According to The Age, the two private-sector consortia bidding to build and operate Melbourne’s proposed desalination plant can’t borrow enough money to finance the construction:
Premier John Brumby’s $3.1 billion desalination plant, the cornerstone of his plan to drought-proof Melbourne, appears to be in trouble as major project finance dries up around the world.
Banking sources say the project faces a funding gap of between $1 billion and $2 billion. Some in the infrastructure industry say a mere $300 million to $500 million is available from banks for all major projects across the country.
The shortfalls confront the Brumby and Rudd governments with either finding the money to bail out the controversial plant, along with a string of other projects across the country, or shelving it.
There’s something that doesn’t add up here. The credit crunch is all too real, sure. But there are still loans being made. And, on the information publicly available, lending money to build a desal plant for Melbourne looks like one of the financially safer loans a bank could offer.
The winning bidder will have a contract with the monopoly distributor of water in Melbourne. And, given the low storage levels, even if rainfall returns to something closer to the historical average, the re-establishment of gardens and letting the reservoirs refill should mean that the desalination plant will be running at full capacity for years to come. If the government so desires, it could even turn off the controversial Goulburn pipeline as an “environmental measure”, and instead use the desal plant.
Obviously, there are other risks to this project that a bank would have to consider before putting up its money. But the nature of this project means that perhaps the single biggest risk – the risk that nobody will buy the product it produces – is largely taken care of. So why can’t they get it financed?
ummmmm,
because the running costs will be high (and increase if the power supply is mainly carbon-burning)? Because of risks with future Govts modifying the contract?
I give up. What’s the answer, Robert?
Yes, but presumably the price being paid for the water reflects the running costs. And it wouldn’t be difficult to include clauses in the contract linking energy costs with the price paid for the water.
Perhaps, but governments can’t arbitrarily break contracts.
It seems to me that the government has a choice to alter the terms of the PPP contract (now) to expose the private investors to more or less of the risks, most notably including demand and energy costs.
Just how little risk are bankers demanding at the moment before they’ll invest in anything?
The desalination plant will be funded by people like us who were not consulted about whether it should be built, and in our case, won’t use the water it produces. Our domestic water tanks are still supplying 100% of our needs – apart from a small top up last week – over that last 8 years.
Holding has said he will allow water retailers to raise their fixed charges to gouge money out of everyone to pay for this folly.
No consultation. Dirty deals with big business. More carbon emissions. Pollution and environmental degradation at the Bass Coast. Not good.
I thought it was as much an issue of “no money, at any price” as “price too high”. I mean, sure, China is sitting on a couple of trillion in mostly US bonds, but whether they’re willing to buy into an Australian PPP (and whether we’re willing to let them) is another question.
It’s also possible that the potential lenders are looking at the project and saying “what a bunch of planet-raping morons” and refusing to buy in as a result. Unlikely, but possible. My impression is that it’s being built on the coast, so a 1m sea level rise will inconvenience it but a 5-10m rise will wipe it out. Currently the risk of a 5m rise is low but increasing rapidly as new data comes to hand.
Another reason to nationalize the banks.
What ratings do these “two private-sector consortia” have? The bond spreads have blown right out so this is a critical point. If the bond price is too low then they wouldn’t be able to raise enough money… ?? Or is this too simple? What is missing if it is?
Oh well, build a dam instead and pocket the change.
moz: “My impression is that it’s being built on the coast,”
well, NEAR the coast moz, but not situated on the sandy beach itself.
The South Gippsland Highway would be inundated before the desal plant
Yes, Robert. The proponents could be asked to carry more risk, but that risk includes future Govt decisions on alternate water sources (you mentioned the Goulburn pipeline, future dams, future water-saving projects inc recycling) and future domestic and industrial water use patterns. That’s lots of risk, si?
Already we’ve seen a shift I think: the CityLink tollway agreement said the State Govt would keep the competing (free) Toorak Road congested – hell, make it more congested, why not?? Subsequent Bracks Govt called this for the antisocial bulldust it always was…..
Recently opened EastLink tollway has lower useage figures than expected: the developers are wearing the lower (current) revenues.
Why not take a risk, desal boosters!
Ambi: but the government is in a position to control a lot of those risks, notably the amount of water that becomes available through alternate sources. It also has a fair bit of influence on future domestic and industrial demand.
My guess is that – particularly with the issues moz raises – it might make more sense for either the state or federal governments to borrow the money.
I’ve read that in several places. Billion dollar debt simply isn’t available at the moment, in Australia, or anywhere. Some Private Equity “players” were saying similar on Sky Business (or something) recently as well.
Indeed. Even in Australia.
Surely once built the desal plant would run at full capacity constantly except during shutdowns for maintenance.
It certainly isn’t going to be the only desal plant Victoria will need.
My understanding is that the desal plant is the solution to the ‘what if it doesn’t rain’ scenario.
If it doesn’t rain for a considerably long period of time (and this drought has already lasted far longer than anyone expected or predicted) then some way of supplying Melbourne with water has to be found. (Even the best of water tanks run out if there is no rain).
Of course, one can argue that, in the long run, the people of Melbourne should be relocated to where there is a totally reliable water supply (where? and it would cost far more than a couple of billion).
As for environmental damage: show us the evidence. Lots of evidence to suggest desal causes minimal harm to the environment, certainly less than a dam.
Coincidentally, listened to a climate change expert on A-PAC today (love that channel) who says that the worst case scenario rise is less than a metre this century (and he was predicting half that). He said claims that went beyond this were totally unsubstantiated.
I admit he also said that predictions so far had underestimated the impact of cc considerably!
It’s being built on the flats just behind the sand dunes, these are flood prone and the soil is acidic – not good for concrete’s longevity.
