Community wins battle over Uranium in drinking water

The Northern Territory Court of Appeal has upheld a ruling that the NT government is legally responsible for providing safe drinking water in remote communities.

The decision could see a class action over remote housing from residents in Laramba who are seeking compensation.

The small community of Laramba, northwest of Alice Springs, took the NT government to court in 2019 because the level of uranium in their drinking water was three times over Australian standards.

And after initially losing that case when the Administrative Tribunal ruled the Territory’s Power and water company was responsible, residents then won their case on appeal.

The NT government challenged that appeal, but that was rejected by the court on Christmas Eve.

Judges Judith Kelly, Sonia Brownhill and Meredith Day Huntingford stated in their ruling that water quality was a “habitability issue”, and came under the government’s legal obligations to tenants.

“If the uranium levels in the water supplied to the premises posed an actual and appreciable risk to the health and/or safety of the tenants in their ordinary residential day-to-day use of the premises, then those premises would not be habitable”, the judges said in their ruling.