Drinking recycled water 'inevitable', council water manager Bruce Logan tells water forum

Tamworth Regional Council currently aims to use 100 per cent of the water recycled at the Westdale Wastewater Treatment Plant on an Effluent Reuse Farm to irrigate fodder farming operations.

Director of water and waste Bruce Logan told a packed forum on Tuesday night that it would be better to add it to the drinking supply.

"I don't think that in five to 10 years' time, we will be using all that water on that farm," he said.

"There are better ways to make use of that water. And I think some form of indirect or direct potable reuse is inevitable, really, and that's the way the council is structured."

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Council retains the right to direct some recycled wastewater away from the farm to other uses, he said.

The potential of water recycling was a major theme of the water forum, convened at Wests Leagues Club on Tuesday night by the Tamworth Water Security Alliance.

Water professor Stuart Khan said the evidence of communities that had adopted water recycling was that it took about a decade of education. Regulators and health authorities can also take years to approve recycled water schemes, he said.

Perth, Sydney, El Paso, Texas and Namibia's capital Windhoek are all supplied recycled water through various means, he said.

In an interview with the Leader after the forum, he said it was a good idea to start on the road to recycling drinking water soon.

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"I think probably most inland and many coastal towns and cities around Australia are on the road there," he said.

"What do you want to call the future, are we talking 10 years or are we talking 50 years?

"Over that longer horizon that's what we're going to be doing.

"That's the most sustainable, obvious available source of water in inland environments.

"I think it's almost inconceivable that that won't be an important drinking supply, so it's a question of when, not if.

"So Tamworth is definitely on that journey. But I wouldn't like to put a date by which time they arrive at that destination."

Mr Logan said convincing the community of the merits of the idea was a challenge of communication that should be met by higher levels of government, because the issue is a universal one.

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"I think that the state needs to have, and indeed the nation, needs to have a discussion," he said.

"I don't think it's much sense for Tamworth Regional Council talking about a particular issue for Tamworth when that same issue is equally applicable to everyone that lives in NSW.

"And so it doesn't make sense, in my view, for the council to spend its money, communicating with its residents about an issue that is equally applicable to virtually 100 per cent of the rest of the state.

"Therefore, I think it's a state government's responsibility to start that communication, pay for communication and do it statewide."

Tamworth council has plans to develop a $105 million water purification plant, recycling waste water left over from the city's abattoirs for industrial use.

Scores of towns and cities ran near dry across western NSW in the 2019 drought, sparking a parliamentary inquiry which considered the issue, among others. But little has happened in the years since.

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The state government rejected the idea of "direct potable reuse" - using recycled water for town water - as a solution during the process which led the government to back the $1.3 billion Dungowan Dam scheme. Recycling didn't make the shortlist because the government assessed it as having "low community support".

Tamworth Water Security Alliance member Graham Carter said the the purpose of the forum was to start the conversation about some of the solutions to the city's water security crisis.

"The intention was to start the conversation; saying really, look, we need to have this conversation about immediate needs and focus on water and solutions," he said.

"The starting point was 'floods follow drought, droughts follow floods'. We have to prepare. Even if Dungowan Dam is built, it'll be 10 years before the benefit is derived, so we have to have urgent action."

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