Desalination contract done – remember the name Blue Water Consortium

…’cause my guess is that they’re going to be in the news a lot, from here on out (or, if you’re a Living End fan, in).

An aside: I’m bothered less by the loudness of the music emanating from what had bloody-well better be a neighbour’s party than I am by how lame it is.

Back to the water: construction begins in a month at the oft-discussed site of Kurnell:

Construction costs are AUD730m for the plant, and AUD230m for the intake/outtake…valves? Pipes? For the seawater. We’re told that is less than estimated. A few things,

(1) this was a tender for a huge goddamn contract. I remember reading a story about (I believe) Neil Armstrong, sitting in the cockpit of the Apollo flight that would take him to the moon, exclaiming, “Oh God, I’m sitting a low bid.” Just like RailCorp, just like Metronet, one wins government contracts by beating other bids. Once you’re half-way built, or desalinating the water, your problems become the State’s problems.

(2) The Premier commented that the lower costs would mean lower water costs for Sydneysiders (that’s what we call ourselves. Or them. You’d have to ask someone living there whether or not I count).

“The lower cost is expected to lower the anticipated increase in consumer water bills to less than $2 per week,” he said.

Bad move. I don’t want to upset my parents, but water in Australia is too cheap. For a country with almost no rainfall and heading for a dustbowl, it is way, way too cheap. AUD2 per week? It should be AUD2 per kilolitre. The plant will turn out some 250ML per day (twice the original plan – apparently it will ‘drought-proof’ Sydney). Last Friday we used 1300ML. Last Thursday, 1290ML. Wednesday, 1250ML.

(3) Also announced was the preferred tender for recycling. Now follow this, as Iemma begins to spend (minimum) AUD1bn-ish on desalination. The Western Sydney Recycling Project should, by 2015, by recycling 50ML per day. This is in line with the Premier’s goal of recycling around 11% of Sydney’s water by then. That’s not now. I can’t seem to find today’s figures, and it’s too late at night for me to sift through a blog titled Water Recycling in Australia (although it is very good). Clearly I’m not in charge, but it strikes me as odd that the government seems at no point to have stopped and wondered whether we should try something else before desalination – say, more recycling?

(4) This is costing AUD1bn to build, not to run. Reverse osmosis is bloody energy-intensive. Estimates I saw vary a bit, but 10kW per cubic litre is not unreasonable (return to the water recycling blog for numbers, costs). ‘Green’ doesn’t exactly describe the plan, but then neither does ’smart’ or ‘good’.

These costs also don’t seem to include discussion of expansion costs, if/when necessary (and at the rate Sydney is expanding, I’d say so). But I read a story not long ago about how Australia’s drought/water shortages would cause electricity shortages next Summer. Be no end of amusing if we instead get those rolling brown/blackouts because of the provision of water.

Clearly I’m anti-desalination. I think it’s a bad idea, and bad policy undertaken by a State government that likes big projects (cross-city tunnel, anyone?), likes claiming job-creation, or just is too bloody lazy to think problems through and go for complex solutions to complex problems. I don’t know, and it’s not going to be my taxes, rates, water bills or energy shortfalls paying for the daft idea.