Dam overflows, desal concern grows
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Sydney's Warragamba Dam could soon overflow but the city's desalination plant is still producing millions of litres of water raising concerns of waste on the Eastern seaboard.
TranscriptCHRIS UHLMANN, PRESENTER: As the deluge continues along the eastern seaboard, three quarters of NSW is now flooded or under threat and hundreds of people are expected to be evacuated in NSW, the ACT and northern Victoria.
Sydney's main reservoir, Warragamba Dam, looks set to overflow for the first time in 14 years.
Yet despite the record rainfalls, the city's huge desalination plant continues to churn out millions of litres of unnecessary water at enormous cost.
The rains have revived a heated debate over the billions being spent on desal plants around the country in what many see as glaring waste.
Greg Hoy reports.
GREG HOY, REPORTER: So much of the sunburnt country is saturated. Floodwaters rising in the eastern states as memories of the great drought a few years ago that parched big city water supplies are washed away. As the deluge continues, the biggest cities main reservoir is close to overflowing. Regardless, under terms of its water-tight contract, Sydney's $1.8 billion desalination plant continues to pump 90 million litres of water a day into the city's supply. Aims to halve this flow have failed to soothe the critics.
BARRY O'FARRELL, NSW PREMIER: We shouldn't have to have this sorry mess where not only do we have rain falling, not only do we have water storages at 100 per cent, but we have a Labor desal contract that says we have to continue to buy water.
STUART WHITE, INSTITUTE FOR SUSTAINABLE FUTURES: Water that flows over the top of Warragamba Dam is essentially water that's been wasted because it's been produced by desal.
GREG HOY: Professor Stuart White of Sydney's Institute of Sustainable Futures tried to warn the former NSW Labor Government this situation could arise.
STUART WHITE: Desalination plants should always be built in the Australian context as a drought or emergency option. So, to build them in a way that is used for operating all the time to provide water is a significant waste.
GREG HOY: Sydney is not alone. Melbourne's once-dire dam levels have now risen to 64 per cent as the multinational corporation building the nation's largest desalination plant at a cost of $5.7 billion blames cyclonic weather and industrial unrest for delays that have triggered its attempt to secure a bailout from an unsympathetic government.
PETER WALSH, VICTORIAN WATER MINISTER: There is talk of claims of up to a billion dollars in liquidator damages. At this stage, we have not accepted those and we will vigorously defend the rights of Melbourne water uses.
GREG HOY: The new Victorian government says it also tried to warn its predecessor such a predicament was possible.
PETER WALSH: Our view is that the previous government did not plan for Melbourne's future water needs, that with the growth of Melbourne, that if you actually put a lot more effort into harvesting stormwater, recycling water, the things that should have been done years ago, you would not have got into a position where they had to make what I believe was a panic decision at the time.
GREG HOY: There's now six desal plants in use or in progress in Australia. They are energy intensive and highly expensive and many argue discourage more efficient use of water and cheaper recycling alternatives, but not everyone is as convinced Australia's mad rush into desalination has been as demonic as it's so often depicted as being.
TOM MOLLENKOPF, CHIEF EXEC., AUST. WATER ASSOC.: The planning that we need to do has to be on a 10, 20 and 50-year horizon. So the investments that we've been made - and not just for today when the rain's falling out of the sky, but for those times that will come - and they inevitably will come - when we're gonna have another dry period and we won't have water in those dams.
GREG HOY: The Australian Water Association's Tom Mollenkopf was for 10 years deputy executive director of the International Water Association in London.
TOM MOLLENKOPF: It's not a waste of money. I mean, when we take out an insurance policy and at the end of the year we haven't made a claim on it, we don't ask for our premium back.
GREG HOY: Indeed the rain gods have not been so kind to WA of late and the Liberal government is extremely grateful its desalination strategy was in place.
BILL MARMION, WEST AUSTRALIAN WATER MINISTER: Two winters ago we faced a very dry winter where we had hardly any run-off into our dams and if last winter, in the winter of 2011 if we hadn't moved to desalination, we would have been in a situation where we woulda been struggling for water supply for Perth.
GREG HOY: However, the debate is not so clear cut for the plants in Adelaide and south-east Queensland.
TOM MOLLENKOPF: Well, Queensland has a desalination plant as well down in south-east Queensland. Last year during the Queensland floods, that plant was actually operating at a very high level because there was a high degree of sediment being washed into the dams there and so what was needed was a good, reliable, quality source of supply.
STUART WHITE: Adelaide is a similar situation in terms of Melbourne. Adelaide's got a significant potential for improved water efficiency at much, much lower cost than the desal plant.
TOM MOLLENKOPF: Again, it's got the potential to supply up to around 50 per cent of Adelaide's water needs by the time it's fully operational. So quite an important parts of their supply arrangements.
GREG HOY: In the end it seems predicting demand for processed water to quench the thirst of the world's driest continent is as uncertain a science as predicting weather itself, so the desal debate is sure to continue.
TOM MOLLENKOPF: The first thing that Australia should acknowledge is that it's been at the leading edge of diversifying its water resources. Countries like the United States, the south-west, places like even Spain and parts of Europe are looking to us for how we've dealt with scarce water resources.
STUART WHITE: We need to break the drought cycle and the election cycle. Along comes a drought, a severe drought, along comes an election and people leap into what in - around Australia are $30 billion set of investment in supply side infrastructure. Now we should change the operating regime to ensure that we're not throwing good money after bad.
CHRIS UHLMANN: Greg Hoy with that report.