Weekend Australian
Saturday 8/11/2008 Page: 6
AUSTRALIA'S first large-scale desalination plant, at Kwinana near Perth, has allowed the city to "bank" water. Perth Water Corporation spokesman Phil Kneebone says the plant can pump 10 billion litres into the Canning dam. 'We'll use that this summer," he says. Kwinana opened in November 2007 and has well and truly lived up to expectations, Kneebone says. When its cracking at full pace it provides up to 150 megalitres a day.
"We have been able to stay with one of the lightest sprinkler roster regimes of two days a week since 2001. The reason for that is we're able to bank some of it, during winter, when we're not using the stuff." Perth and the south-west have suffered significant rainfall deficiencies for nearly 40 years. The Bureau of Meteorology's National Climate Centre says the area has endured a long-term downward trend in regional rainfall (from) the 1970s. In the past 12 years, Perth's annual rainfall has been 10.1 per cent below the 1961-1990 average.
Kneebone says: "It only rains here three months of the year and we don't get the big downpours. (For the sake of horticulturalists) we simply cannot have total sprinkler bans, which is why we went to desalination." Tapping a groundwater source was considered too environmentally risky, so desalination it was.
Kwinana turned out such a success that the Carpenter Government decided another plant would be built at Binningup, about 155km south of Perth. The new Liberal Government will decide next month which of two Spanish companies will build it. Kneebone says the new plant will be powered 80 per cent by conventional renewable energy such as wind energy, and 20 per cent by emerging technologies such as wave power.
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