The cost to Australian consumers from the construction of costly desalination plants continue to soar as rising dam levels make the investments redundant. From The Australian:
…the Victorian desalination plant, southeast of Melbourne, will have cost water users $1.2bn by the November 29 state election, rising to $2bn by the end of the next financial year.
The cost has soared, despite no water having been drawn from the facility since its opening in 2012 and dams being more than 80 per cent full…
Average yearly water-bill increases in Melbourne of about $200 have been recorded.
Assuming no water has been collected from the Victorian desalination plant by 2039-40, consumers will still have paid more than $18bn to keep the plant going…
The Victorian experience has been replicated across Australia’s east and south. Plants in Victoria, NSW, Adelaide and on the Gold Coast cost more than $10bn to build but their operations have been effectively mothballed…
The Victorian desalination plant, built to guarantee the state’s water supplies amid the population ponzi, is some of the worst public policy making that I have seen. Instead of pursuing cheaper options, such as recycling waste water or damning the Mitchell River (which floods every few years), the former Bracks/Brumby Government built the biggest reverse osmosis plant in the world, which is well in excess of Melbourne’s future needs.
With an annual capacity of 150 gigalitres (150 billion litres of water), the Victorian desal plant is more than three times larger than the Gold Coast’s (45GL) and 65% bigger than Sydney’s (91GL), which have also become redundant.
And due to the exorbitant price tag attached to the project – $6 billion – Victoria is now committed to paying a holding charge of $1.8 million a day for the next 27 years, totaling around $18 billion, regardless of whether any water is pumped (to date, not a single drop of water has been ordered). Accordingly, household water bills have already increased by between $167 to $222, with two-thirds of that price rise related to the desalination plant.
Well-targeted infrastructure investment offers Australia the double dividend of supporting growth and jobs as the mining investment boom fades, whilst also expanding Australia’s productive base and improving living standards, but poorly conceived projects like Melbourne’s desalination plant merely raise household costs without improving living standards.
It is the epitome of dumb infrastructure investment.
