South-East Queensland councils have rejected the State Government’s offer to take back their water entities.

Treasurer Andrew Fraser said concerned councils had until midnight yesterday to decide whether to obtain control of water and sewerage services by splitting from the distributor retailers such as Allconnex, UnityWater and Queensland Urban Utilities.

According to Mr Fraser, the councils owned the companies.

By 30 June, no council had declared its willingness to take their water entity back.

Mr Fraser said councils have been “crying out for years” to have the water entities back under the council banner.

“Councils have made their choice, now they should get on with delivering affordable water to the people of South East Queensland,” he said.

“They said they could deliver water cheaper if water was given back to them, so we gave them the option to put up or shut up.”

According to Mr Fraser, the State Government is alleviating the burden on ratepayers by selling bulk water at a loss, which was nearly half a billion dollars in 2010-11.

“It is councils who reap dividends from selling water to their ratepayers; now that they’ve decided to keep the current distributor-retailer model, the political blame games should stop,” Mr Fraser said.