What most people that weren’t around when this decision was made don’t know is: - The labour government ruled out a new dam as they were ‘no longer socially acceptable.’ - There was an ideal dam site identified on a river that regularly flooded that would have cost a fraction of desal. - Not only did they not choose the dam option, they then protected the proposed dam site so that it could never be dammed at any point in the future. - And their friends in the unions made an absolute fortune along the way. Thanks for all you’ve done for us labour.
@@morantaylorThere were a couple of floods whilst the plant was being built causing many millions of dollars damage to several towns that would have been protected by this dam. In fact, the site of the desal plant flooded during construction.
I live only a few km from this plant - in fact I ride my bicycle past it twice a week. Whatever the questions about its cost-effectivenss, the strong environmental opposition to it when it was being planned has had the effect of making it LOCALLY extremely environmentally friendly - the powers that be went overboard in trying to mollify the greenies. We now have a pile of magnificent heathland and wetland reserve where there was once only the remnants of a century of coal mining and it has cut off a magnificent beach from road access which has preserved the foreshore dunes. And the architect did a fantastic job in making it nestle inside the dunes - it is not visually intrusive at all. I think you will find a surprisingly large portion of the capital cost of this plant was in fact spent on its architecture and its surrounds.
Melbourne's entire water requirement is less than 2% of the water already extracted from the Murray for irrigation. It is literally a drop in the ocean. The cost effective alternative to this plant was actually to do the exact opposite - pipe water from the upper Murray! But the farmers would have none of it, and they carry political influence out of all proportion to their numbers and economic importance, as happens in many democracies.
exactly, the value of water when its needed is infinite. I work with water, and this plant is amazing. Best in the world. All the latest tech...fully custom made, even down to the pumps. $$$$
the big flaw was location and the lack of integration with traditional water treatment. many of the systems needed for desalination are also needed for ordinary water treatment at dams, and as dam levels drop the water quality decreases, requiring more and more treatment, at greater cost, but if you've already got a desal plant at the dam you've already got all the equipment you need to cope with the dam's decreasing water quality, and if the dam runs completely dry you can draw salt water from a pipe connected to the ocean. its not a perfect solution but its a lot better than having a multi-billion dollar desalination plant that sits unused most of the time. the current setup is like buying two cars, one landcruiser and one ute, when you could have saved a huge amount of money by getting a towball on the landcruiser so you can tow a trailer when you need to.
It will never be needed. Australia's historic climate cycle is well recorded and it is only the scam of alarmism that imagines we are having less rain than previous history. A giant white elephant built for a non-existent problem. Dams would have been an intelligent choice.
This is an old Chestnut. The horse has truly bolted. Another panic reaction to a drought. Had Labor not stopped the building of the Mitchell dam, we wouldn't have needed it.
It's better than the price tag today. Also, with the power output, desalination plants drain so much power. I doubt that the renewable renewable was enough to keep the light on. There is a desalination plant near i lived and i know how much power it consumes is crazy high.
NSW has one when our state government over reacted.We have paid $360 million per year since 2007 to a French company even though we have never needed to use it.
So just in round figures, instead of paying some corrupt French company $360 million per year, they could instead have given away for free, half a million, $720 cost home rainwater tanks (like what some folks in rural areas still use). So in the course of the last 16 years, 8 million NSW homes would have received a "free" rainwater tank ! But whoever granted the contract to that French company, wouldn't have gotten their bribe money, eh. cheers
mate they were about to double its capacity in 2019 when the last drought was on. it was pretty useful then with dams hitting 40% and dropping. Water security is definitely something you would rather have and not need than need and not have. Imagine the shit we would be giving politicians next drought if we were running out of water and they didnt have a plant ready to go.
The first time the local government knew about this desal plant was when the Melbourne press rang the local mayor to ask their opinion on it. What water plant? Was the reply. Oh and the state government gracefully declared that the desal company wouldn’t have to pay any rates to the local shire. And sweet bugger all water has been delivered since it was built.
I think the government was in a bind, they had to do something about water security but there’s no cheap way out. If water ran low people point the finger at the government “why didn’t they do something?”, then we get normal rainfall since then. An anology, I don’t own a generator and have had only one six hour power failure. So next time might be next week or six years from now. I’d still have to run the generator once a month to ensure it is working.
The government of the day blindly followed the advice of the chief "scientist". He proclaimed that the drought was never going to break. The drought ended just after the desal plant was completed. There are many other methods that cost much less. It's even possible to get water out of the air. No moving parts and virtually no maintenance costs.