Do the costings include the adjacent power plant? It’s common knowledge that it will have one, the only question is gas or nuclear?
FWIW, it’s my contention that the credit crisis has barely begun and funding will not be forthcoming without Canberra’s direct involvement
Good point, mehitabel. Where would you relocate the population of Melbourne? And Adelaide which has an even lower rainfall, for that matter. Perhaps they could ship them to Bangladesh which I understand probably has more rain than it knows what to do with at times.
Andos: not necessarily. It’ll be the most expensive source of water Melbourne has access to. If (a big if, I know) rainfall returns to something more closely approximating pre-1996 conditions, consumption stays low, and continued attention is paid to water efficincy measures, it’s possible that the desal plant will not be running 100% of the time.
Mehitabel: think of it this way. There’s maybe 1.5 million dwellings in Melbourne. What was the construction cost of the average dwelling? $100.000? Multiply those two numbers and you rapidly come to the conclusion that bringing the water to Melbourne is a much cheaper option than bringing Melbourne to the water.
Short answer: because it’s a PPP.
Longer answer: Because it’s a PPP, the bonds issued would need insurance to bring them up to an investment grade. (As opposed to vanilla government debt, which would automatically have the government’s A-class rating). Unfortunately all the bond insurers are at the centre of the global financial crisis and have collapsed.
Also, a PPP usually has a fancy special purpose vehicle at its core, set up as a JV between an investment bank like Babcock & Brown or Allco or Macquarie and a developer and an operator. Guess what’s happened to investment banks and developers?
Robert – there are a lot of complicated factors at play here.
Loans of the magnitude being discussed for this project are often in the form of syndicated loans – that is, no single institution provides the finance, but instead a group of institutions come together to finance the project, often coordinated by an investment bank. Many of the financers of such projects are foreign institutions that are in the process of repatriating their balance sheet exposure for a varity of reasons, and are unlikely to want additional exposure to Australia in the current environment. The syndicated lending market has dried up over the past few months and the domestic banks cannot absorb all of the short-fall because their own funding is constrained as well.
More generally, before you could comment on the private financing of this particular project you would have to have detailed information about the balance sheets of the prospective borrowers – which none of us have – for all we know they are highly leveraged in other projects and financial institutions don’t want to increase their exposure to them. It is also quite difficult for many firms to access non-intermediated financing at the moment.
As for PPPs, I’m not sure there is as little risk involved with the current project as you make out for potential financers. A whole host of government regulatory decisions over the lifetime of the project (including but not exclusively surrounding carbon pricing) will affect the return on the project.
I would have thought that in the current environment, if the project was deemed necessary, it would be far more economic for governments to be financing such projects.
Bill, LO: thanks for the comments.
Is there any reason (aside from AAA-paranoia) that the Victorian government would have any trouble borrowing the money?
In a word – no.
How about individuals buying desal bonds, like War Bonds as in days of yore?
It’ll be a massive success, just like the Brisbane ringroad & the Sydney eastern tunnel. No probs.
Good – I hope the stupid thing doesn’t get built.
Watch out you guys, don’t let them pull a Brisconnections on you.
Macquarie Bank, John Holland Thiess Leightons, the usual PPP suspects, with the help of Peter Beattie’s treasurer, who took half a mill for arranging the deal, more front than the proverbial rat with a gold tooth, went to the market to get the $4.8 billion jobs jobs jobs toll airport link project happening, no wukkas. The GFC happened, the underwriters and institutional investors bailed, the stock tanked from the $1 to sub-cents, bargain hunters swooped, and then everyone found out about Macquaries financial engineering genius fine print: as one punter puts it:
They didn’t realise each of those sub-cent units exposed them to 2 more full $1 installements, one of which is due an a couple of weeks. it doesn’t sound as simple as these folks were too greedy or naive to read the terms. We might yet end up with the most god awful bit-done mess disrupting bits of brisbane all over, til god knows when, when the company is wound up as a huge bad joke.
The brisconnection page as late as last week is still saying they’ll go for the jugular of all those punters:
This deal’s promoted, managed, and contracted out to outfits with the highest labor party connections and history. If you think yours in Victoria aren’t capable of similar mendacity and self-serving instincts, when there are percentages of billion dollar projects going, well good luck and hold on to your shirt.
Get this, from above link: the success fee those labor connections took for shepherding it through their mates is more than the entire Brisconnections company is worth. Now that’s what I call a percentage.
Moving Melbourne is not necessary, but collecting the rain where it falls is. Since a lot of rain falls on Melbourne city, it makes a certain amount of sense to collect and treat that. especially since half the collection is already done – the stormwater system.
The major problems are illegal pollution, ranging from smokers dumping cigarette butts into drains (or the street) up to illegal sewer connections; and gravity since the stormwater collects at sea level. On the other hand, it’s cleaner than sea water and the desal plant is already collecting water from sea level.
FWIW we’re running about 50 litres/day per person into this house from the water main, and about 20 litres/day/person from rainwater just off our roof. Sure, it’s not enough rainwater to run the whole house but it makes a fair dent in our consumption. Most Melbourne suburbs could do the same.
[sarcasm]Just build more dams!
Serious policy wonks like Andrew Bolt can work out the details about how you pay for 10 dams with totally different funds than what you spend on 1 desal plant.
If you disagree with that then you’re a ridiculous Green who wants us all to die of thirst/in bushfires in order to appease your god.[/sarc]
moz, the SEQ draft plan sees recycling and desal as on the expensive side, but possible. I gather storm water collection, while still being explored, is too hard to collect, pool, and clean up. It’s probably more suitable for planned housing estates where the collection etc on a local level on a cooperative basis can be built into the design and can be associated with water features like a central lake.
Water tanks are by far the most expensive retrospectively. SEQ is only looking towards a 7% saving from that quarter long term.
