Page 1541 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 June 2007
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
The difference between Actew’s water2WATER scheme and nature’s water recycling is that the engineered scheme allows us to keep a great deal of our water here rather than sharing it with other people and species downstream. There is no doubt that the water2WATER proposal is a bold move. Intuitively, it seems a good idea. But whatever scheme we choose has to be drop-proof. One mistake, one breakdown and we are looking at an environmental and health disaster. Of course, there is no reason why it should break down, but the possibility exists.
How much does it cost to insure against such a contingency, remembering that insuring midwives assisting with home-births is too dangerous for every insurance company in the world, according to the ACT government. How much more would it cost to insure against a fault in a water recycling scheme? I am sure that all these things are under consideration at the moment, but in a litigious world a breakdown in a system which turns our waste into our water will be very costly.
Last week this seemed to be the only option that Actew and our government were interested in exploring. This week I see that we are also looking at a pipeline up from the coast to transport desalinated seawater. Again, this seems to me to be rather a pie in the sky idea, but this is how desperate we are to make sure that we never have to go without water. By going without water, I mean going without our swimming pools and our green grass and all those other things that we have come to expect in this community.
Actew, I was told by Michael Costello, must find ways of supplying water to the ACT government’s desired population of 500,000 people by 2030. That 500,000 people is just the ACT. Let us not forget Queanbeyan and the townships and villages that also depend on the ACT’s water supply—developments that were often built with streetscapes and houses indicating that their designers were oblivious to the need for water and energy efficiency. This is the wrong way around, if you ask me. We should be looking at the number of people a sustainable water supply for the ACT can support, and at what level of water use. Instead, I fear our planners, our governments and many businesspeople go for the numbers and try to figure out later how to provide water for new houses, sports fields, parks and towns.
In 2003-04, the government and Actew conducted an extensive process labelled think water, act water. This involved community consultation and the commissioning of many research papers. At the end of this process, there was a good basis established for taking water from the Murrumbidgee River to augment our supply, and the Corin and Bendora dams were brought into the process of water supply to Canberra. The augmentation of the Cotter Dam was seen as a least damaging option, as it was built on a reliable and, prior to the 2003 fires, high-quality water supply. Yet, for some reason, in the last three months we have leapt to a scheme that was way down Actew’s own list in its future water options for the ACT region implementation plan.
There was no mention of recycling our sewage among those options. The concept of water farming, which is another form of recycling our sewage, was earlier considered but was dismissed or put on the shelf for later. However, we are not looking at water farming in this proposal.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .