By Margaret Maccoll
It was democracy in action last week when council officers removed dog water bowls from Peregian Village on Wednesday and public pressure returned them.
Every day for the past 10 years, since obtaining permission from village restaurants, local resident Colleen Schweinfurth has collected, cleaned and refilled plastic water buckets across the village after identifying a need for water for visiting dogs and wildlife, including birds, possums and wallabies, and the scarcity of publicly accessible taps.
“Over the years the need for it was so great – the need for animals to get a drink. They depend on us for simple things like a drink of water,” she said.
“I’m so consistent with it and I make sure they’re all clean.”
Colleen said over the years the initiative had received much praise from locals and visitors.
So she was surprised when she was contacted by a council officer who told her all the water containers were to be removed, that people might trip over them, that she needed a permit for them and only shops were allowed to put one out inside the shop door.
A council spokesman said officers removed more than 30 plastic containers in response to complaints and in the interests of dog health and the “amenity of the area’. He said officers only removed containers that “were not suitable as pet water bowls as they were either very old, broken and had sharp edges, or they were mouldy or contained algae. “Officers did not remove containers placed near taps, as these are generally flushed out regularly and were mostly in good condition. Nor did council officers remove any of the plastic water bowls put out by shopkeepers for their customers’ dogs,” he said.
Colleen said they “went and removed every one”.
Colleen petitioned the village following the removal and has been overwhelmed at the public support to reinstate the water containers.
On Sunday while the Peregian Market was in full swing there were plenty of plastic dog bowls in the village and plenty of dogs on leashes. Noosa Today asked some what they think of the dog bowls.
