Drinking mud? NSW water scheme suspended
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New South Wales has announced a three-year moratorium on using the Shoalhaven River to top up Sydney's water supply, two weeks after the Premier credited the scheme for stopping Sydneysiders from "drinking mud".
The south coast river has provided up to 30 per cent of Sydney's drinking supply over the past five-and-a-half years, playing a key role during the worst years of the drought.
But NSW Water Minister Phil Costa says good catchment levels in Sydney mean the water is no longer needed.
"The catchments in the Sydney basin itself are above 65 per cent, and they've been above for some time now," he said.
"I believe we're in a fairly good position to be able to reduce the flows from the Shoalhaven considerably.
"If we don't have to transfer water from one basin to another, it's better. We need to also look after the environment of the Shoalhaven scheme itself."
Mr Costa says reasonable transfers will still be allowed along the Wingecarribee River so that the platypus breeding season is not disturbed.
Last month, Premier Nathan Rees told a gathering of international delegates at Sydney's Metropolitan Congress that Sydneysiders would be "drinking mud" if not for the scheme.
"The former premier wouldn't let me say this, but I can say it now: we transfer roughly half of our water supply each day up from the Shoalhaven River in the south," he said on October 23.
"In February last year, in the middle of the worst drought in 100 years, if we hadn't been transferring water from that river and if we hadn't had water restrictions on, our water supply would have been down to 7 per cent.
"That's scary. That means people [would be] drinking mud."
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