So far… silence!

There’s been an elevated amount of feedback to my column last week about the man who believes he, given the chance, can play a part in helping Orange deal with our water supply issues.

This man is hoping for an opportunity to sit down with the relevant authorities or stakeholders to have a meaningful and sensible discussion about the possibilities he has in mind, a fresh, frank and open discussion with no preconceived ideas getting in the way. He also has qualified professionals around him as well who he’d like to include in such a discussion.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from writing the column, but I was hopeful we’d hear from someone in authority wanting more information. To date, that hasn’t happened. In fact, so far…..just silence! In some respects, I find that a bit astonishing given the importance of the issue. I really thought someone in authority would at least contact me to ask a few questions.

Sometimes things move very slowly in such lofty circles these days, so we’ll just keep our fingers crossed and hope someone comes forward. It’d be an absolute tragedy if no one did, especially if the title of my column last week means something - “What if he’s right?”

Officialdom aside, I have received several emails and correspondence from people who appear to have a variety of knowledge on the subject and apart from one person, all seem to support in one way or another much of what the man in question is saying. There does seem to be strong evidence that there is a substantial amount of water under Orange and certain happenings in years gone by seem to demonstrate this possibility. There have been questions raised about the quality of the water with contamination raised but that may or may not be in certain areas only. That’s one of the questions that would still need to be answered.

Since last week, I have also been shown Spring Creek dam, something I’d never seen before. The water level is quite low and you can see where it fills to when it’s full. It makes a startling picture.

My feeling is that I’d love to see our authorities give this man and his friends a genuine hearing. If they did, I think it may pave the way for further and detailed testing and evaluation to take place. It may prove a complete waste of time and money, but it may not, either way it would not be the first time that money invested in exploration type initiatives has not yielded a positive result, and it won’t be the last. In this same vein a Council staffer was quoted in the media recently as saying “In my view, the Orange to Macquarie Pipeline has been operating with one arm tied behind its back. 514 megalitres since it started 2 years ago is nowhere near enough.” That pipeline cost around $45 million so spending up to a million or so to test other possibilities would not seem an unreasonable option, especially if grant money could be sourced to fund it.

This is a huge and ongoing issue for Orange right now and our water storage is getting a lot of publicity, it’s not going to go away, even if drought-breaking rain should fall in the near future, for this reason I’ll keep readers informed with any happenings.