Should have built a desal ship or even a dozen, could be rented out to earn it's keep when not needed. The existing desal plant has never been needed, and might not be needed during its lifetime.
If people only knew the actual extent of the BS , mismanagement and gouging and Im sure all our projects experience similar. I know the submarine project and various rail projects did.
Desalination was the right answer but it was simply built too big. The demand was 20% of the build. It is modular and should have been built in stages. Running all the time drip feeding the system and adding modules as the population grows. The reason they overbuilt was climate change hysteria “experts” saying it would never rain again.
Yes the operating costs are staggering, and once the plant is started, it cannot be shut down. People forget that the Sydney Plant was equally expensive and probably don't know that it is running all day every day at 100%. The process of reverse osmosis is basically splitting the water down to its atomic structure of H20. In theory the plant can filter the most poisonous water on the planet. Its an overkill, but there isn't any other way around it. Its this technology, combined with the flow of fresh water required is where the operating expense is. Imagine an air filter that strips even the nitrogen and oxygen out of the air, and requires it to be reinjected back in....thats the level of filtration (combined with huge flow)
Wouldn’t be better to cut the cost of maintaining a Non-Producing plant to minimal costs and keep it for emergency. My ultimate suggestion is to remove the politicians out of this decision making process and just let the engineers make the perfect decision!
Yes, this is the point. Instead of building it themselves and mothballing it for emergencies the government entered a ridiculous 27 year contract with the builder/operator to buy all the water at top dollar no matter what. That was done to get the capital cost off the government's books, but It is a classic example of how using PPPs (Public-Private Partnerships) to get infrastructure costs off-budget for political reasons typically results in the private party making out like bandits at taxpayers' expense. The general idea of a desal plant was not so bad but as so often the devil was in the contractual detail.
Built under a PPP contract so the govt as the sole customer needed to commit to pay a minimum value per year to the consortium even if water isn’t produced. At the end of the contract the ownership transfers to govt and they get the asset and payments stop. During the contract the consortium needs to maintain the facility and lifecycle replacement etc. When they transfer the asset back to the govt it’s essentially “new”
The reverse osmosis basically splits water down to its bare atoms...only allowing the elements H20 through....(so you can filter radioactive poison if you wanted to) and the filters and the scrubbers must constantly be in use...otherwise they will clog. This means the plant has to run full time but at the minimum speed. To run the plant means you have to run everything. Yes i work in the water industry.
@@teknikgroup7597 A powerful argument for using flash distillation rather than reverse osmosis, as many pure backup plants around the world do. Distillation is certainly less energy efficient, but that does not matter much if you are not using it most years. And it can be easily started and stopped.
In 1997 the melb water storages were full. They released all that water to make a quick $ (power generation) Then the 10 year draught came. Such bad timing
Amazing video! So professional and enjoyable to watch. Just my opinion but whoever built that was brilliant. They should however go further and build the catchment system as a primary means of water and use desalination plant as the backup. I'm also highly skeptical about the daily operating costs of the desalination plant. I cannot see how it would cost that amount of money if no water was being produced. It's basically a large filter plant. I think someone's fluffing the numbers l o l.
If a city runs out of water, the city has to move. They should do what Adelaide did and use it for irrigation purposes combined with solar panels, to have agriculture that isn’t dependent on weather. This can be scaled up over time also.
We'll definitely need it at some point, like you say the timing was poor. In the meantime I feel like we should do something with the water we could be producing. Like selling the water to offset some of the maintenance costs we're burning anyways.
Given the amount of time to build any of these solutions and the ramifications of a city of over 4 million running out of drinking water, I wouldn't complain too much. More controversial is redirecting water from Victoria's food bowel to city swimming pools.
That's crap. Melbourne's ENTIRE water requirement is under 2% of the water currently extracted from the Murray for irrigation. It is irrigation, not urbanisation, that is destroying the Murray-Darling basin.
What a great project worth every penny in anther 20 years there will be a water shortage and they will be ready to go without having to restrict water usage
Lots of mushrooms grow around here because they used a thick thick layer of recycled wood chips over a 20 square kilometre area, you can find painted pieces of wood and bits of metal among the trees and plants but it’s a beautiful ecosystem, lots of kangaroos too !!
Always more expensive in Victoria. Why not connect desal plant to water reservoirs and dams? The desalination costs per litre is cheap. Run the plant to top up dams etc when levels are run down. It is an insurance in reality and a worthwhile investment. Stop the whining.
