OODGEROO MP Mark Robinson has labelled the state government lazy and arrogant after it introduced a regulation enabling treated wastewater to be put through the purifying process for drinking.
But Natural Resources Minister Anthony Lynham has dismissed the talk as an LNP beat-up.
The regulation, introduced in March, allows Urban Utilities to supply water to Seqwater's advanced treatment plants, where the water could be purified and piped to Wivenhoe Dam.
Mr Robinson said the regulation had been sneaked in and Labor was forcing Redlanders to drink recycled sewage water.
But Mr Lynham said it was introduced to correct an administrative oversight.
The oversight related to the existing recycled water scheme and concerned the declaration of Urban Utilities and Seqwater as supplier and customer respectively, and was identified last year during a drought readiness review of Queensland's Western Corridor Recycled Water Scheme.
The scheme saw three wastewater treatment plants and more than 200 kilometres of pipeline built across the south-east during the Millennium Drought. It was completed in 2008 and can supply up to 180 megalitres per day of purified recycled water to Wivenhoe Dam, but it has never yet been used to augment drinking water supplies.
Seqwater would begin bringing wastewater treatment plants online when combined drinking water dam levels reached 60 per cent. The water grid is at 65 per cent capacity.
It would take two years for the scheme to be fully operational.
Mr Robinson said recycled water was good for some purposes like irrigation but people should not be forced to drink it.
He quoted a Canberra microbiologist who told the ABC in 2007 it could take only one slip up to expose hundreds of thousands of people to a germ.
"Palaszczuk Labor, seeking to cover for their inaction on basic infrastructure, wants us to risk drinking recycled sewage," he said.
According to Seqwater, recycled water would exceed Australian Drinking Water Guidelines before being added to Wivenhoe Dam.
It came after Mr Robinson called for gates to be put back at Capalaba's Leslie Harrison Dam earlier this year.
When the Redlands copped a drenching in February, Mr Robinson said water that spilled from the dam should have been stored to drought-proof the region.
An Seqwater spokesperson said at the time that reinstalling the gates would cause a flood risk to people downstream.
Mr Lynham said water was always a precious resource and encouraged people to check out Seqwater's waterwise tips.
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