Toowoomba City Council - we want a recycling plant just like the one in Namibia ...
Just in time for Easter, Toowoomba City Council gets news it would probably not want to hear before the holiday break.
That other prime example of sewage recycling that Toowoomba should follow, Namibia, is a dud!
In the past week or so, MP Turnbull has been saying Toowoomba should follow Israel's example, except that Israel doesn't use recycled sewage for drinking - just for agriculture and irrigation.
Then there's one of the Council's prime examples used in their $41,000 Water Book - Windhoek, Namibia.
Toowoomba residents should drink recycled sewage because in Namibia they do it and it's wonderful.
Or is it?
Seems the Goreangab water reclamation plant is a dud and the High Court in Namibia has agreed.
The City of Windhoek recently won a High Court case against Standard Bank South Africa under its financial guarantee for a range of problems experienced with the water-treatment plant after it was designed and built by South African Company DB Thermal. The company charged the city N$92 million to build the plant, which was handed over two years later than anticipated in 2002.
See - Windhoek gets a dud recycling plant - 5 April 2006.
For a long time, the recycling plant, which was supposed to produce 21,000 cubic metres of purified water a day, was standing idle because a number of design flaws were detected.
See - Recycling plant has design flaws - 19 August 2004.
Problems with malfunctioning equipment and sloppy contractors apparently continue to dog the effective running of the Goreangab Water Reclamation Works.
The plant continues to be unreliable - at one time with 19 stoppages in as many days.
See - Problems dog dud recycling plant - 14 December 2005.
And this is the example that the Toowoomba City Council holds up for Toowoomba to follow?
No thank you.
Can the Toowoomba City Council provide one example anywhere in the world where people drink recycled sewage at rates of 25% and above (as proposed for Toowoomba) using their 'wonderful' technology?
I didn't think so ...
posted by Concerned Ratepayer at 3:49 PM
4 Comments:
More details:
WINDHOEK: Windhoek's new Goreangab water reclamation plant is a dud, the City claims in a High Court case against the company contracted to build the plant at a cost of close to N$100 million.
First the new plant was completed almost two years late.
Then, once it started operating, it produced significantly less water than it was supposed to while using significantly more chemicals to purify the water going through it.
And now the new plant, which was supposed to produce 21 000 cubic metres of purified water a day, has been standing idle since January 26 because a number of design flaws have been detected.
In the court documents, Piet du Pisani from the Windhoek Municipality 's Strategic Executive:Infrastructure, Water and Technical Services, sets out the woes that have befallen the new water plant.
Du Pisani related that the contract to design and build the water plant at a cost of N$92 million, plus another estimated N$7,3 million in taxes, had been awarded to DB Thermal in May 1999.
It was supposed to hand over a completed plant, ready to produce, by the end of September 2000.
But first DB Thermal started its construction work eight weeks late.
Eventually it handed over the plant on August 6 2002 - some two years late, Du Pisani pointed out.
"The plant contains various material defects, and has either produced an output of drinking water well below the required volume or has been totally out of commission for lengthy periods of time," Du Pisani states.
He revealed that the plant had been operating from August 6 2002 to January 26 2004 , when problems with the pressure switch absorption (PSA) plant - a part of the plant where oxygen is produced to make ozone that is pumped into the water during the purification process - brought it to a standstill.
There had been two explosions at the PSA plant and there were grave concerns over safety, according to Du Pisani.
He stated:"It is evident that the plant is not designed for continuous use in a mission critical industrial application.
This is so because of obvious design errors."
According to Du Pisani, it would cost some N$5,5 million to design, build and deliver a new, proper PSA plant.
It would also cost close to N$6,1 million to rectify other design flaws in another part of the plant.
These flaws were in the membrane plant, which Du Pisani described as the final step in the water purification process.
He alleged that when the plant was run at full flow, the membrane plant had on average only managed to deliver some 14 per cent less than the 21 000 cubic metres of water a day that the plant was supposed to deliver.
Windhoek 's total daily water consumption is between 50 000 and 64 000 cubic metres.
Du Pisani further claimed that DB Thermal had guaranteed that during the plant's initial lifetime of twenty years, the quantities of chemicals needed in the purification process would be at certain levels guaranteed in the contract between the company and Windhoek City .
Although the quality of the water produced by the plant was acceptable, it had been consuming quantities of chemicals well in excess of the levels that had been stipulated in the contract, Du Pisani continued.
It is on that score that the dispute between the City and DB Thermal takes on more serious dimensions.
Du Pisani claimed that the cost of that excess consumption of chemicals would run to N$25,7 million.
He went on to claim that DB Thermal's directors had further been grossly negligent in failing to ensure that their company remained covered by insurance for any claims that the City may have had against them.
As a result, the City may sue the directors in their personal capacity to hold them each personally responsible for the multimillion-dollar claim that the City is now planning to institute against the company.
2:27 PM, April 13, 2006
And the recyled water industry's slightly different PR view:
A Milestone in Potable Reuse
In Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, VA TECH WABAG has installed a plant reclaiming potable water from a mixture of treated sewage water and highly polluted reservoir water. Since 2002 the new Goreangab Water Reclamation Plant has been in operation with remarkable success. To date, the most stringent drinking water standards have been met without any problems.
2:28 PM, April 13, 2006
Yes, and the PR position is true. The problem does not seem to be with the quality of the water being produced, but rather the quantity.
Seems Windhoek cannot get enough of a good thing...
4:45 PM, April 13, 2006
"in operation with remarkable success"? Shut downs, a lawsuit, guarantee claims. That sort of success Toowoomba can do without.
5:43 PM, April 13, 2006
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