Chief engineer stands by his costing figure ...

From the Chronicle:

Chief engineer stands by his costing figure

30 May 2006

By Kathleen Donaghey

Toowoomba City Council's chief engineer Kevin Flanagan stands by his costing of an alternative plan to water recycling.

Mr Flanagan said a proposal to swap 5000ML of recycled water annually from the proposed Advanced Water Treatment Plant with bore water from licensed holders in the Condamine Groundwater Management Area already had been rejected because it was too costly and impractical.

The swap had been put forward as a way to prevent Toowoomba residents having to drink recycled water by exchanging it for ground water.

The plan would require collection and distribution systems, storage, two pipelines for each water type, a reverse osmosis plant to desalinate the bore water and evaporation ponds.

But Mr Flanagan said it would cost $131 million for the complicated swap, not half the cost as claimed by Commerce Queensland South West regional chairman Ken Murphy.

Mr Murphy (The Chronicle, Friday, May 26) based his opinion on a set of notes produced for the NuWater Group by international consultancy group GHD on the potential supply from the Condamine allocation to Toowoomba.

Mr Murphy seized on a section of the two-page brief which claimed up to $40 million could be saved in costings if $35 million on a reverse osmosis plant to desalinate the bore water and evaporation ponds was deleted.

The notes also proposed $10 million could be saved if a pipe returning the recycled water to the licensees was reduced in size.

At the same time, however, $5 million would have to be added to provide for a longer pipeline transporting the bore water to Mt Kynoch as well as $4 million for a pump station to pump the water uphill.

That brought GHD's revised figure to $95 million, compared to council's $131 million.

However, Mr Flanagan has rejected the GHD assumptions as flawed. He said to presume bore water from the Condamine Management Area would not have to be desalinated was "not a possibility", as were a number of scenarios pondered in the notes.

He said the Condamine ground?water resource was not sustainable and would have to be abandoned after five years.

Mr Flanagan said Commerce Queensland had also failed to note that GHD considered council's costing of the project "reasonable".

Source - the Chronicle - Chief engineer stands by his costing figure.


Note that the Toowoomba City Council continues to refuse to allow water source options to be independently assessed.

What are they afraid of ...