, which doesn’t include operating costs of the dam.
“A new dam has always been about supporting irrigation use in the Peel Valley, not about securing water for the towns.”that the majority of Peel Valley residents have been forced to make sacrifices in water consumption for the benefit of a minority of irrigators. “Despite Chaffey Dam being at 93.5% capacity at the start of the 2017/18 water year,” Collins said. “The crisis arose because water allocations to irrigators were not reduced adequately to ensure enough water was held back to protect Tamworth’s allocations.”Collins stated that the Peel Valley gives generous allocations to general licence irrigators, something that’s rarely done anywhere else in Australia.
Peter Gill, a Tamworth resident and retired civil engineer with a background in civil works in Australia and overseas,In his experience “cost recovery was usually pursued” for these sorts of projects. Khan said the dam is now a cost incurred by the decision not to buy water off the irrigators, and that in doing so, the NSW and commonwealth governments at the time had valued the decision to leave the water to the irrigators at the current high cost.“We really need to see the business case. There’s really no other responsible way of assessing the project’s worthiness without the business case.”To date, the business case for the new Dungowan Dam project has not been made public.
“Surveys carried out by the NSW Government show that the people of Tamworth and the Peel Valley are overwhelmingly supportive of this dam. It is a vocal minority who are against it and are for whatever reason risking the future of safe and secure water in our region,” said Anderson.
not ever happening
He’s also an accountant