Water everywhere, and the desal keeps pumping
KATE DENNEHY
Sun Herald March 7, 2010 - 6:42AMDespite serious flooding in much of Queensland last week the state’s desalination plants are still pumping out water, under construction, or on the drawing board.
The combined Wivenhoe, Somerset and North Pine dam levels in the Greater Brisbane area reached more than 85 per cent capacity during the deluge. Flooding occurred in parts of South-East Queensland and the Hinze Dam in the Gold Coast hinterland and the Baroon Pocket Dam on the Sunshine Coast overflowed.
The $1.2b Gold Coast Desalination Plant at Tugun continued operating at 66 per cent capacity last week, pumping out 88 megalitres of purified water a day. The plant, owned by the Queensland government agency WaterSecure, started operating in February last year.
It can run at 33 per cent capacity, producing 44 megalitres a day, 66 per cent (88 megalitres/day) or 100 per cent capacity (133 megalitres a day) - about 53 Olympic swimming pools.
A WaterSecure spokesman said the plant continued operating at 66 per cent because it is still undergoing "final performance testing".
Current testing finishes on Tuesday when it would revert back to operating at 33 per cent capacity, he said.
The plant could be shut down for ‘‘indefinite’’ periods as long as procedures were undertaken to protect the membranes.
The government plans to start building other plants at Marcoola on the Sunshine Coast and at Lytton on Brisbane’s bayside by 2014 at a cost of between $1b and $3.4b each. The Tugun plant may be duplicated and another plant is mooted for Bribie Island, north of Brisbane by 2023.
The Gladstone Regional Council’s $41.5 million desalination plant, with a state government injection of $27 million, is expected to be finished by mid-2011.
A Queensland Water Commission spokesman, Dan Spiller said more water in the dams now meant the building of the next piece of major water infrastructure could be delayed - but not stopped – because of the demands of population increases, climate change and droughts.
"The lesson from the worst drought when our dams fell to a low of 16.7 per cent in 2007 was that we need diverse supply sources because we cannot always rely on rain to fall where and when we need it," he said.
"Our water strategy has been to very deliberately increase our water security by moving from a situation where we were 95 per cent dependent on stored rainfall to the current situation where 25 per cent of our supplies come from climate resilient sources such as desalination."
The Communities Against Desalination Inc (CADI) group is an alliance of 3500 members mainly from areas earmarked for desalination plants. CADI’s president, Debbie Johnson, said the plants were environmentally unfriendly, would increase householders’ energy bills and were too expensive to build.
She said water restrictions should remain at all times and recycling and other water saving measures including stormwater capture and small private dams should be encouraged.
"It’s wonderful that the dams are filling and that means we should have more time to come up with more sustainable, cost-effective solutions than desalination," she said.
The Sunshine Coast Regional Council also opposes the proposed plant at Marcoola.
More than 3500 public submissions to the government’s draft South-East Queensland water strategy were received by the cut-off date of February 12.
THE AUSTRALIAN NEWSPAPER
UP to $1 billion in federal government environmental funds will be spent subsidising power-hungry desalination plants, despite objections from the water industry.
Climate Change and Water Minister Penny Wong has yet to announce the results of funding applications for major infrastructure projects in desalination, water recycling and stormwater harvesting and reuse.
Applications for taxpayer funding of up to $100 million per project -- which closed six months ago -- are still being assessed by the Environment Department.
A spokeswoman for the department refused to say how many of the projects involved desalination, an energy-intensive process that can cost six times as much as dam water. "Information on applicants is not publicly available, as it is commercial in-confidence information," she said.
Applicants can seek taxpayer support for 10 per cent of project costs, under the funding guidelines for the $1bn National Urban Water and Desalination Program.
Projects need to cost at least $30m to build, providing water to cities with a population of at least 50,000 people by mid-2014.
The guidelines reveal that water users will be expected to pay for the new technology.
"Projects are expected to show that they are financially capable of long-term operation without the need for ongoing subsidies," they state.
"All proposals should provide detail of the extent to which revenue can be generated through cost recovery."
But the Australian Water Association -- representing professionals in the water industry -- is warning the federal government against over-promoting desalination.
AWA's national policy manager, Andrew Speers, said funds ought to be spent on more water-efficient design criteria for new housing estates, subsidies for water-efficient appliances, grants to industry to reduce water use, and repairing water pipes.
State governments are spending $9bn on desalination plants in Adelaide, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney to provide a third of capital city water supplies over the next two years.
The Weekend Australian on Saturday revealed that the energy-guzzling plants are adding hundreds of dollars to household water bills.
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh yesterday insisted her government would not take possession of a $1.2bn plant on the Gold Coast until the contractors repaired rust.
"We've made it absolutely clear to the builders that we will not be taking full possession of the desalination plant until the faults are corrected," she said.
John Holland group managing director Glenn Palin yesterday said the Gold Coast plant should be "finally completed" in "coming months".
Project partner Veolia Water yesterday said 45 pipe couplings -- out of a total of 15,000 -- had shown signs of early corrosion and had been replaced.
"There were also some signs of corrosion in approximately 120m of piping, or 4 per cent of the total of 3km of piping used throughout the plant," a spokeswoman said. "A plan has been agreed to replace this piping at a convenient time."