Why is it so expensive here compared to the cost of desalination in the UAE and other Middle East countries and 120MW is not a big power user compared to some industrial sites in Melbourne One site in Dandenong uses more power then 700,000 homes
It still requires reverse-osmosis filtering to remove salts in waste-water so no particular savings over desalinating sea-water and the latter is easer to sell to the public.
Some places around the world are now removing flouride. Flouride is a heavy metal and poisonous, despite its benefit in hardening teeth I think people are quite right to question whether on balance it is a good idea to add it to water. I suspect if we fast forward 100 years prople will look back at the addition of flouride as a bonkers thing.
@bahpapajarmjackson that's not it. You are talking about withdrawal of additional fluoride that was added to prevent tooth decay, this is about adding minerals to make the water more like the natural fresh water found in lakes, not for humans.
@@bahpapajarmjacksonbut there's no evidence that the levels of fluoride added to water lead to any harmful effects... Our water is also chlorinated, and chlorine is a deadly gas. But it's safer to have chlorine in our water than to risk microbial growth. You don't know what you're talking about
It is a long scale wet dry cycle, but yes deforestation does reduce rain fall and reforestation increases it. We are currently in a wet cycle the time to be doing the latter on a vast scale. Prepare for bad times in good times.
Hmm 🤔 Storm water harvesting "the collection of excess rain ☔ 🌧️ fall" Drought " The prolonged absence 🌞☀️of rain fall" Hmm LET'S NO rely on water falling from the sky, in a drought prone country/Continent 😅
Climate change is a constant ever since the earth was created and will continue to be constantly variable for ever more this video hasn't aged well as we are in our second decade of unusually High rainfall which is the right time to be assessing the best infrastructure required for the next 5 year or ten year drought which will come along in the next decade or two. Not one climate change computer model or prediction has ever materialized. we have to accept climate change and prepare for all variabilities of climate. Many countries around the world are greening their deserts with very simple, cheap and functional permaculture techniques that have been implemented in China, India & Africa, yet Australia hasn't made greening our deserts and terraforming our high ground to catch water to replenish our ground water? The thoughtlessness and near sightedness of our Local State and federal Governments is blatantly Foolish & annoying.
Politicians and the citizens have small minds. Three quarters of Australia is unusable desert. Just pipe it tithe interior for irrigation and future development. People may actually want to live there.
Your not going to irrigate with deslinated water as it tales 2000 +tonnes of water to grow a tonne of corn 2$for a tonne of desalinated water make this unviable
@@santyclause8034 your a dreamer no one does mass irrigation with desalinated water there is no irrigators that would pay 2$a kilolitre the water you would use would cost more than value of your crop.The idiots that run Australia should realise Australia is the driest continent with the worst soils .Before they crowd Australia out with third world Immigrants
Started out at costing $3Bn which lept to $4Bn when the contract was signed 12 months later and Govt yet again gave it to the French . To $2bn and counting, with ill thought out design, site planning ie on an old honeycomb of coal mines, Union gouging, ludicrous roof garden and inside straw sound insulation which gets moldy every few weeks at a cost of Millions to keep replacing due to poor garden construction and improper roof materials leading to seepage. Our Grand children will be paying the eyewatering Interest only bill and the unions French and Bankers will be profiteering for decades exacerbated by the young punk of a Water Minister insisted the project be fast tracked to mitigate embarrassment for him - at least thats when the Unions realised they could get away with massive and ludicrous extra charges and issues such as a trucks company driver complaining the step height wasnt regulation on HIS Fg truck!! resulting in a full days double time wages for reading the paper when they discovered it was ok after all. This is why bureau- twats cant be left to sign, run or oversee anything
As Melbourne's population continues to grow, its. boundaries. expand and in light of uncertainty as to rainfall, the cost argument must be weighed. against an intrinsic " insurance"parameter. Yes by 2010, the drought of the late 90's>lates 2000's had. broken. So from a "cost benefit" analysis, the project was an overkill. One giant financially irresponsible noose which has only added to the state. debt HOWEVER in light of an unpredictable rainfall in S E Australia given the impact of climate change; maybe if seen as. an insurance policy, the deal plant may yet prove its. worth. Look at Snowy 2.0. Billions in cost over run, still nowhere. near completed. PLUS it is. still dependant upon "snow. runoff" to provide. the initial source of water. before. any "green electricity" can be. generated. Tasmania. found out a number of years ago what a. depleted rainfall can do to