WATER: "Parched Toowoomba first to draw water from 'exploited' basin"

The Australian
17 October 2008

TOOWOOMBA will become the first large urban centre to draw its town water from the Great Artesian Basin, with more than 400 megalitres a month to be extracted to meet the needs of the drought-ravaged city on Queensland's Darling Downs.

A $17million project is under way to drill bores to meet Toowoomba's requirements as experts warned that water levels in the 1.7 million sqkm basin were falling sharply from overuse.

A referendum to pump recycled waste water to shrinking storages in Toowoomba, Australia's biggest inland city with a population of 120,000, was defeated in a 2006 referendum, with 62 per cent of residents voting no...

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