Second desal plan a win for the Yarragadee

Tuesday, 16 May 2007 - The West Australian government has ditched controversial plans to pump 45 billion litres of water a year from the southwest Yarragadee aquifer. WA Premier Alan Carpenter announced a second water desalination plant will be built by 2011. Mr Carpenter said the plant will be built near Binningup, between Bunbury and Mandurah, at a cost of $955 million. He said it will provide 45 gigalitres of water a year, with the potential to increase to 100 gigalitres...

The new plant is expected to produce nearly 20 per cent of Perth's water needs. Similar to the Kwinana plant, it will be powered by renewable energy - possibly geothermal energy. The first major sea water desalination plant to be built in the Southern Hemisphere was commissioned at Kwinana earlier this year. The two desalination plants are expected to increase household water prices by $30 a year.

Mr Carpenter said there were too many environmental problems with tapping the Yarragadee and that the success of the wind-powered Kwinana plant, showed a second plant was the best choice. He said the plant would provide water to Perth, the Wheatbelt and the Goldfields.

The contentious plans to tap the Yarragadee, were protested by the state Liberal/National Opposition as well as countless community and environmental groups. Mr Carpenter said the new plant will be powered by renewable energy and established at Binningup, 130km south of Perth. More than 30 per cent of Perth's water will then come from desalination, cutting dependence on dams and the strained Gnangara mound - Perth's major water source.

Opposition Leader Paul Omodei said using water from the Wellington Dam would have been better than another desalination plant. The Opposition also suggested damming the Ord River, in WA's north-west, and piping water down 3000kms to Perth.

The Water Corporation's Jim Gill, who has been pushing the Yarragadee proposal has left the Yarragadee option open. "We're still very confident that for the future of the southwest of WA it's a magnificent water source. It's not something that will not be tapped in the future," he said.

The head of the Water Research Centre at the University of WA, Jorg Imberger, is disappointed the government has put aside the Yarragadee plan. "I just feel sad for this state because they're obviously no longer governing or taking any notice of the public service whatsoever," he said.

Paul Llewellyn, Greens member for the South West, said he was delighted that the government has seen the wisdom. "To secure our future, we must now become very energy and water efficient. This decision will give us just 10 years relief from our rapidly growing water demand before we need to find yet another 45GL," he said. Mr Llewellyn called on the Government to support the Water Conservation Target Bill to implement a water efficiency, conservation and recycling plan, that will reduce demand on the system by at least 45GL per year by 2020.

"Desalination uses an enormous amount of energy. The plant must be powered by new sources of renewable energy that are legally certified. The Government must pass the Greens' Western Australian Renewable Energy Target Bill in order to be guaranteed a clean energy supply for the plant," said Mr Llewellyn.

WA Conservation Council's Chris Tallentire also welcomed the Premier's decision. "That's great news for the farmers, the conservationists, the scientists, the local government people who have all been involved in campaigning to stop the Government taking water from the south west Yarragadee that's so important to south west ecosystems," he said. He said conservationists across the state had worked hard to stop the Yarragadee project which posed very real risks to the environment. Mr Tallentine warned that the desalination plant would be closely scrutinised.

The proposed site for the plant is at a Water Corporation wastewater treatment facility on Taranto Road north of Binningup - adjacent to a disused limestone quarry. It is expected to have minimal environmental and visual impact on the area, but will be subject to the usual approval processes.

The Premier said that while the SW Yarragadee aquifer had effectively received environmental approval, it remained a source that was still reliant on climate and rainfall. "We can no longer rely on traditional, seasonal climate patterns and rainfall," the Premier said. "Seawater desalination is clearly the best long term feasible and practical option for our State, along with more water recycling initiatives.

"When you compare the seawater desalination process to transporting water from the Kimberley, there is no comparison. Put another way, for the cost of building a pipeline from the Kimberley, we could build at least 12 desalination plants and get three times more water at one third of the price per kilolitre."

He said the Government was also researching a major aquifer recharge recycling project north of Perth, which had the potential to yield an extra 25 gigalitres.

Currently WA's water supply includes 13 per cent recycled water and 17 per cent desalinated water. Opposition leader Paul Omodei said more attention must also be paid to recycling and said the Kimberley water pipeline to bring water from the north of the state also remained an option in the longer term.

Mr Omodei said the shelving of the Yarragadee plan had prevented the Carpenter Government from "taking the greatest environmental gamble the State has ever seen." Shadow Environment Minister Steve Thomas said the South West community would be pleased with the Government’s decision, and would closely watch the development of the new desalination plant to ensure environmental concerns were covered.

