$14 million CopperString project, which is intended to connect the west of the state to the national electricity market. According to Peddle, this project helped secure A$20 million in government funding for a water treatment plant.
Construction of the plant will take several years, while upgrading other parts of the system is estimated to require another A$15 million. The Queensland government said it supports local councils through the ongoing A$100 million Works For QLD program and the A$2 billion Residential Activation Fund.
