Pipeline is great but not all it should be
IN regard to the article on page 5 of The NDL on Thursday August 16, “Tamworth Regional Council decides on bigger pipe for Barraba project”.
Great news for Barraba indeed. After decades of not having anywhere near enough water, now we will have plenty. Thank you so much to all the people in Tamworth, Manilla and associated villages who have gotten behind our cause and helped us to push our case.
I would like to, however, draw your attention to a couple of points in the above mentioned story. The first is, while it is a great outcome and one I am personally very satisfied with, it is not quite as fantastically over the top as the article would have you believe.
For starters, the pipeline as planned would be capable of delivering a little over three megalitres a day. It would only be able to deliver the 6.1 megalitres quoted if additional pumps were added. Additional pumps are not a part of the current plan.
Secondly, averages don’t always paint the real picture – 0.5 megalitres a day may be the average, however seasonal usage varies widely. Barraba can use up to three times that amount in summer. Which would actually mean we could only have 1.5 megalitres to spare.
Remember that not that many years ago, Barraba’s population was around 35 per cent higher than current. It already has the infrastructure in place to accommodate a larger population. There is phenomenal mining activity happening just to the west of us, in fact just outside the Tamworth Regional Council boundary. It would not take much development to use up the remaining 1.5-megalitre capacity of the pipeline in two or three decades. I might also add that anyone who thinks Tamworth is the only place that will grow in the next couple of decades is a person
without vision.
DANNY BALLARD
BARRABA