Twelve of the state’s 21 towns that remain on “boiled water” alerts and all four towns issued with “do not drink” alerts are in Northern Tasmania.
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On Monday treasurer Peter Gutwein said he had called an urgent meeting with Taswater’s council-owners to discuss water and sewerage infrastructure management.
But Launceston Chamber of Commerce executive officer Jan Davis said the time for buck-passing and bureaucratic squabbling had long past.
“This situation is no longer tolerable. The very basics of public health are clean water and sanitation. These results would be considered unacceptable in a third world country,” she said.
“It is clear that we need a whole-of-government approach to ensure all Tasmanians have access to clean and safe drinking water, and that our wastewater systems comply with accepted environmental standards.”
Ms Davis also said Tasmania would struggle to maintain its reputation as a clean, green environment if something was not urgently done to address the ageing water and sewage treatment infrastructure.
“Importantly, repeated testing and expert reports have confirmed that Launceston needs to be the top priority for governments at all levels,” she said.
Tasmanian waste water treatment environmental compliance was the third from the bottom of the federal government’s updated Infrastructure Priority List released on January 20.
Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson said the federal government should make financing available to local government or the state government through an infrastructure fund.
“We called it an infrastructure bank owned by the federal government and it can lend money to local governments at 1 or 2 per cent,” he said.
“It’s not in [council’s] nature and culture to go into debt and borrow money. I think a bit of debt is OK. They need the federal government to provide the initial incentive to get them over the line.”
Tasmanian Greens' spokeswoman Andrea Dawkins said a sewerage system which did not have capacity to manage “even the basic requirements” of Launceston and Northern Tasmania was a public health disaster waiting to happen.
“The … Tamar is one of the nation's most polluted rivers, with raw sewage frequently flowing into it. Holding yet another meeting is not going to fix that,” she said.
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