Brian, of course, but since we’re comparing stormwater collection to desalination the question is less about whether either is affordable, but which is cheaper. The financially cheap solutions have already been ruled out due to political cost. Water tanks aren’t cheap but they do answer a lot of the “but my garden will die” critics, and since they start at $50 for 200l it’s hard to argue that they’re completely out of the question.
In Melbun we have a bunch of creeks in the suburbs that are currently green corridors and could probably be turned into water sources without too much trauma. Specifically for us, Merri Creek runs through Coburg Lakes and there is space at the latter to both expand the water storage and put in a treatment plant. The main issue is storing the storm surges, which means big storage that is regularly emptied.
A big issue is the cost of land. Both in direct money terms, and in the political cost that people do not like to see the scale of infrastructure that they depend on. Building a Gl water storage facility anywhere that millions of people have to look at would give us NIMBYism in extremus. Likewise water restrictions have a political cost, and the appeal of the desal plant is that it’s small and turns a political cost into a financial one. Guess which cost politicians prefer.
Not entirely on topic, but does anybody have good figures on how our water supply is used – i.e. what percentage for drinking/cooking/washing dishes/ourselves and what percentage for watering gardens, refilling pools, washing cars/clothes etc.? And I guess I more interested in long-term figures rather than just for the last few years where obviously usage has been constrainted somewhat.
I’ve often wondered if it would be worth having a parallel water supply system that supplied water for the latter uses – certainly I’m very conscious of the fact that I regularly have to top up the pool with drinking water, even though it would surely be safe to fill it with water of lower quality that I can then treat with additional chlorine etc.
Are there separate standards that exist now for washing that is considered safe for, e.g., doing laundry with but not for drinking? I know for properties that rely on bore-water where it seems to be considered safe for anything except drinking directly from the tap – and of course the taste tends to act as a pretty good preventative.
I’ve read a lot of posts over the last few years which give stormwater collection as the answer.
Two points:
(i) I don’t think Brumby et al threw a whole lot of pieces of paper on the table marked ‘stormwater’ ‘recycling’ ‘desal’ ‘dam’ etc and then picked a couple at random. I am foolish enough to believe that there was some kind of analysis of all the options here and that desal was chosen on its merits as was the NS pipeline.
If that seems a reasonable scenario, then one has to ask why.
My answer would be that all the other options are LESS politically acceptable, MORE expensive and don’t solve the ‘what if it doesn’t rain’ or ‘what if Melbourne’s dams are polluted by bushfire run off’ scenarios.
(ii) If stormwater is the answer, then why isn’t using Yarra water (suitably treated, of course)? I assume that most stormwater ends up in the river anyway. I tend to surmise (given that I have never ever read on any of the hundreds of postings on the subject of how to supply Melbourne with water) that it is prohibitively expensive. If this is so, then I would assume that that’s why stormwater is also off the agenda.
Regardless, I’m curious why that is never suggested by anyone.
Why have this ridiculous sham of a PPP anyway? Why won’t the government just build the damn thing?
You know what is going to happen. In periods of high rainfall a sensible government owned utility would run the thing at low output, or even shut it down for a while, thus saving unnecessary C02 emissions. Hell, if it was using a fast start gas turbine generator the electricity could more usefully be used to top up the grid in times of high demand.
If it is some bastard PPP then this sort of (in)activity will come with all sorts of penalty clauses. The Government will end up paying the PPP not to produce water. Madness.
wiz: I can’t recall exactly where it is, but when last I looked a bit of judicious Googling turned up a lot of useful information on consumption.
On your second point, you’re referring to “third pipe” systems. They’ve become quite common in new developments, I believe, but are very expensive to retrofit to existing suburbs, much more than just treating the water to drinkable quality.
mehitabel: they did do a fair bit of analysis, and some of the information is publicly available here, notably a debunking of a lot of the dam proposals. They’re not entirely stupid. From a technical perspective, recycling would have been a cheaper option and is just as reliable as desal. However, as I understand it the political call was made (with the aid of the inevitable polling) that they didn’t think Melburnians would get over the ick factor.
Aside from the ick factor with the lower Yarra, if I recall correctly stormwater reuse was also fairly extensively costed. The yields weren’t that high, but the costs were.
I have it on reasonably good authority that Thwaites argued for recycling from SEPP, which would be marginally cheaper and ultimately lower impact, Treasurer Brumby argued for desal because it was easier to do as a PPP, therefore in the eyes of treasury ‘cheaper’ and ‘lower risk’, as well as politically more palatable, if you’ll excuse the pun.
Stormwater recycling is a bit of a myth – the stormwater outlet pipes are all distributed across the bay at the bottom of the catchment, where land is very pricey, so you’d need a whole lot of inefficient small units doing the same trick, and having to pump much further to get back into the dams.
Small scale sewer mining has limited uses, but ends up very expensive too.
Don’t forget Melbourne is already recycling a fair bit of waste water at Werribee, and that hasn’t turned out to be as easy as promoters expected, the farmers are certainly not fully accepting of it. Still, mroe could obviously be done.
Domestic consumption is still too high, but these are long-term programs of cultural change, and Melbourne does lead Australian cities I believe.
One thing that is very retrograde is not legislating for a rainwater tank in new homes (far cheaper than a retrofit) and for dual-flush toilets etc at point of sale.
Fact is, a rainfall independent solution is needed. The coastal and marine impacts are absolutely trivial, and completely manageable. The impacts that are serious are the energy emissions and the financial opportunity cost. We should have built the damn thing five years ago, when it was much cheaper, and could afford some whopping great windfarms!
You mean it’s still legal to install high-flush only toilets? WTF?
I naively assumed that you’d be allowed to choose between dual-flush and low-flush determined by some random number (viz, less than 5l/flush means you don’t need dual flush).