its hydro energy capacity Anyway back to Vic's. Desal plant and its mammoth cost. It's like insurance. Do you run the risk of not having a policy purely on the basis of never having claimed on a house or motor vehicle policy; Whereby saving yourself the costs involved? Taking the risk until one. day your house e catches fire or you have. a. crash with an expensive motor. vehicle. or. worse still; cause. a fuel tanker. to avoid a. collision caused. by your inattention or negligence resulting in a rollover spilling ten's of thousands of lites of fuel to spill or. worse still cause the. upturned tanker . to catch fire. resulting in many millions of $$$$$'s in associated. damage. GET MY DRIFT.... Vic was in the midst of a. nearly decade of drought. Despite strict water usage restrictions, its water. storages. were at a. dangerous and. decreasing level. They didn't have. a glass ball into future. rainfall. Tapping into Eildon to supplement Melb's. water supply was at best a stop gap measure with huge implementations. upon the Goulburn Valley , Mallee & Wimmera regions. AS even Blind. Freddie. knows, the general populous has. to have. someone. to blame in the event of any crisis- usually the government is "The. Culprit" HAD the. drought continued, the bays for blood. from all impacted by tighter restrictions would have been heard all over the country; let alone. the economic and social costs of running out of water. So the state. government initiated the building of the desal ( or. as. some. would. say) The."White Elephant plant". I'm sure. back in the1920''s. many residents. of Sydney would have said. that about the building of Sydney Harbour Bridge. (the debt for. which was. only paid. off in the mid 80's). Might not be. in my lifetime but sure. one. day, residents of not only Melbourne. but North/ North Western Victoria might be. grateful that there is a. reserve water supply in the form of the Desal plant. What price. Water Security? One. should. also question why water rights. are traded like. a commodity and why foreign governments. ( and. even politicians) are involved in this scarce. commodity profiteering?
What most people that weren’t around when this decision was made don’t know is: - The labour government ruled out a new dam as they were ‘no longer socially acceptable.’ - There was an ideal dam site identified on a river that regularly flooded that would have cost a fraction of desal. - Not only did they not choose the dam option, they then protected the proposed dam site so that it could never be dammed at any point in the future. - And their friends in the unions made an absolute fortune along the way. Thanks for all you’ve done for us labour.
What most people that weren’t around when this decision was made don’t know is:
- The labour government ruled out a new dam as they were ‘no longer socially acceptable.’
- There was an ideal dam site identified on a river that regularly flooded that would have cost a fraction of desal.
- Not only did they not choose the dam option, they then protected the proposed dam site so that it could never be dammed at any point in the future.
- And their friends in the unions made an absolute fortune along the way.
Thanks for all you’ve done for us labour.
you should watch The Rules for Rulers. "Do you see the problems in your Country, AND know how to fix them?.."
How common is flooding during extended drought? There is no point in building a dam if there is no water replenishing the supply.
@@morantaylorThere were a couple of floods whilst the plant was being built causing many millions of dollars damage to several towns that would have been protected by this dam. In fact, the site of the desal plant flooded during construction.
I live only a few km from this plant - in fact I ride my bicycle past it twice a week. Whatever the questions about its cost-effectivenss, the strong environmental opposition to it when it was being planned has had the effect of making it LOCALLY extremely environmentally friendly - the powers that be went overboard in trying to mollify the greenies. We now have a pile of magnificent heathland and wetland reserve where there was once only the remnants of a century of coal mining and it has cut off a magnificent beach from road access which has preserved the foreshore dunes. And the architect did a fantastic job in making it nestle inside the dunes - it is not visually intrusive at all.
I think you will find a surprisingly large portion of the capital cost of this plant was in fact spent on its architecture and its surrounds.
at a cost of 19BILLION dollars
Why not pump the water up to the Murray-Darling basin?
The maintenence money is already being spent
Melbourne's entire water requirement is less than 2% of the water already extracted from the Murray for irrigation. It is literally a drop in the ocean. The cost effective alternative to this plant was actually to do the exact opposite - pipe water from the upper Murray! But the farmers would have none of it, and they carry political influence out of all proportion to their numbers and economic importance, as happens in many democracies.
At 0:41, the marker "A" is positioned at Victoria's capital city of Melbourne, not Wonthaggi. Wonthaggi is 125km southeast of where the marker is.
Excellent documentaries
Like everything in Victoria, the union bosses no doubt did alright out of it.
