By November 2017 Tweed Shire's est. 93,458 residents faced a water security trifecta.
Floods in the first quarter of the year had affected water quality and local infrastructure, a tidal anomaly in August had caused saltwater to enter the Bray Park Weir, the following month Terranora Lagoon was contaminated by raw sewerage from the treatment plant and the walls of Clarrie Hall dam still needed raising to cope with urban water needs.
Water sustainability still remains an issue in 2018.
In this case it appears to be Black Mount Pty Ltd and Mt. Warning Spring Water Company's commercial water supply needs which are the main culprit.......
Echo
NetDaily, 13
April 2018:
A call for the halt of
water mining in the Tweed Valley has been made by NSW Greens MP and North
Coast spokesperson, Dawn Walker in state parliament this week and is
supported by the Tweed Water Alliance. Concerns over the
impact on underground water resources, alleged poor compliance with
extraction licenses and the damage caused by heavy vehicles have all been
raised.
‘Water is our most
precious resource and gigalitres of water beneath Tweed Valley are being sucked
up and bottled for commercial profit, leaving the community high and dry with
the impacts. Water mining licences are being handed out by the government without
adequate monitoring and in many cases, water meters haven’t even been
installed,’ said Ms Walker.
Water mining licences
are controlled by the state government while work on the property and
permission for truck movements are controlled by the local council.
‘We certainly support
the ban,’ said Jeremy Tager, spokesperson for the Tweed
water alliance
who believes the water extraction companies are ‘operating lawlessly’.
‘Extracting water is a
lose lose prospect for here and most other places. Water is taken away from
local users; it creates little or no employment as most of the operators are
water transporters. That means the trucks come in and get filled up and then
are taken away to be bottled elsewhere.
‘They only pay a a small
road contribution to drive these big trucks on rural roads that were never
designed for them.’
In December 2017 the
Tweed council voted to amend their LEP (local environment plan) 2014 to remove
the clause that the previous council had put in to allow water extraction for
bottling water in the Tweed shire. This has been sent to the state government
for approval as part of the Gateway process. If the state government decide
that the change can proceed then Tweed council will be able to put the LEP
amendment on public display.
The state government can
also request that a ‘savings clause’ be put in that would allow current
applications that are waring to be assessed to be allowed.
Echonetdaily asked
the state government what the time frame for responding to the Tweeds request
for removing the water mining clause from the LEP was and if they would request
the inclusion of a ‘savings clause’.
A spokesperson for the
department of planning and environment responded stating that; ‘The department
is currently in the early stages of assessing a proposal from Tweed Shire
council to remove the water extraction and bottling clause to the Tweed Shire
2014 LEP.
Local extractor takes
council to court
Larry Karlos, a local
water extractor, is currently taking the Tweed Council to the Land and
Environment court to appeal their decision not to allow them to increase the
size of the trucks they use to transport water from six meters to nineteen
meters.
‘The council refused the
application for 19m trucks because they felt that the road was no suitable for
that size truck,’ said Tweed Mayor Katie Milne.
‘Urlip Road is really
narrow and in some places it is only one lane. There are also areas where it is
very steep on one side and has a steep drop off on the other.
ABC
News, 21
March 2018:
It's the new battle in
the bush — the bottled water wars.
On one side is
Australia's $800-million-a-year bottled water industry and its suppliers, on
the other, rural residents who fear their most precious resource, groundwater,
is being squandered.
"It's dividing the
local community," said Larry Karlos, one of half a dozen water extractors
in the Tweed Valley in northern New South Wales.
He's been pumping water
from an aquifer beneath his property for 16 years.
But his recent bid to
increase the amount he sells to bottling companies has ignited local
opposition.
Fourth-generation farmer
Patrick O'Brien fears his children's future is being jeopardised for the profit
of the water industry.
"If they don't stop
this type of thing then, you know, what's going to be left?" he told 7.30.
“What's going to left
for future generations? No-one was really worried when they were trucking the
water out in small amounts, but then they want more, they want more trips, they
want bigger trucks."
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