July 12, 2021
The half of Hivesville households not connected to the Proston Water Supply Scheme (PWSS) seem unlikely to get connected any time soon.
At last week’s South Burnett Regional Council Infrastructure standing committee meeting, Cr Kathy Duff noted that while the PWSS’ annual allocation was 500 megalitres, this year’s usage seemed likely to come in at 350 megalitres.
She wondered if the unused allocation could be used to supply reticulated water to households in Hivesville, where half the village’s residents were currently forced to rely on tanks.
She also said several farming properties in nearby Fairdale had expressed interest in getting connected to the scheme.
Cr Duff said the Hivesville issue had been raised with her by local firefighters, who were concerned the lack of reticulated supply through the whole village could pose a risk to residents in an emergency.
Precisely that situation had occurred a few years ago when firefighters had been unable to save a house because they could not access enough water, Cr Duff said.
Council officers explained the PWSS was part of a regional water allocation taken out by the Council, where usage was assessed on a “whole of region” basis and any excess use was punished with heavy fines.
This meant that while the PWSS may be under-used this year, the excess would be applied elsewhere in the system to make up for any overruns.
For example, it seemed likely that Kingaroy would exceed its annual allocation of 1150 megalitres this year, so some of Proston’s allocation would be applied to Kingaroy to remedy that.
Cr Duff then asked if officers had any idea about how much it would cost to reticulate water to the village.
Officers said the main cost would be in building water reservoirs and they estimated such a system could cost as much as $11 million.
However, they planned to bring a detailed report and preliminary costings to Council in August.
Cr Kirstie Schumacher said the 2016 census reported Hivesville’s population was 169.
She asked officers if they could include an estimate of population growth and estimated economic growth in Hivesville between 2016 and 2021.
She said she wanted to understand what the cost/benefit would be of spending $11 million to connect the unconnected houses.
