November 2, 2017
The South Burnett Regional Council has kicked off a long-term plan to connect Kingaroy’s water supply to Nanango.
At last week’s Special Meeting to adopt the 2016-17 Annual Report, the Council awarded a $952,000 tender to local business Burnett Water Services to supply materials to upgrade the Mount Wooroolin Water Supply Main.
The upgrade is a vital link in supplying Kingaroy with water from the new Gordonbrook Water Treatment Plant.
Mayor Keith Campbell said the project not only continues a planned six-year upgrade of Kingaroy’s water supply system, but is a necessary step in the Council’s longer-term plan of connecting Nanango to Kingaroy’s water supply.
The Mayor said the Council ultimately hope to build a 20km pipeline between the two towns.
The new pipeline would not only supply Nanango with better quality water than residents currently get from the Barkers Creek aquifer, but would also open up the possibility of sending Nanango’s sewage waste back to Kingaroy via a second pipe.
The sewage could then be treated by the new Kingaroy Waste Water Treatment Plant, eliminating the need to upgrade Nanango’s ageing waste water treatment plant.
The Mayor said the new Kingaroy Waste Water Treatment Plant had plenty of spare capacity at present, and would be relatively inexpensive to upgrade in future if population growth required it.
“We’d only need to build another tank,” the Mayor said.
“The way the new plant works, the bigger the volume of waste water it processes, the more efficient it is.”
The Mayor said the biggest cost of the Kingaroy-Nanango project was the pipeline itself.
The Council is getting estimates on the pipeline’s cost, but is unlikely to have a full feasibility study prepared until next financial year.
However, he expected it would be a major outlay even with co-funding from the State or Federal Governments.
Because of this the Mayor thought the project was unlikely to happen in the next few years.
But he confirmed the pipeline project is currently being discussed at Portfolio meetings and the Council will press ahead with it when it is in a financial position to do so.
The Mayor said the Council is also considering a similar long-term plan to connect Murgon and Wondai.
Murgon’s water treatment plant on Barambah Creek was recently upgraded, but is also approaching the end of its working life.
Connecting the two towns with a pipeline to avoid duplicating processing plants would make similar sense.
