Brisbane eases water restrictions - Toowoomba Regional Council says no ...

Courier Mail:

Water restrictions eased to wash off dust

24 September 2009

South-East Queenslanders have been granted a wet week to house down cars and houses with water restrictions relaxed because of yesterday's dust storm.

Deputy Premier Paul Lucas today announced that water restrictions would be relaxed from 12.01am this Saturday until 11.59pm on Sunday October 4.

Residents will be able to wash cars and buildings with a trigger hose, high pressure hose or hand-held twist-nozzle, but they will not be able to use the water on their gardens, or driveways and paths.

See - Courier Mail - Water restrictions eased to wash off dust.


Excerpt from Toowoomba Regional Council response:

Level 5 water restrictions remain for Toowoomba network

24 September 2009

Residents on Toowoomba’s water supply network must comply with Level 5 water restrictions banning the use of town water outside homes and businesses.

Toowoomba Regional Council’s Water Services portfolio leader Cr Paul Antonio said proposed Queensland Water Commission exemptions allowing clean-ups in the wake of this week’s dust storm would not extend to residents on Toowoomba’s water network.

Cr Antonio said council set and administered water policies and the current restrictions for the Toowoomba water supply network.
...

Cr Antonio said council set and administered water policies and the current restrictions for the Toowoomba water supply network.

“Given our combined dam capacity (9.7% as at September 23) and the limitations of the current Level 5 restrictions, council could not consider allowing any exemptions for widespread external cleaning,” he said.
...

These restrictions do not apply to the use of rainwater.

Toowoomba Deputy Mayor Antonio backflips - now Toowoomba won't run out of water ...

The Chronicle:

We won't run dry

22 September 2009

Toowoomba will not run out of water — ever.

That was the strong message from Deputy Mayor Paul Antonio yesterday after a Sunday Mail article this week painted a grim picture of the city’s water supply.

Cr Antonio stressed there was “absolutely no cause for alarm” as the Wivenhoe Dam pipeline neared Cressbrook Dam.

“There is absolutely no way we can run out of water,” he said.

Cr Antonio said Toowoomba’s three dams, Perseverance, Cooby and Cressbrook, were sitting at 9.7 per cent.

Water Services acting director Greg Lindsay said the city was currently using both dam water and basalt bores, with the basalt bores making up about 30% of the total supply.

Mr Lindsay said none of the city’s five Great Artesian Basin bores were currently operating because they were waiting for a permanent power source to be connected to the bore stations.

“Two or three of the artesian bores should be able to come online by the end of October,” he said.

“Earlier in the year for about three months, we were using a generator to run one of the (artesian) bores, but it was far too expensive.”

Cr Antonio said he expected water to be flowing through the Wivenhoe pipeline to Toowoomba by January.

The $187 million pipeline will be able to pump 14,200 million litres of water a year which is more than 50% above the current demand.

When asked if he thought it was irresponsible of The Sunday Mail to portray the situation as dire as it did, Cr Antonio declined to comment.

“But what I will say is that I’m going to be positive about Toowoomba’s water supply rather than negative.”

Chamber of Commerce president Shane Charles said negative stories about the city’s water supply could “certainly” affect out-of-town investment.

“It’s becoming increasingly important that we’ve got a positive message,” Mr Charles said.

“We need to attract business investment and even just visitors to the town.

“Toowoomba has to be seen as a lifestyle destination, but if people perceive that we’ve got water trouble and it is hard to live here, then that doesn’t do us any favours.”

See - The Chronicle - We won't run dry.

Toowoomba's Deputy Mayor tries to scare residents about water ...

Since 2005, Councillors have been using scare tactics about Toowoomba running out of water.

It was supposed to run out by Christmas 2005.

It didn't.

Now it's Deputy Mayor Antonio's turn.

He seems to think that the GAB supplies are going to dry up.

The article also implies that bore water use is just commencing.

To some in Toowoomba on bore water for quite some time, this will be a bit of a surprise.

Sunday Mail:

Toowoomba taps into bore water as drought continues

20 September 2009

The town that rejected recycled water has been forced to tap into an emergency allocation of bore water while it waits for a lifesaving pipeline connecting Wivenhoe Dam to the region's water supply.

While Toowoomba was in full bloom as it celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Carnival of Flowers yesterday, away from the festivities the region continued to bake in a decade-long drought, with dam levels falling to a critically low 9.8 per cent.

In a sign of the desperate times, the Toowoomba Regional Council Deputy Mayor, Paul Antonio, said the town was now pumping water from an emergency allocation from the Great Artesian Basin.