The estimated cost of building the plant will be $640million, plus an additional $315million to integrate into the water supply system. Western Australia is recognised as the nation’s leader in water resource management. Perth is the only major capital city in Australia where people can use sprinklers through summer – despite our driest year on record last year.

SOURCES:
AAP
ABC
ABC
The Australian
Perth Indymedia
The West
Yarragadee Community Action
Paul Llewellyn - Media Release

World Water Day - time to fund alternatives to Yarragadee

World Water Day - time to fund alternatives to Yarragadee
by Water Indy 2007-03-22 12:10 PM +0900
MARCH 22, 2007 - Senator Rachel Siewert has used the occasion of World Water Day to press for alternatives to the WA Government's proposal to draw 45 billion litres of water per year out of the South West Yarragadee aquifer...

YARRAGADEE RALLY
TUESDAY 27 MARCH
1PM PARLIAMENT HOUSE
11.30 ESPLANADE
"On the basis of the evidence, I do not agree with the recent 'Sustainability Assessment' Panel's findings that the Yarragadee project is sustainable - quite the opposite," said Senator Siewert.

"Why was the panel prevented from looking at alternatives?" asked Senator Siewert. "This proposal could devastate the environment of the south-west, and all it does is delay another desalination plant for a few years. Instead we need to look at why Perth's water consumption is so high."

"The report also used outdated rainfall figures which do not accurately reflect the serious decline in rainfall experienced in the South West. There is well established evidence that the Yarragadee proposal will be a repeat of the damage inflicted on Perth's northern wetlands by over abstraction from the Gnangara Mound," Senator Siewert said.

"The State Government sought $300 million in federal funding for the raid on the South West Yarragadee, which Federal Minister for Water Resources Malcolm Turnbull sensibly turned down."

"However, having been entirely overlooked in the Prime Minister's $10 billion Murray Darling plan, Western Australia should be demanding Malcolm Turnbull fund realistic water efficiency measures across the board."

"We don't need to go after the Yarragadee - we should instead be funding the kinds of measures outlined in the "Water Challenge" paper by Greens MLC Paul Llewellyn": http://www.mp.wa.gov.au/llewellyn/yarragadee.php

"The forests and wetlands of the South West Region may die so Perth's lawn may live."

YARRAGADEE RALLY
TUESDAY 27 MARCH
1PM PARLIAMENT HOUSE
11.30 ESPLANADE

The Western Australian State Government has tasked its Water Utility to ensure Perth, the capital city, will never have garden sprinkler restrictions. To do this the Water Corporation has embarked on a proposal to extract water from the distant south west of the State and pipe it to Perth.

This process has taken many years of geological, biological, social, aboriginal heritage and economic investigation, and still the people of the communities in the south west are implacably opposed to the inefficient use of water in the city as opposed to the maintenance of precious biodiversity across the south west, the preservation of threatened ecological communities and rare and endangered flora and fauna, and the creation of ecologically sustainable economies in the south west.

The South West Yarragadee proposal represents a massive change to the environment of the south west to maintain large expanses of lawns in Perth. Western Australia does not recycle water to any great extent, and we as a community should be looking towards sustainable watering schemes that value water and to begin the move towards a water ethic.

Perth is situated between desert and ocean, receives its freshwater from winter rains and must learn to subsist during the hot dry summers. Yet the design of our city and urban form is dominated by an urban aesthetic that privileges european landscape forms, or paradoxically the wet tropics. This artificiality of urban design must move towards xeriscaping, a land and water ethic that accepts water and rainfall as part of natural cycles, and values water for the life giving essence to all aspects of the ecology, not just merely a resource for human use and domination.

Perth's water crisis is not one of lack of supply but one of lack of imagination on behalf of short-sighted politicians and policy makers. The realisation that the continual search for water for unsustainable landscapes is a dead end resulting in a move towards collapse of ecosystems and economies.

Climate change has focussed government attention upon ways of living on the western edge of the 3rd planet's driest inhabited continent. To date this response has looked at increasing water supply for increasing human population. The search goes deeper underground, and further and further from population centres.

The South West Yarragadee aquifer underlies large areas of the biodiversity hotspot of the south west of Australia. This site is an attempt to provide information and education and a central point to coordinate the release of that information. Contributors are opposed to the Water Corporation proposal.

http://yarragadee.org/