Drier `new reality' to cost nation $30 billion to hydrate

Age
Thursday 4/9/2008 Page: 2

AUSTRALIA will spend at least $30 billion finding new sources of water over the next decade, as the nation's biggest water authorities declared yesterday there was no drought, but rather a drier "new reality". The declaration in the Water Services Association of Australia's annual performance report comes as experts predict Melbourne will need multiple desalination plants to satisfy demand by 2050.

As the Brumby Government awards further lucrative desalination contracts this morning in Wonthaggi, a panel of experts surveyed by The Age warned the policy trend towards seawater desalination could see Melbourne lapse into a cycle of consumption that would be solved only by additional desalination plants.

The WSAA's annual report card found the rush towards large-scale water infrastructure was "unprecedented" but "appropriate", given most of the projects would not be reliant on Australia's increasingly fickle rainfall. "In some way or another, all of the major challenges confronting the industry can be traced back to climate change," the report said.

"The urban water industry no longer refers to the last decade of well below average inflows as a drought; it accepts that greatly reduced inflows into water storages are the new reality." Victoria will spend at least $4.9 billion on new water infrastructure from now to 2012. Academics such as Professor Barry Hart and La Trobe University's Lin Crase warned that billions more would be spent on more plants in the decades ahead unless the Government committed to alternatives that better capture rainwater.

Microbiologist Nancy Millis -who helped shape the Bracks government's water policy in the early 2000s - said building the desalination plant as a public-private partnership would create pressure to use all the water produced to ensure the project was profitable. She said she hoped this did not lead the Government to relax its successful water-saving efforts. "We need to continue to educate people as to the fact that water is a precious commodity," Professor Millis said.

Despite concerns that desalination would undo the water-conservation habits that have emerged, the WSAA predicted that increased water security would not erode the "water conservation ethos" that has emerged in urban Australia.

It said a carbon trading scheme posed enormous challenges and opportunities for the water sector, given the industry uses large amounts of electricity but also produces environmentally neutral biogas in the treatment process. The report said "fugitive emissions" such as methane and nitrous oxide made up a significant proportion of the water sector's greenhouse gas emissions and, respectively, had a warming effect of 20 and 300 times more than carbon dioxide.

"Fugitive emissions are the 'x factor' in the greenhouse gas footprint of the urban water industry," the report said. While water recycling continues to increase, the report warned the safety of recycled water was being threatened by more concentrated waste. Utilities reported 40% reductions in waste-water flows, meaning that less water was available to dilute the chemicals and dangers in waste.