I’m used to building codes being rubbish, I’ve been involved in building in NZ where we couldn’t really bring ourselves to meet the highest rating for greenfulness because it meant choosing which easy measures to leave out (often replacing them with higher-cost alternatives, even). So I’ve renovated commercial property to higher standards than the standards can measure. Which is just annoying on the (rare) occasions when I had to advertise for tenants, because there’s no easy way to convey that the building is quite habitable despite exceeding the standard. Bah! Even more annoying, the standards often have rubbish in them like specifying lighting levels that are unnecessarily high.
Don’t get me started on how energy-efficient fridges do not meet the Australian standard because they can’t crash-cool a carload of groceries in the requisite time (they have tiny compressors and they don’t need big ones because they’re properly insulated). The world is full of wacky laws.
Wizofaus, some information on Melbourne’s water usage is here [link]
Melbourne’s stormwater and sewerage output combined is over 700GL; more than enough to meet Melbourne’s needs if stormwater usage (either rainwater tanks or suburban storage) and sewerage recycling (long promised but never delivered) were done. And stopping logging in water catchments would provide another 20 to 30 GL per year for no cost.
The reasons stormwater and recyclinbg have not been done are well summarised by Wilful. The government says it is too hard and too expensive. But they never provide evidence to support this.
They have never released the analysis that flipped their 10 year conservation/recycling water strategy to the complete opposite – desalination and other major engineering projects. This happened without explanation after the 2006 state election, when Labor vehemently opposed desalination while the Liberals promoted it.
Moz, taking water from the Yarra River river has been assessed – it would need to be treated, but now there is not enough water there to take. More environmental flows were recommended and promised in 2005, but they have never been delivered.
If the government had done as much as they could on recycling and water tanks and building codes, then desalination would have been a last resort. I think they favour desal as they can offload the PPP, slug us to pay for it, and keep playing politics. Rather than doing the hard yards and implementing truly sustainable and climate friendly water options.
There is still enough rain around to keep domestic tanks full enough to supply our household needs.
There is some information that may be relevant to the Melbourne situation in the SEQ Water Strategy document (draft, not government policy) which you can download from here.
The problem we have is that there are limited additional dam sites available, plus a need to find a greater proportion of our water supply from what they call “climate resilient sources”. Over 50 years the phasing in of recycled water and desal is intended to increase climate resilient sources from 8% to 30%.
On the comparative costs of additional sources see figure 4.4 in Ch 4. You have to read it off the graph, but Traveston Dam comes in at about $2,000 per ML/a. Desal is about $2,800 and recycling about $3,400. They give a range of about $2,200 to $6,300 for rainwater tanks on new dwellings.
They are suggesting that new dwellings should be designed to target savings of 70,000 litres pa via rainwater tanks. That is about 64L pppd for a household of three. I think they state it that way because the rainfall averages vary significantly across the SEQ basin.
From the water grid they say they’ll supply 230 litres per person per day, and essentially you can use that indoors or outdoors as you wish (currently we are on Target 170 litres, which have no trouble in meeting. It is interesting that the 230 litres plus the target savings via tanks roughly equals the pre-drought consumption.
Information about domestic consumption pre-drought, during the worst Target 140 period, and post-drought is provided in Figure 4.6 (Ch 4). The bathroom seems to be the big one, followed by the laundry, then toilet and kitchen about equal.
This is an extract from the section on stormwater harvesting (section 4.5.1):
They also mention the cost of regulating stormwater schemes (health risks). I get the feeling they don’t much like them.
Stormwater is still only useful if it rains, as are water tanks.
Water tanks are an incredibly expensive water option – fine if the individual homeowner wants to meet that expense, but economically prohibitive for govts to mandate (which they would have to do if wts were identified as the answer to the problem).
Vic’s building codes (I think) do specify new homes have to either have a water tank or solar panels.
Water tanks also pose serious health risks if not monitored (I cleaned out my gutters recently and am thinking twice when it comes to the choice of drinking water pumped from the river or water from the rain water tank!). Again, that’s fine if it’s an individual choice, but if govts mandate their use then they will also have some responsibility for at least educating homeowners about the risks, if nothing else but to protect themselves from increased health costs.
But, if the question the government was faced with was ‘what happens if it doesn’t rain?” then stormwater and tanks were not the answer.
Oh, and in answer to why the government’s thinking changed after 2006 –
(i) In autumn 2007, the city of Wangaratta ran out of water. This wasn’t because of the drought but because of mismanagement of their very secure water supply (basically they emptied it in expectation of heavy rains which never came). This made it clear to the government that no town/city should rely on one source of water.
(ii) In summer 2006/7, the Great Divide fires threatened the Thomson catchment, which is Melbourne’s major water supply. If fires had invaded the catchment, and made the water unusable, then Melbourne would have faced severe water shortages.
These two events, combined with a realisation that rainfall patterns weren’t getting back to normal (and might never) meant that the govt had to come up with strategies for Melb which meant that the city was not dependant on one water source, had back up plans if water sources had to go ‘offline’ and were not reliant on rainfall.
mehitabel, we have two tanks, both fitted with “first flush” interceptors on the downpipes where by the first 17 litres of water is diverted and doesn’t go into the tank. You should clean them out at after every rain and it’s surprising what crap you find there even though we don’t have overhanging trees.
The beauty of tanks is that you catch water with every light shower.
In Brisbane we can only connect tanks to toilets and the laundry, although there are places in the outer suburbs that rely entirely on tank water. When the gutters are left uncleaned the brew can get pretty thick – it’s kind of gumleaf tea flavoured with stuff you wouldn’t want to know about.
