THE old saying “success has many fathers but failure is an orphan” would have been apt at yesterday’s commissioning of the Macquarie River pipeline.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Of all the capital works projects undertaken by Orange City Council since the Civic Theatre in the 1970s, which cost most on council their seats, none has been quite as divisive as the pipeline.
And it has not just been councillors who have gone with the ebb and flow of public sentiment on the project, politicians too have faltered as the environmental impacts, construction costs and, most recently, the running costs have been dissected and scrutinised.
The project spawned an anti-pipeline lobby group, attracted the criticism of fishing show celebrities and prompted quite unjustified criticism from other communities along the Macquarie River.
And yet here we are, almost a decade after the idea was floated, marking the commissioning of the project, thanks largely to mayor John Davis and council’s technical staff.
Some of the regulations around its operation have been modified, partly it must be said as a result of the intense public scrutiny, which is a good thing, but the rationale for its construction remains and those who said it could not be built, let alone on budget, have been silenced.
For those who have forgotten, the pipeline project was conceived when Orange was in the grip of drought and water restrictions were tightening a noose around the city’s residents and commerce.
While the drought brought the issue of long-term water security for the region into focus something was needed in the short-term to safeguard Orange’s supply.
Part of that short term solution was the pipeline. There are other measures, including the stormwater harvesting scheme and, most importantly, a city of consumers who are far more water wise than they were a decade ago.
The next phase in securing regional water security includes the pipeline networks linking Orange with Blayney and Carcoar Dam and Orange with Molong, Cumnock and Yeoval with state government funding.
The region still needs to lock in the site for a dam but it now has more time to implement the right decision.