As did the French,,, again !! and the Bankers
S.E QLD has a desalination plant, we don't use it as its "Too expensive to run"
They'll be happy they built it when they need it, and it's always cheaper to have built it already than to build it in the future
Absolutely!!!
exactly, the value of water when its needed is infinite. I work with water, and this plant is amazing. Best in the world. All the latest tech...fully custom made, even down to the pumps. $$$$
the big flaw was location and the lack of integration with traditional water treatment.
many of the systems needed for desalination are also needed for ordinary water treatment at dams, and as dam levels drop the water quality decreases, requiring more and more treatment, at greater cost, but if you've already got a desal plant at the dam you've already got all the equipment you need to cope with the dam's decreasing water quality, and if the dam runs completely dry you can draw salt water from a pipe connected to the ocean. its not a perfect solution but its a lot better than having a multi-billion dollar desalination plant that sits unused most of the time.
the current setup is like buying two cars, one landcruiser and one ute, when you could have saved a huge amount of money by getting a towball on the landcruiser so you can tow a trailer when you need to.
It will never be needed. Australia's historic climate cycle is well recorded and it is only the scam of alarmism that imagines we are having less rain than previous history. A giant white elephant built for a non-existent problem. Dams would have been an intelligent choice.
Not only that and under Labor it would have cost like 50 billion
This is an old Chestnut. The horse has truly bolted. Another panic reaction to a drought. Had Labor not stopped the building of the Mitchell dam, we wouldn't have needed it.
It's better than the price tag today. Also, with the power output, desalination plants drain so much power. I doubt that the renewable renewable was enough to keep the light on. There is a desalination plant near i lived and i know how much power it consumes is crazy high.
NSW has one when our state government over reacted.We have paid $360 million per year since 2007 to a French company even though we have never needed to use it.
So just in round figures, instead of paying some corrupt French company $360 million per year, they could instead have given away for free, half a million, $720 cost home rainwater tanks (like what some folks in rural areas still use). So in the course of the last 16 years, 8 million NSW homes would have received a "free" rainwater tank ! But whoever granted the contract to that French company, wouldn't have gotten their bribe money, eh. cheers
mate they were about to double its capacity in 2019 when the last drought was on. it was pretty useful then with dams hitting 40% and dropping. Water security is definitely something you would rather have and not need than need and not have. Imagine the shit we would be giving politicians next drought if we were running out of water and they didnt have a plant ready to go.
The first time the local government knew about this desal plant was when the Melbourne press rang the local mayor to ask their opinion on it.
What water plant? Was the reply.
Oh and the state government gracefully declared that the desal company wouldn’t have to pay any rates to the local shire.
And sweet bugger all water has been delivered since it was built.
We will need it in the future, having it has a back up is what we need
I think the government was in a bind, they had to do something about water security but there’s no cheap way out. If water ran low people point the finger at the government “why didn’t they do something?”, then we get normal rainfall since then.
An anology, I don’t own a generator and have had only one six hour power failure. So next time might be next week or six years from now. I’d still have to run the generator once a month to ensure it is working.
The government of the day blindly followed the advice of the chief "scientist". He proclaimed that the drought was never going to break. The drought ended just after the desal plant was completed. There are many other methods that cost much less. It's even possible to get water out of the air. No moving parts and virtually no maintenance costs.
sounds like the one at Gold coast that never gets used
Should have built a desal ship or even a dozen, could be rented out to earn it's keep when not needed. The existing desal plant has never been needed, and might not be needed during its lifetime.
Another white elephant project. The maintenance contact on this is very costly but the site is hardly used
If people only knew the actual extent of the BS , mismanagement and gouging and Im sure all our projects experience similar. I know the submarine project and various rail projects did.
It could even be reused as a part of a nuclear power facility.
The greatest tragedy of this project is it wasn't built in two halves, one at each of Melbourne's major treatment plants.
Desalination was the right answer but it was simply built too big. The demand was 20% of the build. It is modular and should have been built in stages. Running all the time drip feeding the system and adding modules as the population grows. The reason they overbuilt was climate change hysteria “experts” saying it would never rain again.
Yes the operating costs are staggering, and once the plant is started, it cannot be shut down. People forget that the Sydney Plant was equally expensive and probably don't know that it is running all day every day at 100%. The process of reverse osmosis is basically splitting the water down to its atomic structure of H20. In theory the plant can filter the most poisonous water on the planet. Its an overkill, but there isn't any other way around it. Its this technology, combined with the flow of fresh water required is where the operating expense is. Imagine an air filter that strips even the nitrogen and oxygen out of the air, and requires it to be reinjected back in....thats the level of filtration (combined with huge flow)
can't wait to see how they power it when they rely only on renewable, such an energy hungry operation when it's functional.