I’m with Brian – we flush our toilets with tank water (and dishwater) and it can be an exciting brew. We have ridiculous roof area per resident, and since the rain started we’ve collected a bit over 2kl. Thing about coastal cities is that they get a lot of light rain and showers… those fill our tanks nicely.
It has rained enough in Surrey Hills in Melbourne over the last 7 years for us to capture 99% of our water needs – with 22,500 litres of tanks.
Not correct. $3 billion of water tanks and pumps would yield more water savings (about 175GL) than the desalination plant would produce (150GL) with a fraction of the operating cost and much lower (about 1/15th) carbon emissions.
Either suffices for 5 stars – so water tanks are optional. Both should be mandatory. And the mandated water tank size is tiny at 2,000 litres – it should be 20,000.
Not a problem for us. First flush diverters solve our health concerns. We have had the water tested and it is fine. And you can add water filters too (we don’t have one).
Some homeowner education – perhaps from rural Australians who have using water tanks for 200+ years – would be a good idea.
Stormwater use and water tanks are part of the answer. Easy, cheap and climate friendly. If this (and stopping logging in water catchments) is not enough then desalination would be the last resort.
It is a great pity that the Victorian government is pursuing inappropriate climate-unfriendly water production and ignoring the obvious distributed options.
Peterc
So in your world, governments sit down and say “OK, what’s the most expensive, environmentally damaging option we can go with? Great boys, let ‘er rip.”
I am a rural Australian, from an area where 50% of the population doesn’t have access to town water and most of those rely on tanks. Most have also been trucking in water for the last few summers. In some cases, this has caused real economic hardship – and we’re in a high rainfall area.
Noone mandates run off diversion for tanks. Very few people up here bother with it. I’m aware they’ve available and am also aware of the problem but haven’t done anything about it (would speculate that most of my neighbours haven’t either). I know it’s complacency on my part, but my point is that, if governments mandated tanks, they would have to combat this.
Town water supplies don’t just go for household needs, of course, and these need to be factored in when supplying water for communities (again, have personal knowledge of trying to keep sportsgrounds going – not an indulgence when you’ve just blown ten years of fundraising on groundworks, only to see the work and money go for nothing after a summer of not watering).
I repeat – neither stormwater or tanks are cheap. That’s the opinion of the water industry as a whole. You’re the first person I’ve ever read who suggests otherwise, and I’d be interested in knowing how you’ve worked the costings.
mehitabel, rainwater tanks can definitely be expensive, our neighbours spent about $10k for about 5kl. Which they use for washing their cars, but they got the rebate. We have spent going on $1500 for 3kl, including a pump that I use mostly for tank equalisation and filling the (new) header tank that feeds the toilets. It’s tricky for us because we rent, so it all has to be removable. Paying someone else to do the work would have made it cheaper to buy a single 3kl tank and limit the plumbing, but since I did the install it was free.
200l drums work pretty well for urban tanks and cost $20 each. It costs more than that to plumb the suckers in, but it also means we can capture all 7 downpipes at no extra cost.
At a whole-of-city level it’s not that hard to make the stuff available and set up paper versions of the Instructables site etc, then persuade local plumbers to pipe them into toilets where appropriate. Tank stands would be the only tricky bit (for gravity fed toilets) but those could be mass manufactured if the demand was there.
Crisis? What crisis? We don’t know we are alive.
Mehibatel,
Here is general information on water tanks.
This article contains information on costing of water tank options versus desalination [link]
Yes, many rural regions are simply out of rainfall and river water. This hit home to me 3 years ago driving to Mildura for the Murray to Moyne bike ride. Many towns along the way had little or no rainwater, no river water, and could not drink the bore water.
All the more reason to reduce our carbon emissions and hopefully restore a safe climate. Which the desal plant and north south pipeline don’t do.
In inner easterm Melbourne, there are huge water tank systems (30,000 litre+) going in everywhere – mainly to protect people gardens that may be priced at 300K+.
I think the government goes for what they perceive as the easiest political option partly pandering to protecting water retailers, and partly happy to offload responsibility for management to a PPP.
Without any public consultation.
A CO2 polluting desalination plant is a travesty. Why are Labor people so blind to the physical sciences? Lawyers and arts graduates the lot of them.
Labor people Huh? It was Liberal Party policy, shamelessly ripped off from them immediately after the election.
Hey Wilful, you and I agree on something! Chalk it up dude.
peterc, apart from your misconceptions about forestry, I don’t believe we’re that far apart. I’m moderate, centrist, work within the system, and you seem to be more tear it down and start again, but I think we both want roughly the same end goals.
Based on the evidence to date, my method appears to be failing, by the way!
Now, back to desal, here’s something I just found at J Gans blog that’s relevant . Not that I endorse it or anything.
Peter C – we cannot restore a safer climate. Sorry, that train’s left the station.
Even if we cut off all carbon emissions tomorrow, we’ve bought into at least fifty years of climate change.
Like it or not, the desal plant and the NS pipeline (both of which I was against until I sat down, looked at the problems they were intended to solve and the possible solutions) ARE adaption to climate change. As some posters have pointed out, it is still cheaper to bring the water to Melbourne than to shift Melbournians out (and where would they go?)
What is your answer to ‘what if it doesn’t rain”? Tanks are rain dependant. Three months without rain and your tank is looking grim. One dead possum and it’s gone for all money. And tanks are simply not practical solutions for factories, sporting stadiums, parks, skyscrapers and apartments.
mehitabel, if it doesn’t rain we’ll have much more severe problems than “where does Melbourne’s drinking water come from”. If you want to feed irrigated farming off desalination the little plant that’s proposed will not go very far. Desal is small amounts of expensive water for city people who will happily pay a premium for it.
The indications so far are that coastal showers will continue, and since that what feeds household water tanks it’s actually quite a secure supply. More so than the shifting rainfall patterns further inland, and the dependence Melbourne (and Sydney) have on rare intense rainfall events to fill inland reservoirs.
