Qld: Queenslanders won't be left high and dry: Beattie

AAP General News (Australia)
04-26-2007
Qld: Queenslanders won't be left high and dry: Beattie

By Roberta Mancuso

BRISBANE, April 26 AAP - Queensland Premier Peter Beattie says residents won't be left
"high and dry" in the worst drought on record.

The premier today dismissed media reports which suggested two towns on the Darling
Downs faced evacuation because they had almost run out of water and could not afford to
indefinitely cart in supplies.

State bureaucrats had reportedly discussed the possibility of moving residents from
Leyburn, population 200, and Killarney, home to 1,500 people.

But Mr Beattie today said the government had been providing water to such communities
under an uncapped disaster relief program.

He said the state government paid 75 per cent of the cost of emergency water supplies
needed for domestic use.

The funding program was available across the state and there were no plans to end it, he said.

"We are going to continue to look after these communities," Mr Beattie said.

"If you think we're going to leave any community out there high and dry, we're not.

We'll stick by Queenslanders."

Mr Beattie said the issue of evacuations had not been discussed within the government.

Local Government Minister Andrew Fraser said the program helped fund the carting of
water to communities, or projects such as the raising of weirs and construction of emergency
pipelines.

He said communities that had required such assistance included Cecil Plains in Millmerran
Shire and Yarraman near Toowoomba.

"It's an uncapped budget. It's there on an as-needed basis," Mr Fraser said.

Warwick mayor Ron Bellingham said water had been carted in to Killarney's 1,200 residents
for the past month and there were plans to do the same for the small town of Leyburn.

But he said the council had never discussed evacuating towns.

"Brisbane is going to run out of water before we're going to run out of water here,"

Mr Bellingham told ABC Radio.

"I want to assure the people of both towns there is no possibility, as far as I'm concerned,
... (of) any thought of evacuation. In my view that's just silly."

However, Peter Kenny, president of rural lobby group Agforce, said some producers were
preparing to remove stock from their properties because it was too expensive to cart water
to remote locations.

"It's something that's probably never happened in this country before," he said.

Opposition Leader Jeff Seeney said evacuations of drought-stricken towns were "unthinkable",
but he feared it may be a "practice run for what unfortunately might happen in Brisbane".

AAP rm/pjo/cjh/cdh

KEYWORD: WATER QLD

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