It comes three years after residents rejected a recycled water referendum when dam levels were over 23 per cent.

Now Australia's second largest inland city, with a regional population of more than 150,000, will come within a few months of its dams running completely dry as the State Government works to complete a 38km pipeline from Wivenhoe to Cressbrook Dam.

The much-needed pipeline will be able to pump 14,200 million litres of water annually - more than 50 per cent above present demand - when it is completed by the end of January next year.

"Without this pipeline, the water situation for Toowoomba is grim," Infrastructure and Planning Minister Stirling Hinchliffe said.

To make matters worse, consumption per resident increased to 129 litres a day last week, compared with 120 litres in the same period last year, as residents grow weary of the long dry and strict level 5 water restrictions. The region's three dams, Perseverance, Cooby and Cressbrook, hold a maximum storage capacity of 135,074ML, but only about 12,3362ML remains, of which 8523ML is classified as "dead storage", or unable to be used.

Mr Antonio estimated without any further supplementation the dams would run dry by June. The council had thought that by mid 2010 "we would be in deep trouble for water", he said.

But it could be worse, Mr Antonio admitted, saying there was uncertainty about just how much water was usable.

See - Sunday Mail - Toowoomba taps into bore water as drought continues.

Desperate times?

Clearly not desperate enough to prevent the Council from supplying bore water to the Carnival of Flowers Garden Competition entrants.

And if the Wivenhoe pipeline will be finished in January 2010, why is there any need for Deputy Mayor Antonio to try to whip residents into a panic by saying the water will run out by June.

He's just not making sense ...

Queensland's new rules for coal seam gas ...

See - Qld government - Blueprint for Queensland's LNG Industry.

Anna Bligh's new rules for coal seam gas water ...

Excerpt from Blueprint for Queensland's LNG Industry:

September 2009

Managing produced water

Coal seam gas (CSG) is primarily methane, which is absorbed and maintained in the coal seam. To produce CSG, the water contained in the coal seam must be removed to create a pressure void into which the gas migrates. As a result, a significant amount of saline water is produced. The quantity and quality of CSG water can vary considerably between wells and regions.

In 2007–08, approximately 13.5 gigalitres (GL) of CSG water was produced in Queensland.

It is estimated that production of gas for domestic consumption in the Surat Basin will produce an annual average of 25 GL of CSG water for the next 25 years. With the potential growth of the CSG/LNG industry, it is possible that the CSG water production may be in the order of:

• 126 GL/year for a 10 Mtpa industry

• 196 GL/year for a 28 Mtpa industry

• 281 GL/year for a 40 Mtpa industry.
  

In addition to CSG water containing concentrations of salts, it may also contain other contaminants that have the potential to cause environmental harm if released to land or water through inappropriate management. There are also ecological risks associated with the disposal of CSG water and, without proper treatment, the use for CSG water is limited.

To address the potential risks of CSG water the government has decided that:

• CSG producers are responsible for the treatment and disposal of the CSG water they create.

• CSG producers must treat CSG water to a standard defined by the Department of Environment and Resource Management before disposal or supply to other users.

• Evaporation ponds are to be discontinued as the primary means of disposal and transitional arrangements are to be developed in consultation with industry.

• Remediation action for existing ponds is to occur within three years.

• Ponds, necessary for aggregation or brine storage, are to be lined to a standard defined by the Department of Environment and Resource Management.

• At the approval stage, CSG producers will need to advise how they intend to manage water on their operations through the preparation of a CSG Water Management Plan.

• Water which is in excess to that which can be directly injected or beneficially used is to be aggregated for disposal.

See - Blueprint for Queensland's LNG Industry - Page 4.

Anna Bligh's Traveston dam plans awash with protesters ...

Anna Bligh is damned if she does, damned if she doesn't.

The Queensland Premier's doggedness in building a $1.5 billion dam to drought-proof the state's insatiable southeast has drawn the wrath of a powerful coalition of convenience: farmers and greenies.

The government plans to dam the Mary River at Traveston Crossing, just north of Gympie, to augment Brisbane's water supplies. Drought lowered the city's dam levels to 16 per cent last summer despite the nation's toughest water restrictions.

To the chagrin of the dam's opponents, Bligh is implying southeast Queensland could run out of drinking water, even though new desalination plants and recycled water technology have been put in place.
...

But in the end Bligh may find a rejection by Garrett to be a convenient cop-out.