A big advantage of desalination is that it seems to scale – there’s no obvious reason why we couldn’t build more plants and have as much water as we want, whenever we want. Rainfall is fickle, and since it’s rainfall that drives rivers and lakes so are they. But it’s a technological fallacy – desalination is expensive and scales badly. Using less water is very easy to slander, while distributed solutions are hard to monitor and measure, so again are easy to slander.
Choose your poison: big projects that are easy to audit (and rich pickings for political lobbying) and have single point of failure issues, or distributed solutions that leak every which way but are incredibly resilient.
On a side note, has anyone noticed that none of the PTB want to talk about Cuba? Cuba went through peak oil and de-intensification very quickly quite some time ago and has recovered nicely. Being barred from most international trade seems to have hurt them more than losing oil did.
But do we see them as a model for other industrialised countries to follow? Or even as an example of all the terrible things that will happen when we lose cheap oil? I wonder why not?
Probably because we are sane.
GregM, can you expand on that? Which bit of the story is not reality-based in your view? Has Cuba always had ample oil? Did Cuba return to pre-industrial levels once the imports stopped? Or what?
A 300ppm CO2 target would be a good start; to do this we need zero carbon emissions and active drawdown of CO2.
I don’t think that more techno adaptive measures are feasible long term solutions. This is a futile attempt at cure rather than prevention. I don’t want to be the proverbial frog in the saucepan.
Regarging rainfall patterns, wot Moz said @ 49.
The point being – our tanks DO provide our household in current rainfall patterns. Trust me, they do. Which reveals the lies Tim Holding spouts about “tanks not being effective”.
Factories, sporting stadiums, parks, skyscrapers and apartments can and should all have rainwater capture and storage – let’s call it urban water sequestration.
There should be building standards that dictate these. Not billions spent on more carbon emitting supplies.
“Factories, sporting stadiums, parks, skyscrapers and apartments can and should all have rainwater capture and storage – let’s call it urban water sequestration.”
Damn right and CERES in Melbourne is pioneering some world-leading storm water reclamation systems.
But it’s grey water which means it can’t be used for domestic or industrial purposes without major filtration. And there’s no dedicated water grid where you feed the grey water into its most cost-effective purpose so far which is irrigation.
But yes the overall tech is moving ahead in hops and skips.
OK, don’t want to get into circular arguments – just trying to explain that there is some rational basis to the government’s decisions, rather than running with the assumptions here that either (i) they were just picked out of a hat or (ii) they were made just to p*** off the greenies.
At one hand, Peterc, you think we should listen to those with long term experience with tanks but then you ignore what I’m saying based on this long term experience.
And I also have major involvement with a sporting club and have been intensely lobbying for water reuse for years. We’ve a sewrage farm less than a k from the pitch and a disused but perfectly adequate pipe from this running 200 metres from the ground. Everyone thinks it’s an excellent idea for us to reuse the water but noone’s interested in helping us fund it, so we’ll continue to use irrigation water and the town supply. Don’t get me started on how stupid it all is. (And a major expense in that is the 40 000 litres of water storage we need to put in).
So yes, there are solutions but they’re incredibly costly, especially when you’re talking about volunteer run facilities (which I believe covers every sporting ground in this region).
The point with apartments etc is the water catchment is not big enough for the number of users. A multistorey apartment will have roughly the same catchment as an individual house. A facory roof might be greater in area but its needs are also greater. Anyone who thinks that a sporting stadium can catch enough water to be self sufficient doesn’t understand the huge amounts of water needed.
I’m not saying that tanks are out of the picture or shouldn’t be encouraged. For years I campaigned actively (and would bet that my efforts were far more sustained and more successful that anyone posting here can claim) for compulsory tanks. I then got educated.
They have a role but they’re not the whole solution. The solution is a range of water supply options and that includes desal (which, by the way, I have NEVER suggested using for irrigation purposes, so please don’t verbal me).
mehitabel, sorry if you feel that was verballing you, I was responding to your “tanks are useless if it doesn’t rain”. True. Rivers, lakes and every other damn thing are useless if it doesn’t rain, too. The question is to what extent it doesn’t rain… and suburban tanks don’t need much rain.
Irrigating sports grounds using tank water is hard, and I don’t envy you trying to set that up. Perhaps more progressive water charges would be one way to encourage that stuff (or they might just wipe out water-dependent community facilities instead)
You should put on a Sheffield Shield final more often.
Especially if the QLD Bulls are doing well.
Mehibatel, I share your concerns about understanding whether there is a rational basis to the government’s recent decisions on water. Questions in several letters I have written to Premier Brumby and Water Minister Tim Holding have not been answered to date, including providing them with hard evidence of the effectiveness of domestic water tanks and their much lower (order of magnitude lower) carbon emissions profile.
Unfortunately, Holding keeps saying water tanks are ineffective and too costly, while Brumby keeps saying that the desalination plant will have lower carbon emissions than those associated with water tanks. They provide zero evidence for these claims. Both are provable lies.
I therefore speculate on their motives. They are part panic and part politics. Privatised major projects (PPPs) for water such as the desalination plant provide a perceived “guaranteed supply” which they think they desperately need politically as Melbourne is on a trajectory to completely run out of water and they know they will be voted out when Melbournian’s realise this.
Essentially they think they can engineer and buy their way out of our water crisis, and off load accountability to the private sector – as they have done with the debacle that is Melbourne’s train system.
They are prepared to politically write off rural electorates they regard as politically insignificant such as around the Yea/Goulburn region and the Wonthaggi Bass Coast region.
They are also ignoring the increased carbon emissions with these approaches, choosing to spin their way out of this by claiming that “it will all be powered by renewable energy”. Which is another lie.
