Toowoomba council makes $270m Cressbrook Dam safety upgrade sole priority for Qld, federal budgets

Toowoomba residents could pay upwards of $120 extra every year if the council cannot convince the state and federal governments to give it $180m towards the Cressbrook Dam upgrades.

Toowoomba deputy mayor Rebecca Vonhoff and mayor Geoff McDonald discuss the council's request for $90m from both the state and federal governments to help pay for the Cressbrook Dam safety upgrades.

Ratepayers have been warned they will foot the bill for the massive Cressbrook Dam safety upgrade if the Toowoomba council can’t secure $180m from state and federal governments.

Mayor Geoff McDonald and deputy mayor Rebecca Vonhoff this week officially launched the council’s advocacy campaign around the massive $270m project, making it the sole item on its wish lists for the upcoming state and federal budgets.

The upgrades, which are currently being planned and should be under way before the end of the year, need to be “substantially” completed by October 2025.

The upgrades, which don’t increase the capacity of the region’s largest dam, will reclass the asset from being able to withstand a 1-in-8000 year event to a 1-in-800,000 year event.

Significant fines and other penalties could be imposed by the state government should council fail to reach the deadline.

The campaign comes at a critical time for the newly-elected council led by Mr McDonald, who has forecasted borrowing up to the TRC’s debt ceiling of $300m if it can’t secure external help.

Aerial photograph of Lake Cressbrook, Thursday, January 05, 2012. Photo Kevin Farmer / The Chronicle Helicopter services courtesy of Heliwest Group

But the mayor also flagged increasing water rates by at least $120 every year until 2029, as well as cuts to services or the scrapping or future projects.

“If we don’t get significant support from state and federal government, that means our ratepayers will have to fulfil the full burden of those dollars, which means we will need to borrow, where our borrowing capacity reaches around its limit of $300m,” Mr McDonald said.

“It may also means some projects that we’ve had planned for the next five years may well be pushed out or may have to stop completely.

“The clear message is this, the Toowoomba Regional Council has decided we have one ask for their budgets and that is we need significant funding for our Cressbrook Dam safety upgrades.

“In the reasonableness of state, local and federal government (agreements), a third-third-third would be ideal.”

Along with continued talk behind the scenes, Mr McDonald said the council would lodge its fast-tracked business case to the state government as early as June.

The government has already indicated it was prepared to help council pending a business case, while the TRC also has a $20m grant application lodged with the federal government.

“We’ve done a fair bit of work over the past few years to get us to a point where we’ve been able to compress the business case time frame,” he said.

“We’ve been speaking with the state and federal government for close to four months now, and they’re fully aware but now we want to make it quite clear that as a council and residents, we have one ask.

“I haven’t had any doors slammed on me, we know the pressures are on all levels of government, which is why we’ve made this our only priority.

“This is a big risk for council — it’s a massive risk, so we need to get this right.”

Ms Vonhoff said the TRC was also still committed to looking at increasing the capacity of Cressbrook as part of the upgrade, following a resolution of the previous council to explore the matter.

“The rationale is pretty straight forward – for $270m, we’re not increasing the capacity of Cressbrook, and I think any reasonable person in the community would ask how we add to our capacity when we are spending so much money,” she said.

“That work is going to come back to us from the engineers, we’ve got an impressive team now of all the right people to give us that information about whether it’s possible and I’m sure that will be useful information for the state and federal governments.”

Groom MP Garth Hamilton confirmed to News Corp he had already written to Water Minister Tanya Plibersek to ask about funding options for council regarding Cressbrook.