Water Taste Test 2012

31 entries, 6 regional finals, but there could only be ONE!

North Queensland finalist Burdekin Shire Council won bragging rights for the best tasting tap water in Queensland at an exciting grand final event held at the Water Industry Operators Association (WIOA) conference on the Gold Coast on Thursday, 7 June 2012.

Burdekin promotes itself as being built on liquid gold, with an underground aquifer that contains over 20 million megalitres of water (about 40 times the amount of water in the Sydney Harbour). Water is pumped from the aquifer to treatment facilities where the water is both aerated and chlorinated before being supplied under pressure to the distribution network for consumption.

Burdekin was one of 31 state-wide entrants which had been narrowed down to six finalists at our regional conferences in 2012. The other regional winners who battled it out at the state-wide grand final were:

• South East Queensland:
  North Burnett Regional Council’s Eidsvold scheme gets its water from the Burnett River through an alluvial bore and has a fairly simple treatment process with only sand filtering and chlorination before it is distributed to the 297 residential connections in Eidsvold.
• South West Queensland:
  Toowoomba Regional Council’s Mt Kynoch facility takes water from Toowoomba’s three dams and uses conventional treatment - flocculation, settling, filtration, chlorination and fluoridation - before distribution.
• Central Queensland:
  Rockhampton Regional Council gets it water from the Fitzroy River and treats it at the Glenmore water treatment plant using conventional treatment processes like flocculation, sedimentation, filtration, chlorination and fluoridation before distribution.
• Western Queensland:
  Barcaldine Regional Council gets it water straight from the Great Artesian Basin and it needs no further treatment. It has two bores; one of which is artesian and flows continuously. Both are pumped into ground storage reservoirs and then distributed through town by variable speed pumps. There is a single reticulation system into which is fed from both sources depending on where in town the demand is. The water comes out at around 45°C.
• Far North Queensland:
  Torres Strait Island Regional Council’s Saibai treatment plant gets its water from a rainwater lagoon supplemented by naturally purified swamp water. The water is then filtered and chlorinated before being pumped to the 300 residents across the island.

2012 promotional video