Lid kept on dam options
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in Carolyn Tucker, Dam Alternatives, Desalination, Environmental Impact Statement
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5 February 2008
By Carolyn Tucker
The Queensland Water Commission is set to unveil a new long-term water strategy which will include discussion on additional desalination options for South-East Queensland.
The strategy will be released in coming weeks, after the government was accused of withholding information from the public about desalination.
Earlier this month, anti-Traveston dam campaigners had called for the government to release a half-a-million dollar report prepared by engineering consultants GHD, which a spokesman for the Deputy Premier had claimed did not exist.
The Minister for Natural Resources, Craig Wallace had previously told parliament that $512,000 was paid to GHD for ‘investigation of desalination options for South East Queensland’ in 2005-06.
The Deputy Premier’s spokesman told the Daily on January 8 that the advice was not provided in the form of a single ‘report’ on desalination and therefore could not be released.
Since then, another government document obtained by the Daily confirmed not only that GHD had prepared a report for the department of Natural Resources but that its contents had been kept secret.
The draft report from the Bulk Supply Infrastructure Task Group established under the South East Queensland Regional Water Supply Strategy justified the secrecy on the basis that its release would cause anxiety.
It went on to say the South East Queensland regional water supply strategy steering committee had agreed to fast track a scoping/feasibility study for desalination schemes in August 2005.
“Desalination studies were expedited by the Department of Natural Resources and Water,” the report said.
“(The department) engaged GHD to carry out this work, given their considerable experience in this area and a draft report was produced in March 2006.
“In consideration of the contentious nature of the desalination site locations and the potential to cause significant unnecessary community anxiety prior to any decision to develop these sites, the report has not yet been made available for release,” the document said.
When asked if the government would like to clarify its position, Mr Lucas’s spokesman said it had never denied the existence of desalination reports and stood by its earlier statement that there was no single $500,000 GHD report.
“Numerous technical reports have been used as part of the Queensland Water Commission’s considerations for a long term water strategy – including desalination information provided by GHD,” the Deputy Premier’s spokesman said.
“The strategy is still being finalised but when released will include discussion and detail on potential desalination options.
“Information used in preparing the long term strategy will be provided when the strategy is released.”
Kevin Ingersole from for the Save the Mary River Action group said the government had been withholding information about alternatives to the dam, because it would soon become obvious that the public was being sold a pup.
“One of the key points that has been made consistently to the coordinator-general in hundreds of submissions on the Traveston Dam Environmental Impact Statement the lack of any half serious attempt to define and consider and compare the alternatives,” he said.
“Taxpayers should be flooding their MPs with faxes and emails and phone calls, ‘saying how dare you treat us like idiots and waste our money like this’?
“They’ve spend hundreds of millions of dollars and all we can see is an EIS that hundreds of well qualified people think is one of the worst examples of an EIS they’ve ever seen.
“Surely to God we deserve better than this.”
The Opposition’s spokesperson for Infrastructure, Fiona Simpson, said the decision to keep the GHD desalination report confidential was part of a pattern of behaviour.
“This keeps pointing to the fact that there’s a whole raft of documents they are not releasing in order to avoid scrutiny of its flawed decisions,” she said.
“The Sunshine Coast in particular has been ripped off in this process but so has all of South East Queensland.
“They are spending $2.1 billion on the dam and the second stage of the pipeline and we are entitled to ask ‘are they making the most cost-effective, environmentally sensitive and socially responsible decision?’ because there is no evidence that they are.”
Miss Simpson said the suggestion that Traveston Dam would resolve South East Queensland’s immediate water shortage remained “the mother of all con jobs” and the government had shown a disgraceful disregard for the value of taxpayers’ money.
“The government committed to a decision that was not based on research and now they have spent millions after the fact trying to justify it – and they’ve forgotten to tell the people of Brisbane that they are being lied to about when it will deliver water,” she said.
“The lack of regard for the value of taxpayers’ money is a disgrace.”
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Cheap and nasty economics
Friday 1st February 2008page 26 (not available online)
The Traveston dam proves the lowest bid isn’t always the best option, writes Charles Berger
The astronaut John Glenn, asked what he felt as he sat in the Apollo capsule awaiting launch of the first manned flight to the moon, is reported to have said: “I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of two million parts, all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract.”
