Young people in remote towns at the northernmost tip of Australia are driving community resilience projects in the wake of prolonged water outages in their region.
Concerned for their Elders, they’re raising funds for camp showers and bottled water.
Northern Peninsula Area Regional Council (NPARC) said it has long called for a replacement of their water treatment plant, but those calls have never been answered.
Late last year, an 11-month boil-water notice finally ended for the five Indigenous communities of Queensland’s Northern Peninsula Area (NPA), when the council received much-needed funding for upgrade works.
Last week, failed pumps at the NPA’s water treatment plant caused some households to lose water for almost 24 hours.
News of families down to their last bottle of water travelled across the blue highway to Waiben, Thursday Island.
Tari Sagigi rallied community members to help round up a stash of bottled water to send over to the community of Seisia.
She said she saw other young people posting on their social media about what was happening in the NPA and reached out to help.
“As a mother of six, I started panicking for them,” she told NITV.
“Just knowing that there are Elders and young babies in need – my baby, is taking a bottle, so we need that fresh water ... I thought, 'What can I do?'"
Young people of Seisia have raised funds and purchased over 20 camp showers for households with Elders or young children. Credit: Carli Willis, NITV
In the meantime, young people in Seisia had teamed up on a social media chat group to start fundraising for camp showers.
Talei Elu said the showers offered a way of washing your hands or body while keeping water usage to a minimum.
“It just makes it a lot easier for Elders or households, especially with young kids, to just have a good bath without massive wastage of the bucket-over-the-head kind of situation,” she said.
“It was heartwarming to see how many people wanted to support but it was also a bit frustrating to know that we had to do this ourselves to build our own contingency plan and community resilience for when something like this occurs.”
Talei Elu said the region experienced frequent power, water and communication outages. Credit: NITV
Renewed calls for a new water treatment plant
Mayor Poi Poi said the pumps had to be replaced with refurbished parts, from a specialist in Mareeba – 1000 kilometres away – as they were no longer manufactured in Australia.
He said when the pumps failed, raw water reserves dropped to below 30 per cent, which is dangerously low, and meant the council had to enforce prolonged rolling outages.
“We really need to stress to the state government to take action and help – immediately,” he said.
“Some of that infrastructure is very old and ageing.”
Mayor Poi Poi said the region, which had won national awards for tourism two years in a row, suffered economically due to the constant water outages.
On occasion, the added pressure of tourist use on the system had caused outages in the region.
“[We need a] bigger one to cater for not only 3800 people in the NPA, but to take into consideration tourists coming in,” said Cr Poi Poi.
“Nearly 100,000 people [visit the NPA] in that nine months of the dry season – there's a really serious need to upgrade water in the region.”
The town now relies on refurbished parts of critical infrastructure, like its water pumps. Credit: Carli Willis, NITV
He said he wanted to inspect the chronic issues experienced by the region firsthand.
“We can't continue just to patch up ageing infrastructure at immense cost when ultimately it's going to have to be replaced, but I can't commit to anything until I've been ... and come back and talk to the department, the minister,” he said.
The state government signed the water treatment plant over to the council to manage solely in 2019.
“The then-state government handed this over to council with sole responsibility for it, but didn't really disclose the full extent of the issue,” said Mr Kempton.
“So council have already got themselves a lemon on their hands here.”
In a statement to NITV, a spokesperson for the Department of Local Government, Water and Volunteers said they were working with NPARC and its water treatment plant operators Veolia to “address the challenges”.
The Local Government Association of Queensland said a report by the Queensland Water Regional Alliance Program in 2018 showed that across the state, more than $645 million dollars is needed to replace ageing water mains.
Mayor Robert Poi Poi said the low rate-base council relied on funding from state and federal government. Credit: Carli Willis, NITV
“Every 80 minutes a water pipe bursts in Queensland, so the cost to maintain and fix our state's ageing water supply framework is substantial and growing all the time - but local councils just can’t afford to do this work on their own,” she said.
The Australian Human Rights Commission's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Katie Kiss said access to water was a fundamental right, critical to both sustain human life and ensure basic dignity.
“For First Nations communities, access to water is more than a health necessity,” she said.
“It is intrinsically tied to cultural practices, community connection, and self-determination.
“Governments must do all they can to uphold this right and address longstanding inequities.
“This includes by working closely with First Nations communities, respecting their knowledge and leadership, to develop solutions, policies and programs that fail to do so risk perpetuating systemic discrimination.”
The Commissioner said she plans to visit the Torres Strait in the new year as part of her state tour to hear form communities and inform her 2025 agenda.
