Seisia community leader Talei Elu, pictured addressing the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Australia and Pacific Regional Conference in 2023, says the ongoing water security failures plaguing the Northern Peninsula Area should not be used as a “political football”. Photo: Supplied.
Amid finger pointing and claims previous state governments are to blame for a series of embarrassing sustained outages, one Northern Peninsula Area (NPA) resident has come up with her own solution to ensure water security for her community the next time the region’s taps run dry.
The 3,800 residents of Bamaga, Injinoo, Umagico, New Mapoon and Seisia were left without any town water for periods of almost 24 hours at a time over the past week as Northern Peninsula Area Regional Council (NPARC) and water supply contractor Veolia struggled to repair infrastructure at the Jardine River pump station, which supplies town water to all five communities.
While NPARC says repairs were being completed, Seisia community leader and 2023 Queensland Young Australian of the Year Talei Elu went to the extraordinary length of organising a GoFundMe campaign to purchase portable camp showers for use by families and Elders during what she said would be assured future water outages.
“The water infrastructure we have here is old, so we expect them (the outages),” Ms Elu said.
“When this one happened and it was going to be throughout the night and then got extended, that was the catalyst for me to contact a lot of our young community members … to do a fundraiser to get some [camp showers] for our community.
“We’re up to 21 camp showers for our households, and they are easy to use and easy for the Elders to carry as well.
“It’s a contingency for when the water goes out again.”
The outages come on the back of a community-led online petition for NPARC to sack its chief executive officer, Kate Gallaway, over perceived trust breaches and a “severe lack of transparency”, and the six-month involuntary appointment of a financial controller and governance adviser in the wake of criticism of the council’s strategic, operational and financial management.
The council said the cause of the outages was a lack of funding to undertake infrastructure upgrades, not internal operational issues, with Ms Gallaway adding “Veolia and NPARC are working closely to source further funding to upgrade the equipment and system”.
Ms Elu criticised the council for its communication with residents during the water security failure and said she was disappointed the situation had become a “political football”.
“The communication from the council and Veolia was not as good as it could have been, in my opinion,” she said.
“I don’t like the fact there’s a blame game; it shouldn’t be a political football – it’s a critical piece of infrastructure and without it, it’s a massive public health risk and a disaster waiting to happen.
It’s Australia in 2024 – we’re a developed nation and I don’t understand why on Cape York and in some Indigenous communities, we don’t have adequate secure water infrastructure.”
Another NPA resident, who spoke to Cape York Weekly on the condition of anonymity, said they believed community confidence in the council’s executive staff had hit a new low following the latest water woes.
“We get the pipes and stuff are old and need money to upgrade, but the way the outages were communicated by the council staff was disrespectful and didn’t give much time for people to prepare,” they said.
“We had families who couldn’t wash or flush toilets for almost a day, and had no water to drink in a hot part of the year; businesses couldn’t open because they had no water.
“It’s disgraceful and all of us know it’s a certainty water outages are going to happen again soon.”
Minister for Local Government and Water Ann Leahy did not respond directly to questions about whether she had concerns about the leadership of NPARC’s executive team, instead blaming former Labor governments for not making remote infrastructure upgrades a priority.
“This failure of NPARC’s water infrastructure is a result of Labor stripping millions from water and sewerage maintenance grants across Queensland,” she said.
“The local MP, David Kempton, and I will work together with NPARC to urgently resolve the situation for residents.”
Despite having the Jardine River on their doorstep, Northern Peninsula Area residents were without water for almost 24 hours at a time last week after a major failure of the region’s pumping infrastructure. Photo: Cape York Weekly.