It’s amazing the sort of clarity that comes from sitting in the nose of a moon-bound rocket. A decision-making process that made perfect sense to a cost-conscious bureaucrat didn’t seem so sensible to the man who had to live with the consequences.
The uncomfortable truth is we’re living in a low-bid economy and we all take a turn sitting in the nose cone from time to time.
Of course we don’t call it a “low bid” economy. Instead we call it an “efficient” economy.
Efficiency is great, when we get the same real value for less money. But too often the low bid turns out to be less durable, less reliable, more toxic, not recyclable, more likely to blow up, more likely to put people out of work, more likely to finish off an endangered fish or turtle.
The cheap toys end up having lead paint; the cheap electricity turns out to be destructive to out climate.
The low bid promises a good deal, but much of the time we end up sacrificing things that are of real and lasting value to us – our health, our environment – in exchange for a transient cost-saving exercise that runs through our fingers like sand.
The people of the Mary Valley know what it’s like to sit in the nose cone. They’re dealing with one of the stupidest low-bid options in recent memory: the Traveston Crossing dam.
Not only will the proposed dam obliterate good agricultural land, as well as the last remaining natural habitat of at least three of Australia’s most threatened species – the Mary River Turtle, the Queensland Lungfish and the Mary River Cod – it also doesn’t stack up economically.
The economic assessment for the Traveston dam fails to follow state and federal government guidelines on assessing the social, economic and environmental costs of the project and fails to compare those costs with real alternatives to the dam.
Demand management – house-holders and businesses doing things differently to reduce the demand for water – was not considered in the Queensland Government’s recent environmental impact statement (EIS) as an alternative to the dam.
Demand management comes in many guises. Using recycled water rather than fresh drinking water to cool power stations is an obvious example that would save billions of litres of water a year.
The first deliveries of recycled water from the Bundamba Advanced Water Treatment Plant to Swanbank Power Station began in September 200; and there is no good reason why similar initiatives should not be immediately implemented at all the region’s power generation stations.
Then there’s the widespread deployment of the humble water tank.
Rainwater tanks collect and store water far more efficiently than dams. They can capture virtually every drop that lands on the roof catchment – and the stored water does not evaporate, as it does from open reservoirs.
Installing rainwater tanks throughout urban communities means instant savings on greenhouse gas emissions and infrastructure costs.
The water industry has not factored in these savings when arguing against rainwater tanks.
Experts at Sydney’s University of Technology believe demand management could deliver an extra 230 billion litres of water each year at a cost of about $1.15 a kilolitre. In contrast, the current proposal for the Traveston dam would deliver just 70 billion litres at $3.38 - $4.65 a kilolitre.
It turns out the low-bid option is not even cost-competitive.
But even taking the Queensland Government’s own analysis at face value, better options exist. According to the EIS, an alternative of building modular desalination plants, which are developed over time and increase water output as needed, would cost only 3 percent more than the dam.
Have we become so enamoured by the low bid that a skinny 3 percent cost saving is good enough reason to destroy good land, flood a thriving agricultural community and consign already threatened species to near-certain extinction in the wild?
None of those costs are reflected in the economic assessment put forward in support of the proposed dam, which looks only at the cost of building and operating the dam, but doesn’t count the collateral damage inflicted on the community and environment.
A word of advice to governments considering big new infrastructure projects: When making your decision, ask why the low bid is the low bid. Is it because it’s really the best value for money, or is it because there are other costs involved that haven’t been included in the analysis?
And don’t just try to answer this on yourself. Ask the people in the nose cone instead.
Charles Berger is the Australian Conservation Foundation’s Director of Strategic Ideas.
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Reader Comments (1)
When making your decision, ask why the low bid is the low bid. Is it because it’s really the best value for money, or is it because there are other costs involved that haven’t been included in the analysis?
So true. That the Northern Pipeline Interconnector was not considered to be part of the cost, that the method of actually pumping water out of the dam was not factored in ... and the list goes on.