Cyclone Alfred: SE Qld has day’s supply of drinking water in reserve

Seqwater has urged people to conserve their drinkable water in the days after Tropical Cyclone Alfred hits the coast.

Water utility company Seqwater has more than a day’s supply of treated water in reserve, but its CEO urges people to conserve their drinkable water in the days after Tropical Cyclone Alfred hits the coast.

“We’re as ready as we can possibly be to face up to what Tropical Cyclone Alfred brings us,” Emma Thomas said at her daily update on Thursday.

The entity has 32 water treatment plants across South East Queensland, including the Gold Coast desalination plant which is ready to be used if necessary, with 1000Ml of treated water in reserve in case further treatment was disrupted.

The region consumes up to 900Ml of treated water each day.

Disruption could be caused by dirty water from flooding, but Seqwater had a sophisticated pipeline of 600km across the region where water could be moved around.

“We may see some damage, and we may see some power outages, and our team in our operations area will be ready to adjust and provide updates as required,” Ms Thomas said.

Seqwater CEO Emma Thomas on Thursday. Picture: John Gass

“At the moment I would really emphasise that the water in our South East Queensland system is clean and available to drink.”

Generators have been kept at some plants for back-up power supply in case of blackouts, but Ms Thomas said Mount Crosby’s west and east plants supplied 60 per cent of the region’s power and used too much power for that to be viable.

However they had natural resilience built into them by ensuring on backup power sources.

General manager of operations service continuity Matthew McCahon said staff would be stationed at plants to maintain them.

He warned it could take weeks for water treatment to return to normal.

“These events don’t necessarily end when the cyclone’s passed, there’s always some quite dirty water to have to treat,” he said.

“Twenty twenty-two took us nine months to recover to normal water quality to have to treat.”