I lived in Wonthaggi while it was being built. The return of habit is worth the visit
Wouldn’t be better to cut the cost of maintaining a Non-Producing plant to minimal costs and keep it for emergency. My ultimate suggestion is to remove the politicians out of this decision making process and just let the engineers make the perfect decision!
Yes, this is the point. Instead of building it themselves and mothballing it for emergencies the government entered a ridiculous 27 year contract with the builder/operator to buy all the water at top dollar no matter what. That was done to get the capital cost off the government's books, but It is a classic example of how using PPPs (Public-Private Partnerships) to get infrastructure costs off-budget for political reasons typically results in the private party making out like bandits at taxpayers' expense.
The general idea of a desal plant was not so bad but as so often the devil was in the contractual detail.
If you build that plant today it would be 4 times expensive
And still not neeeded.
Why does it cost so much when not in use? Contract?
Built under a PPP contract so the govt as the sole customer needed to commit to pay a minimum value per year to the consortium even if water isn’t produced. At the end of the contract the ownership transfers to govt and they get the asset and payments stop. During the contract the consortium needs to maintain the facility and lifecycle replacement etc. When they transfer the asset back to the govt it’s essentially “new”
The reverse osmosis basically splits water down to its bare atoms...only allowing the elements H20 through....(so you can filter radioactive poison if you wanted to) and the filters and the scrubbers must constantly be in use...otherwise they will clog. This means the plant has to run full time but at the minimum speed. To run the plant means you have to run everything. Yes i work in the water industry.
@@teknikgroup7597 what's your guess on the replacement cost of filters and the scrubbers? more than a few years of running it?
@@teknikgroup7597 A powerful argument for using flash distillation rather than reverse osmosis, as many pure backup plants around the world do. Distillation is certainly less energy efficient, but that does not matter much if you are not using it most years. And it can be easily started and stopped.
In 1997 the melb water storages were full. They released all that water to make a quick $ (power generation)
Then the 10 year draught came. Such bad timing
Could've piped water from Tasmania and most of it would be using gravity. Tasmania releases shit loads every year into the sea.
Amazing video! So professional and enjoyable to watch. Just my opinion but whoever built that was brilliant. They should however go further and build the catchment system as a primary means of water and use desalination plant as the backup. I'm also highly skeptical about the daily operating costs of the desalination plant. I cannot see how it would cost that amount of money if no water was being produced. It's basically a large filter plant. I think someone's fluffing the numbers l o l.
If a city runs out of water, the city has to move. They should do what Adelaide did and use it for irrigation purposes combined with solar panels, to have agriculture that isn’t dependent on weather. This can be scaled up over time also.
We spend more on retired bureaucrats and politicians.
However this has made water very expensive in Victoria
We'll definitely need it at some point, like you say the timing was poor.
In the meantime I feel like we should do something with the water we could be producing. Like selling the water to offset some of the maintenance costs we're burning anyways.
$19 BILLION for a project that will never be used yet people on here saying it was a good idea. Clearly fkn not
It gets used every year,check the contract.
adelaide put one in over 20 years ago. we have never used the sucker, but it's costing us a motza.
Just politicians who filled their own pockets
You try dealing with running out of water.
@@davefoord1259 Running out of water is not the inevitable result of not building a desalination plant.
Dammed if you do,
Dammed if you don't.
Cant build more of them either
Pumped aquifer storage is the latest buzz. Still think more dams would be the most practical though.
Given the amount of time to build any of these solutions and the ramifications of a city of over 4 million running out of drinking water, I wouldn't complain too much. More controversial is redirecting water from Victoria's food bowel to city swimming pools.
That's crap. Melbourne's ENTIRE water requirement is under 2% of the water currently extracted from the Murray for irrigation. It is irrigation, not urbanisation, that is destroying the Murray-Darling basin.
What a great project worth every penny in anther 20 years there will be a water shortage and they will be ready to go without having to restrict water usage
Lots of mushrooms grow around here because they used a thick thick layer of recycled wood chips over a 20 square kilometre area, you can find painted pieces of wood and bits of metal among the trees and plants but it’s a beautiful ecosystem, lots of kangaroos too !!
Always more expensive in Victoria. Why not connect desal plant to water reservoirs and dams? The desalination costs per litre is cheap. Run the plant to top up dams etc when levels are run down. It is an insurance in reality and a worthwhile investment. Stop the whining.
