Chickens before Residents?
I couldn't believe when I read the front page of the Northern Daily Leader on 9/01/2020 that our mayor and associated council members are really considering running pipelines to supply local poultry farms with town drinking water.
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It appears that chickens are higher priority than town residents. Yes, these birds need to drink but a significant amount of water consumption in grower sheds is to run their air conditioning to cool birds that have been genetically selected to grow at an unsustainable weight in a highly stocked environment.
As a red meat or pork producer in the Peel Valley, if your water runs out you truck it in or you de-stock. These producers also do this for feed as they don't have the ability to feed stock rendered by-products. Yet here our council is, considering providing a precious water resource to sheds that don't even collect their own water from their significant roof catchment areas.
My Murray was quoted as saying it would be devastating to the economy if Baiada was forced to scale back its production and workforce, I think the economy is already struggling because our red meat industry is struggling.
Baiada should not be held on a pedestal above any other agricultural enterprise in the area. Teys and Thomas Foods and farming related businesses and farming itself employ many more people and have a very significant impact on our economy but are they going to run pipelines to the farms that have run out of water so they can grow feed and water their stock rather than de-stock? Or course not, that would be absurd.
As a business, it is up to you to provide the resources required to sustainably run your business and if you can't, you should not expect the community to do it for you.
We can't keep building bigger dams hoping that rain will come to fill them, and then squandering the water when it comes.
Council clearly admitted they are still learning "how the river works for transporting water and how inefficient it is" (NDL 4/01/2020) yet they refuse to listen when members of the community advise them about how the river works, for example, that the treated effluent water was not going to make it to the intended sources.
The river is far from inefficient, you just have to understand it is like an iceberg, you only see a certain percentage of the water flowing past.
As I continued to read through the paper I found the letter by Graeme Reeves and it gave me hope, possibly we will end up with a council that is prepared to listen to people more qualified than themselves on how we can make our community more sustainable.
Maybe we will get a council that is proud that we are a regional town and we rely on agriculture to thrive. Maybe we will get a council that the community can be proud of.
Margot Woolaston, Somerton
With respect of your paper on water to chicken farms, for your reporter to do such a report someone from the Tamworth Regional Council must have made the statement as l do not believe such would have been from a dream. Although the water manager went on TV and 'no idea as such was ever stated to me'. That is saying the reporter of this headline must be a liar.
As a young child l was taught to respect the badge of office but l do find it very hard to do so, when such is said and done by those elected to represent.
To add salt to the wounds this same manager stated those coming to the country music festival use no more water. You don't need to be an Oxford scholar to work out at 1000 people using a portaloo and a shower once a day equates to 20,000 litres day, and then times that by 10 = 200,000 - but no they don't use it.
May we as voters after the next election get representatives with honesty, integrity and common sense, not like we have today wanting to spend millions on a mall planting a few trees and a so-called shade area purchased from Canna Buy Betta.
David Davis, Manilla
An apolitical political stand - no kneeling
The International Olympic Committee has taken a stand on political or social statements at the 2020 Japan Olympics - you can't, at least visibly. There is to be no kneeling, raising your fist or standing aside or basically anything that can be seen by a camera, but you can still tweet your feelings. But why?
The purpose of the Olympics is basically for the best to compete in a positive way, but not in a positive drug test way. It is meant to show the best we can be although surely this should include the right to draw attention to the problems that exist around the world and that will still be there long after any one athlete kneels down.
The Olympics should be an opportunity for people to see what the world is like especially in countries where freedom of speech is not a right nor apparent. The most famous Olympic protest was that of Tommie Smith and John Carlos supported by Peter Norman at the 1968 games which drew further attention to an issue that needed to be seen.
The need for a visually clean games is also a result of the concerns about political correctness and the worry about offending some country that should be called out for their crimes and human rights violations.
People have a right to speak their mind unless they win a medal? This doesn't seem like a good path to a better world.
Dennis Fitzgerald, Box Hill