The first drinking water from Victoria’s beleaguered desalination plant flowed into the Cardinia Reservoir yesterday but it could be years before Victorians actually need it.
At a press conference yesterday to mark the milestone, Mike Jury, the plant director for Degremont Thiess Services - the joint builder-operators of the plant - could not say how long it would be before desalinated water would be required.
”You would have to ask the DSE [Department of Sustainability and Environment],” he said. ”I couldn’t really comment on the vagaries of the Australian climate. The concept of a plant like this is we’re a solution to a problem you may not even know you have yet. And the day will come when the plant will be needed, and we’ll be ready to run. When that date is going to be, I’m not sure.”
The facility had a design life of 100 years, he said.
Notably, there were no representatives from the Baillieu government on hand at the media launch to answer the question. Their absence on a day the plant operators described as a ”major milestone” suggested it was continuing to distance itself from the controversial project, commissioned by the former Labor government.
The project, which has experienced months of delays and major cost blowouts - the subject of a $1 billion-plus compensation claim by the AquaSure consortium, which is overseeing the project - is expected to cost Victorians up to $24 billion (in nominal dollars) over 28 years.
In March, when the state government was required to make its first formal water order to the plant, it opted not to order any. Under the desalination contract, the government is required to forecast Victoria’s needs for the next financial year and make an order of between zero and 150 gigalitres by April 1 each year.
At the time, Water Minister Peter Walsh said the decision not to order water was due to dams being close to 65 per cent full with the ”winter/spring filling season” still to come.
With water storage levels at almost 80 per cent, the government is unlikely to order any water in the next few years.
But Melbourne water users will pay for it regardless.
Under the contract, households will pay an average $650 million annually over the next 10 years even if no water is ordered. That increases to up to $780 million a year over that period if the full annual amount - 150 gigalitres - is ordered.
Mr Jury said yesterday the entire plant would be completed and ready for full operation by the end of December - more than five months after the initial deadline - but that come January next year it would instead go into ”a maintenance” or ”dormant” mode.
”Up until we’ve achieved our contractual milestone we need to produce water in order to test the process and we will do so up until the end of December. At the end of that we will then ramp the plant down and basically put it into maintenance mode waiting for that occasion when the plant is needed.”
The water being piped into Cardinia Reservoir, 84 kilometres away, is part of the plant’s performance testing requirements. The water will mix with rainwater already in the reservoir, which will then be piped into homes in the area.
