EDITION 61, JUNE 2015
Cairns reclaims Top Drop Title Cairns Regional Council reclaimed the title to the top drop in Far North Queensland when attendees at the Queensland Water Directorate’s regional conference selected water from its Mountain View Water Treatment Plant as the best tasting from nine samples across the region at the 2015 Ixom Best of the Best Queensland Water Taste Test on Friday, 8 May 2015. Cairns Mayor Bob Manning said the win came as no surprise. “We are lucky to have some of the best water in Queensland,” Cr Manning said. “And the residents of Mountain View are getting the best of the best. “This might be one of our smallest catchments, but the quality speaks for itself. With water sourced from a tropical mountain creek, you could not ask for a more pristine water supply.” Mountain View treatment plan sources water from the Little Mulgrave River and supplies 30 connections in a rural locality to the south-west of Cairns. Water passes through a 50-micron pre-filter screen then through an additional two sets of bag filters, which screen down to 1-micron (or one thousandth of a millimetre), before passing through
a UV disinfection system, and into the water storage reservoirs. Once in the storage reservoirs the water disinfection is automatically sampled, monitored and maintained with residual chlorination up to the delivery through the network to consumers. Queensland Water Directorate (qldwater) CEO, Dave Cameron, said the event marked the end of the tenth annual Water Connections Tour where representatives from the water industry and state government this year visited remote communities in Far North Queensland to learn more about the issues faced in providing water and sewerage services. “The water industry continues to experience numerous challenges from extreme weather events, removal of subsidies for building new infrastructure, downward pressure on prices, red tape reduction and an ageing asset base, all of which impact the way water service providers – including councils – manage water and sewerage within their communities,” Mr Cameron said. “Most customers are happy when the tap works and the toilet flushes and probably only think about who provide these services when they are paying their bills or when something goes wrong. The aim of the taste test is to raise awareness of the hard work that happens behind the scenes to ensure we all have safe, clean drinking water when we turn on the tap.” “Our conferences this year focus on customers, innovation to reduce costs and industry skills and capacity. Industry collaboration in Queensland is exceptional and the events we have held in Cairns have been some of the best anywhere.” With 75 drinking water service providers around the state - mostly owned and run by local government organisations - and over 300 schemes (or community water supplies), the quest to find the top drop of tap water in Queensland is divided into six regional semi-finals before the final six go head to head at a State Finals event in November 2015. With the taste test now crossing borders into NSW,
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the overall winner of the 2014 Best of the Best Queensland Water Taste Test, Richmond Shire Council, will take on NSW winner Orange City Council at the Water of Origin taste test event to be held at the Water Industry Operators Association of Australia (WIOA) Queensland Conference in Toowoomba on 17 & 18 June 2015. Livingstone Shire Council won the first regional title for 2015 in Central Queensland at a Rockhampton event in April. Other regional taste test events for 2015 are scheduled for Barcaldine on 15 June, Ingham on 23 June, St George on 31 July and the Gold Coast on 20 August, culminating in the grand final event on the Sunshine Coast on 5 November. Kindly hosted by Cairns Regional Council, the Cairns event provided an opportunity for Far North Queensland Water Service Providers to share water management information.
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