That's exactly what it does, if needed.
However, only Cardinia Reservoir, which holds about 15% of our water.
Why is it so expensive here compared to the cost of desalination in the UAE and other Middle East countries
and 120MW is not a big power user compared to some industrial sites in Melbourne
One site in Dandenong uses more power then 700,000 homes
Basically because lots of governments needed urgent desalination plants installed at that time so builders could charge whatever they wanted.
Unions had a very very good deal on that job.
Union corruption with the Victorian Labor government..there's a reason why Vic is broke
How much did the parliamentary pension fund and the state super fund invest in Aquasure?
Membrane reverse osmosis is a mistake. Too complicated and too maintenance excessive.
Can't we use our plant and export our water to somewhere that needs it?
A good insurance project. It will be needed in the future.
Murry Darling basin has been screwed with for decades. Broken water meters, $$$. Imagine growing cotton is the aussie desert. lol
By 2010 they had floods and heaps of stored water lol
Could have hired a de-sal plant as needed.
Australia is in need of water.
Waste water should be recycled.
It still requires reverse-osmosis filtering to remove salts in waste-water so no particular savings over desalinating sea-water and the latter is easer to sell to the public.
did you watch the video?
Not for drinking or agriculture. Forever chemicals.
No water....... No life........
I wonder if anyone bothered to talk with toper field
Ur 15yrs late me n my dad worked there building it
Bulldog?
Nah but, the landscaping they did was amazing with the hills and all the trees 😍😍😍
Australia = inevitable drought. It's built, so protect stored water by supplementing with the most economical rate of desalination.
Reminerlized with fluoride?
Yes, a public-health measure to reduce tooth decay. Just like we add iodine to table salt to prevent cretinism and brain problems.
Yes, natural groundwater has minerals in it.
Some places around the world are now removing flouride. Flouride is a heavy metal and poisonous, despite its benefit in hardening teeth I think people are quite right to question whether on balance it is a good idea to add it to water. I suspect if we fast forward 100 years prople will look back at the addition of flouride as a bonkers thing.
@bahpapajarmjackson that's not it. You are talking about withdrawal of additional fluoride that was added to prevent tooth decay, this is about adding minerals to make the water more like the natural fresh water found in lakes, not for humans.
@@bahpapajarmjacksonbut there's no evidence that the levels of fluoride added to water lead to any harmful effects...
Our water is also chlorinated, and chlorine is a deadly gas. But it's safer to have chlorine in our water than to risk microbial growth.
You don't know what you're talking about
A huge un needed white elephant. Staggering financial libility for Victorians into the next generation.
Until you need it and you don't got it. Doesn't you have any clue what water "security" means?
Exactly
If they didn't destroy the forest in Australia this will not happen
It is a long scale wet dry cycle, but yes deforestation does reduce rain fall and reforestation increases it. We are currently in a wet cycle the time to be doing the latter on a vast scale. Prepare for bad times in good times.
Hmm 🤔
Storm water harvesting "the collection of excess rain ☔ 🌧️ fall"
Drought " The prolonged absence 🌞☀️of rain fall"
Hmm LET'S NO rely on water falling from the sky, in a drought prone country/Continent 😅
Climate change is a constant ever since the earth was created and will continue to be constantly variable for ever more this video hasn't aged well as we are in our second decade of unusually High rainfall which is the right time to be assessing the best infrastructure required for the next 5 year or ten year drought which will come along in the next decade or two. Not one climate change computer model or prediction has ever materialized. we have to accept climate change and prepare for all variabilities of climate. Many countries around the world are greening their deserts with very simple, cheap and functional permaculture techniques that have been implemented in China, India & Africa, yet Australia hasn't made greening our deserts and terraforming our high ground to catch water to replenish our ground water? The thoughtlessness and near sightedness of our Local State and federal Governments is blatantly Foolish & annoying.
It has to have “fluoride” added to keep Victoria so woke
Seven million Melbourne population and global warming insurance policy.
This is terribly researched and dishonest.
Politicians and the citizens have small minds. Three quarters of Australia is unusable desert. Just pipe it tithe interior for irrigation and future development. People may actually want to live there.
❤❤❤😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Your not going to irrigate with deslinated water as it tales 2000 +tonnes of water to grow a tonne of corn 2$for a tonne of desalinated water make this unviable
@robertfoster7807
These are sunken costs. With the money already spent, regardless if any water is produced or allocated. Your math is fallacious.
