The article is from the ABC Online of 23 November 2007.

The Queanbeyan Council says Telstra is to blame for its inability to stop the sewage leak that led to the closure of Lake Burley Griffin a fortnight ago.

The lake was closed for a week after bacteria from the sewage reached dangerous levels.

Queanbeyan Mayor Frank Pangallo says engineers have emergency plans ready to go when power fails at the treatment works.

But he says Telstra had discontinued an automatic SMS notification service without telling anyone.

"Telstra changed its protocols four days before the event and what used to happen before those changes is that our on-call person would've got an SMS message if the system failed," he said.

"They had changed that, they'd discontinued that."

Mr Pangallo says the communication problems are disappointing.

"I certainly feel annoyed it's created a lot of problem and a lot of embarrassment for Queanbeyan because sewage spills unfortunately are going to happen no matter where they are when equipment fails," he said.

"Had we been notified of that, we would've automatically switched on a generator."