{"id":229633,"date":"2019-02-25T19:58:06","date_gmt":"2019-02-25T09:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/?p=229633"},"modified":"2020-07-01T08:29:49","modified_gmt":"2020-06-30T22:29:49","slug":"council-cuts-swickers-water-charges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/2019\/02\/25\/council-cuts-swickers-water-charges\/","title":{"rendered":"Council Cuts Swickers’ Water Charges"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Swickers Kingaroy Bacon Factory will get further relief from water charges after ongoing drought conditions forced the company to substantially increase its town water use<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

February 25, 2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

South Burnett Regional Council will temporarily cut Swickers’ water charges to help one of the region’s largest employers save money during a downturn in the pork industry.<\/p>\n

At last week’s Council meeting, Councillors agreed to a request from the company to reduce its water usage charges.<\/p>\n

Swickers had requested that a Tier 1 charge of $1.64 per kilolitre be applied to their plant’s water consumption.<\/p>\n

Councillors voted to charge the company $1.64 for the first 20,000 kilolitres of water used in each six-month period this financial year.<\/p>\n

A Tier 2 charge of $2.20 per kilolitre would then be levied for all water used above 20,000 kilolitres in each six-month period.<\/p>\n

They also accepted a recommendation from Council officers that the situation be reviewed in June to determine if the concession should be extended for a further year to June 2020.<\/p>\n

The reduction in water usage charges is not the first Swickers has sought.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In October 2017, the company told Council its costs were blowing out because of high water usage charges, which threatened its viability.<\/p>\n

Council reduced Swickers\u2019 tariff from Level 6 to Level 1 from September 1 to December 31 that year.<\/p>\n

It also promised to review the situation in January 2018 and consider a further six-month extension if the situation had not improved.<\/p>\n

Councillors were told the root cause of the problem was that the ongoing drought had severely impacted the company\u2019s internal water supply.<\/p>\n

This meant Swickers had to rely on town water to maintain their business.<\/p>\n

In June 2018, the Council reduced its former six-tier water charges system to just three tiers as part of its 2018-19 Budget in an effort to provide some cost relief to high-volume users.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A meeting called by Mayor Keith Campbell to discuss the region’s water needs last November heard Swickers was still spending a \u201ccrippling\u201d $50,000 a month on water.<\/p>\n

At last week’s Council meeting, Finance portfolio chair Cr Ros Heit – who moved the motion – said the decision to grant further relief to Swickers was “challenging”.<\/p>\n

“Obviously, we want to sell the water to recover our expenses. But at the same time, Swickers is a very large employer and it uses a lot of water.<\/p>\n

“It’s a bit of a balancing act but I think – on balance – this is a good thing to do to ensure that Swickers will continue, which is what we want even though this does come at a cost to Council.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mayor Campbell said the tier system had been implemented to discourage the overuse of water.<\/p>\n

“But there is another side to the usage of volumes of water, and that is business that depends on water for the creation of their operation,” Mayor Campbell said.<\/p>\n

He said this was “a situation of necessity to ensure that this business continues to function”.<\/p>\n

Cr Terry Fleischfresser said as far as he was concerned, the decision was a “no brainer”.<\/p>\n

Councillors voted unanimously to agree to Swickers’ request, with Cr Jones and Potter absent from the room due to a conflict of interest.<\/p>\n