Regarding stormwater and recycled water usage, I (like your sporting club) have been lobbying for our local council (Boroondara) to use both in a more climate friendly way. Currently they spend over $1m per year trucking recycled water from the Eastern Treatment Plant to water parks, gardens and ovals throughout the municipality.
There should be a third pipe for recycled water and suburban level stormwater capture facilities (they now actually have one of these as a pilot).
There should be state funding for these local climate friendly water intiatives, or at least council funding matched by state and/or federal funding.
Every drop of water is precious. Apartments and high rise may not capture their full usage requirements, but it can make a conribution. Buildings such as Southern Cross station and Jeff’s Shed (Convention Centre) have huge roofs that could capture vast quantities of water, but they don’t. This is a failure of government, legislation and common sense.
Tanks and stormwater are not the whole solution, but I think they are a very important contributor, almost completely ignored by Government for no good reason. Millions of litres just going down the drain every time it rains.
Peterc – my concerns are people who assume there are no rational reasons for government actions.
I’m sorry Brumby and Holding haven’t answered your letters. Obviously that hurts. As a long time political agitator, my advice is to write to your local state member and ask them to source the info. Ministers and Premiers get thousands of letters a day. Priority is given to those who have gone through the correct proceedure and written via their local member.
As for zero evidence – let those without sin cast the first stone. The evidence you’ve provided so far has been weak to say the least (I couldn’t find anything in the link you provided above which was at all enlightening).
From personal experience (I know the gentlemen personally) and from the amount of money being pumped into country electorates, I can also dispute the claim that they don’t care about country electorates. However, if it’s a choice of peeing off a few country people and the whole of Melbourne running out of water, I’d say the priorities are pretty clear.
If they’re ignoring the problem of increased emissions, why are they bothering to ‘spin’ at all? And you’re ignoring increaed emissions, too – the amount of energy required by every home having a pump or used by pumping storm water into storages (let alone used in purifying it) will also produce emissions.
You seem determined to believe in a government which hasn’t looked at the evidence for no good reason. That simply defies common sense. I’ve asked you why you think they’d behave this way and you’re unable to come up with any reason, so I’d suggest there isn’t one.
mehitabel -
Brumby and Holding not answering my letters simply indicates they are dodging their accountabilities, and are unwilling to justify their lies.
My local members have also been informed; their response is that it is in the hands of the Water Minister and Premier. No accountability there either, or any representation.
Not sure what your problem with evidence is. The very simple math based on empirical evidence clearly indicates that water tanks can reliably supply more water than the desal plant. You can choose to ignore this to, but you don’t have to make excuses for politicians that do so to.
Interesting that you know the gentlemen personally. You aren’t doing their bidding by any chance are you?
I think the answer to this is clear – they want to allay public concern about climate change, and are possibly feeling a touch guilty about their duplicity in adding to it with more carbon emissions.
So you too subscribe to Brumby’s lies about water tank pumps using more energy than teh desal plant? Do you math. Domestic water pumps would use 1/15th of the energy of the 90MW desal plant. Which will also need more carbon emissions to pump the water to Melbourne. Brumby won’t substantiate his bullshit claim and apparently you won’t either. . .
The government won’t provide any substantive evidence of their claims, or of any options analysis. If you think they have, please provide a reference. This isn’t about belief, its about the lack of facts provided by government.
I have already explained what I think their motives are. No point repeating, just re-read my last post.
I suggest you address the issues raised rather than continue your ad hominem argument.
OK, maths it is (never my strong point, but what the heck…)
Firstly, the article you link to assumes that $5000 is adequate to provide each of Melbourne’s homes (only 72% of which it says are suitable) with a tank and a pump.
However, if – as you have stated – the tank needs to be at least 20,000 litres, I can’t see how it can be done.
After extensive search, I found a 13 500 litre tank on line for $2600, so we’ll assume that 20 000 litres will set you back about $5000, leaving nothing for the pump and the plumbing. So we’ll assume another $1000, taking the total cost of supply to $6000.
My maths says this equals $3.6 billion, so desal’s ahead by $500 000 already. And desal’s doing all the homes, not 72%, as well as industry and businesses.
According to a government fact sheet (apologies, tried to link, but have a new computer and can’t work out how to do it) available at http://www.ourwater.vic.gov.au (and yes, it’s very broad brush) the power usage per household will be equivalent to a 4 star fridge. My 4 star fridge uses 414 kwh per year, so I make that 1.14 kwh per day.
The figure given by your linked article is 140 mwh per day for all water pumps (600,000 homes) which would equal 0.23 kwh per day.
So yes, the power usage is greater, but less than half that stated by your article (less than 6 times versus 15 times).
Not desirable, I agree, especially in the context of climate change, but the desal plant isn’t supposed to be running all the time.
I’d also factor into my costs (based on living with water pumps) maitenance and replacement costs and point out that there’s a lot of difference between ringing the water company when you have a problem and finding a plumber to fix it.
And we still haven’t solved the problem of what happens if it doesn’t rain.
I can’t see most houses in Melbourne being willing to have a 20kl tank full stop. Sure, if you have a 1000 square metre section losing a carp-park size area is not too bad, but especially for infill housing combined with the insane rules requiring two off-street carparks for most houses, adding an extra one for the water tank is not going to work.
That said, I don’t think the rest of the numbers hang together. Perhaps their assumptions are designed to produce a bad result? For a house that’s just running the toilets, garden and laundry off rainwater a 5000l tank with some water-saving effort will be fine. We run 6 adults off 3000l of storage, for example, and that was getting low towards the end of Feb before the rain started but no way would we need 20kl.