@@santyclause8034 your a dreamer no one does mass irrigation with desalinated water there is no irrigators that would pay 2$a kilolitre the water you would use would cost more than value of your crop.The idiots that run Australia should realise Australia is the driest continent with the worst soils .Before they crowd Australia out with third world Immigrants
Started out at costing $3Bn which lept to $4Bn when the contract was signed 12 months later and Govt yet again gave it to the French . To $2bn and counting, with ill thought out design, site planning ie on an old honeycomb of coal mines, Union gouging, ludicrous roof garden and inside straw sound insulation which gets moldy every few weeks at a cost of Millions to keep replacing due to poor garden construction and improper roof materials leading to seepage. Our Grand children will be paying the eyewatering Interest only bill and the unions French and Bankers will be profiteering for decades exacerbated by the young punk of a Water Minister insisted the project be fast tracked to mitigate embarrassment for him - at least thats when the Unions realised they could get away with massive and ludicrous extra charges and issues such as a trucks company driver complaining the step height wasnt regulation on HIS Fg truck!! resulting in a full days double time wages for reading the paper when they discovered it was ok after all. This is why bureau- twats cant be left to sign, run or oversee anything
As Melbourne's population continues to grow, its. boundaries. expand and in light of uncertainty as to rainfall, the cost argument must be weighed. against an intrinsic " insurance"parameter.
Yes by 2010, the drought of the late 90's>lates 2000's had. broken. So from a "cost benefit" analysis, the project was an overkill. One giant financially irresponsible noose which has only added to the state. debt
HOWEVER in light of an unpredictable rainfall in S E Australia given the impact of climate change; maybe if seen as. an insurance policy, the deal plant may yet prove its. worth.
Look at Snowy 2.0.
Billions in cost over run, still nowhere. near completed. PLUS it is. still dependant upon "snow. runoff" to provide. the initial source of water. before. any "green electricity" can be. generated.
Tasmania. found out a number of years ago what a. depleted rainfall can do to its hydro energy capacity
Anyway back to Vic's. Desal plant and its mammoth cost.
It's like insurance. Do you run the risk of not having a policy purely on the basis of never having claimed on a house or motor vehicle policy;
Whereby saving yourself the costs involved?
Taking the risk until one. day your house e catches fire or you have. a. crash with an expensive motor. vehicle. or. worse still; cause. a fuel tanker. to avoid a. collision caused. by your inattention or negligence resulting in a rollover spilling ten's of thousands of lites of fuel to spill or. worse still cause the. upturned tanker . to catch fire. resulting in many millions of $$$$$'s in associated. damage. GET MY DRIFT....
Vic was in the midst of a. nearly decade of drought. Despite strict water usage restrictions, its water. storages. were at a. dangerous and. decreasing level. They didn't have. a glass ball into future. rainfall. Tapping into Eildon to supplement Melb's. water supply was at best a stop gap measure with huge implementations. upon the Goulburn Valley , Mallee & Wimmera regions.
AS even Blind. Freddie. knows, the general populous has. to have. someone. to blame in the event of any crisis- usually the government is "The. Culprit" HAD the. drought continued, the bays for blood. from all impacted by tighter restrictions would have been heard all over the country; let alone. the economic and social costs of running out of water.
So the state. government initiated the building of the desal ( or. as. some. would. say) The."White Elephant plant".
I'm sure. back in the1920''s. many residents. of Sydney would have said. that about the building of Sydney Harbour Bridge. (the debt for. which was. only paid. off in the mid 80's).
Might not be. in my lifetime but sure. one. day, residents of not only Melbourne. but North/ North Western Victoria might be. grateful that there is a. reserve water supply in the form of the Desal plant.
What price. Water Security?
One. should. also question why water rights. are traded like. a commodity and why foreign governments. ( and. even politicians) are involved in this scarce. commodity profiteering?
the DE CEL....is like our polititians...how much for doing nothing ever year...ya goofy m8te from australia
Could've piped water from Tasmania at a fraction of the cost - and it's all down hill!!! 🦘🦘🦘
What most people that weren’t around when this decision was made don’t know is:
- The labour government ruled out a new dam as they were ‘no longer socially acceptable.’
- There was an ideal dam site identified on a river that regularly flooded that would have cost a fraction of desal.
- Not only did they not choose the dam option, they then protected the proposed dam site so that it could never be dammed at any point in the future.
- And their friends in the unions made an absolute fortune along the way.
Thanks for all you’ve done for us labour.