That desal plant
It was Professor Chris Flannery (hired by the federal ALP) who said years ago we would not have lots of rain and/or flooding in the future and so our rivers and dams would never be full again.
The advice given to Labor governments of the day was to build desalinisation plants, which cost billions of dollars each.
Warragamba Dam and the other dams supplying Sydney's water have all overflowed since the plant was built.
Desalinisation plants in Sydney, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane have been closed and Melbourne's one is not producing water.
Every year many millions of dollars for each plant is paid as a penalty to the owners of these plants because of their closure or lack of use.
Flannery got this issue terribly wrong.
Yes, we should close the Sydney plant and we should ignore Flannery's alarmist false predictions in future.
Paul, Hurstville
Water management
In 2006, as a volunteer with an environmental group, I helped prepare their submission outlining reasons why the then-proposed desalination plant at Kurnell should not proceed.
I sifted through boxes of government and ministerial documents on the desalination proposal. These had been made available under Freedom of Information.
I personally also made representations to the Department of Planning and to Cherie Burton who later sent me a copy of the response from David Campbell, then minister for water utilities. Campbell's letter addressed none of the issues I raised.
The main points I raised were:
- The Carr government had had plenty of time to plan for Sydney's increasing population but failed to do so. The government should have thoroughly examined the technical, financial, economic, environmental and social feasibility of all available water options for Sydney and, following true public consultation, should have initiated a program based on prioritising and developing the best option. Instead the government proceeded with the desalination project on an ad-hoc basis using special legislation to avoid the need to publicly justify and prioritise options or permit open and true public consultation.
- From 2001 to 2005 the Carr government had syphoned off $460 million from Sydney Water's revenues - money that could have enabled more sensible water management options to be examined and enacted.
John Forrest, Kyle Bay
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