Page 3550 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 25 August 2009
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… we may not need to think again about whether or not we ever need a dam.
In July 2006, he said:
… there is no need for many years, for example, to build a new dam in the ACT.
Then last year, in a flash of light, Mr Stanhope had a Damascus conversion. He said that climate change meant the ACT must act now to increase water security to cope with the extended drought, the drought that had been in operation for eight or nine years already. Mr Stanhope said:
I believe it’s appropriate in the light of our current experience that we should enhance our water security through enhanced capacity.
The Stanhope-Gallagher government pooh-poohed observations from me and my former colleague, Mr Stefaniak, and others about water saving measures such as dual-flush toilet replacement programs and drought-resistant sports ovals. Then there was another flip-flop by the government when they eventually implemented programs exactly like those advocated by the Canberra Liberals.
Then we come to the cost blow-outs. Barely a week after this year’s estimates hearings, we saw announcements in the local media that the Cotter Dam could cost more than twice as much as it would have had the government decided to build the dam back in 2005. In April 2005, Actew Corporation’s Future water options report estimated that the cost to enlarge the Cotter reservoir to 78 gigalitres would be $120 million. After the Stanhope government’s years of denial, and then finally announcing the enlargement of the Cotter Dam, he said that it would cost $145 million. That was in October 2007—already up $25 million. Then on 30 May 2009, the Canberra Times reported Actew Corporation’s managing director, Mark Sullivan, as suggesting that the cost would now be up to $246 million for the same capacity—more than doubling the price that we expected to pay in 2005.
For more than four years we have seen the Stanhope-Gallagher government dithering about, delaying the inevitable and, in the end, costing Canberra’s taxpayers dearly. On top of the cost of building you have to add the high cost of operating the Cotter Dam because, unlike the other water supplies in the ACT, the Cotter Dam will require the pumping of water. All of the other water supplies in the ACT are gravity fed, and consequently the cost of running and maintaining the dams is quite low. All of the 78 gigalitres that will be stored in the lower Cotter enlarged dam will have to be pumped, at huge cost in terms of electricity and greenhouse gas emissions if we choose to use conventional electricity sources to do that.
The blow-outs are not limited to the Cotter Dam. Mr Sullivan told the estimates committee on 18 May 2009 that the Murrumbidgee to Googong transfer project, estimated by the ICRC in 2007 to cost $96.5 million, will now cost 30 per cent more. So what does this mean for the price of water? Mr Stanhope made it clear when he announced the enlarged Cotter Dam that these projects would mean higher water prices and he made no apology for it. Nor did he make any apology to the people of Canberra for his years of dithering denial resulting in these cost blow-outs.
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