Sure, that doesn’t “solve” our need for drinking water, but it drops us from the 155 litres/day/head target to 40-60 litres/day each without any great hassle (we’re not collecting shower water any more, for instance, because the tanks are full).
Likewise the pump. Sure, lifting a 20kl tank 3-4m so you get enough head to gravity fill toilets is not going to work. But a 200-500l header tank and running the pump a few times a day is reasonable (I’ve lived in houses that do that). That setup allows you to put the tank in the ceiling space and buy a high-efficiency pump instead of a compromise high-pressure, high-volume pump with a small pressure tank bolted to it.
But that sort of thing is expensive to retrofit, and the homeowners who have done it are mostly DIY types who don’t pay for labour. The cheap answer of a small (2kl-5kl) tank on a 0.5m high stand will fill ground floor toilets, is small and cheap to buy. Even with a pump for when the tank is low you’re looking at $2k tops. Sure, lower water savings but at dramatically lower cost.
$5000 would be adequate to provide all new homes and homes enough space to retrofit a tank system (e.g. most quarter acre blocks). This can be quite easily done.
Also, on my calcuations, the water saving equivalent would be 175 odd GL., more than the estimated 150GL production of the desal plant.
Power usage per household for desal water is a nonsensical figure – it would depend on how much desal water they used. In our case, it would be none.
The only figures worth considering are power (and CO2 emissions) per litre of water. You say tanks could be 6 times better. My calculations say 15 times, possibly more. Even if we split the difference and tank water has one tenth the carbon emissions of desal it is clearly a much better option.
The desal plant will most likely be running 24 X 7 to ensure maximum profits for its private owners and operators..
It seems we have agreement that the Government has not provided information on options analysis, and it is a fact that the top secret desalination decision was informed by zero public consultation.
We have had enough rain over the last 5 years, even given reduced rainfall, to keep us 99% supplied via tanks, and we have a fairly small roof.
The government should legislate for mandatory good sized water tanks for all new dwelling, and subsidise a retrofit program for existing dwellings that can easily accommodate them.
Then we might find that a 1b 50GL desal plant is all we need to manage demand shortfalls.
Why should people be forced to pay via increased fixed charges for desal water they are never going to use?
More evidence of Brumby’s ill considered “water strategy”. The North South pipeline, stealing water from the dying Murray Darling catchment, will not carry anywhere near the water it has been claimed by Holding and other benders of the truth.
The only year it will provide the claimed 75GL is the election year of 2010. Thereafter, its flow will be a lot less, because there is not enough water there to steal.
This is very obvious to anyone looking at a rainfall gauge (no rain in Jan or Feb here) and taking the trouble to look at the seriously depleted Lake Eildon, which is fast approaching pond status.
Pipe dream: water strategy in doubt as forecasts dry up
Their entire “water strategy/gid” is a bunch of emissions intensive engineering projects dreamed up in corporate headquarters and signed off secretly in Spring St.
They don’t like water tanks because they can’t control them, and they reduce privatised water company profits. The big end of town wins yet again.
PeterC: even with the Murray/Goulburn system’s drastically reduced flow, a heck of a lot more than 75GL will go to irrigators.
We can easily afford to buy out the buggers at the price differential between desal and the pipeline’s capital cost.
Which is what we probably should have done in the first place, but Brumby has got the unaccountable desire to appease, at excessive cost, farmers who never vote for him in a fit anyway.
I heard again a day or two ago Prof Mike Young say that in the Murray Darling the inflows and evaporation are in perfect balance. So is all this much ado about nothing?
Yes, Brian, as long as you don’t mind the outflow from the mouth being “nothing”, let alone the water available for human use…
Yeah, I was being ironical, Robert. Irony often doesn’t work well in blog comments.
The whole thing is a bleeding tragedy. The citizens of Adelaide should be looking to climate independent sources, like desalination, powered of course by renewable energy IMHO.
The river as we have known it seems done for unless we get some decent precipitation.
Sorry, I think that should have been “sarcastic” rather than “ironical”.
Sorry Brian, I got it, but I wasn’t sure whether others did. Should have added a smiley.
No probs, Robert.
I’m wondering whether the MD is going to morph into streams like the Georgina, the Diamantina and Cooper Creek which peter out into nothing a lot of the time before reaching Lake Eyre. If’s that how it is going to be people in the headwaters might just as well use whatever water there is there, because it’s no use to people near the mouth anyway.
Peterc
I gave the assumptions behind my calculations, you simply state ‘my calculations say’.
You really can’t accuse the govt of being untrustworthy if you yourself are not going to be transparent.
The irrigation upgrade which the NS pipeline is part of was not dreamed up in Spring St. It was the work of a number of irrigators in the Shepp area. Even without their agitation, however, it is pretty apparent that an irrigation system which was put in -when? over sixty years ago? – and not touched since in any meaningful way since, would be in need of an upgrade and further, that such an upgrade would result in water savings.
As for the long term future of the MD, we get back to the big question: is this a drought or a climate shift? (I’m not disputing climate change, just whether this is a drought elongated by cc or something more permanent). If the former, with water by backs, more efficient irrigation systems and more sensible use of water (which includes alternative supplies to minimise demand) there is SOME hope that the MD will recover. If it’s a climate shift, yes, it’s gone for all money and we need to look at adapting to this. Not sure how long we can wait to make this call, however.
Either way, SA has to seriously look at where it gets its water from, because I don’t think anyone can guarantee constant flows down the Murray in the future.
My information and calculations on the viability of water tanks – and the much lower carbon emissions footprint – including assumptions – are all provided. See [Melbourne water usage] and and [Victorian desalination plant]
Some more information has just come to light that casts doubt on the “rational reasons for government actions” on water. [link]
This certainly raises very serious concerns about a lack of transparency and due diligence in the Labor Government’s decision making process on water policy and projects.