She can play up to the voters she most needs to impress at the next state election -- those in the thirsty Brisbane-to-Gold Coast corridor -- without antagonising green voters or those in the conservative heartland around Gympie.

See - The Australian - Anna's dam awash with protesters.

Amazing. Recycled water was touted by Anna Bligh as 'wonder water' - now she threatens to force people to drink recycled water if she can't build her dam ...

Qld's coal seam gas industry faces Qatar competition for Asia sales ...

Courier Mail:

Cheap Qatar gas threat looms

19 September 2009

Premier Anna Bligh was in full flight this week, lauding a burning bright future for Queensland coal seam gas and looking forward to a very nice contribution to the state's royalty coffers.

But Queensland coal seam gas hopefuls, so many of whom are aspiring to become big exporters of liquefied natural gas, had better make sure the sales contracts some of them have signed are rock solid.

And those who haven't yet got firm buyers would do well to quickly lock in long-term customers.

The go-ahead this week for the giant $43 billion Gorgon LNG project in Western Australia, and announcements of a string of sale contracts by the participants, which could garner $150 billion over the life of the project, makes things on the global LNG horizon look good.

A world hungry for Gorgon gas would also be hungry for Queensland LNG - seen as the state's next boom industry - wouldn't it?

The Premier on Thursday talked of Queensland LNG projects exporting as much as 40 million tonnes of gas a year. Maybe - one day.

LNG facilities take many years to progress from a glint in the eye to plants producing gas. And in the shorter term, there's an elephant in the room, as industry monitor EnergyQuest's Graeme Bethune called it recently, in the form of Middle Eastern gas gusher Qatar.

Queensland has five LNG projects under study that can be taken seriously at this point - though even some of these will probably fall by the wayside or merge with competitors.

The likely first off the rank, if all goes to plan, will be the small LNG Ltd-Arrow Energy plant planned for Fisherman's Landing near Gladstone.

Arrow's plan is to produce about three million tonnes of LNG a year from two small liquefaction "trains", as LNG processing lines are known. It is aiming to ship first gas by 2012.

Arrow's shares spiked more than 3 per cent yesterday on news that Norwegian shipping company Golar LNG Ltd had agreed to sell gas from the proposed Gladstone project to a subsidiary of Japan's Toyota Group.

Toyota Tsusho has agreed to buy around 1.5 million metric tons of LNG a year for 20 years from 2014, which is enough to underpin the project's first LNG processing train.

The other four big schemes are the Santos-Petronas project, that proposed by Origin and ConocoPhillips, the BG Group-Queensland Gas Co plant and Royal Dutch Shell's operation - which is also expected to take its base supply from Arrow's coal seam gas areas, in which Shell has a 30 per cent stake.

Each of these projects is hoping to eventually have three to five million tonnes-a-year trains, or at least two in quick succession, with each extra train having a big multiplier effect on the profitability of any LNG operation because the first trains in such large developments chew up huge amounts of capital.

That would be 60 million tonnes a year of LNG.

Premier Bligh talked of just 40 million tonnes when she announced this week's draft blueprint for the industry. That may reflect industry concerns that not all Queensland's hopefuls will get up, as well as worries about competition from Qatar and the recent plunge in US gas prices.

Estimates of world demand for LNG into the next decade or so vary widely. EnergyQuest's August Energy Quarterly said world LNG demand growth had averaged 7 per cent a year since 2003.

EnergyQuest consultant Andy Flowers predicts future demand will grow at 8.5 per cent a year.

This would take demand to 520 million tonnes a year by 2020, from 163 million tonnes in 2007.

But the Japanese Institute of Energy Economics forecasts growth averaging only 4.1 per cent to 4.9 per cent over that period, to reach 332-388 million tonnes by 2020.

Long before that, Qatar, likely to be the world's lowest-cost producer of LNG, is planning to churn out 77 million tonnes a year.

Australia at present produces about 20 million tonnes a year.

Gorgon is looking at 15 million tonnes and hoping to quickly add another 10 million tonnes, while Woodside and ExxonMobil, Santos and Oil Search - with their project in PNG - are also close to entering the market with large licks of production. Another worry for Queensland's gas industry is future LNG prices.

The state's coal seam gas groups looked to export markets to tap prices that have long been well above prices in Australian. But the financial crisis led to a dramatic fall in the price paid for US gas.

Prices have recovered somewhat in the last week, despite huge stockpiles, to about $US3.30 for 1000 cubic feet- still well short of the $US14 they commanded last northern hemisphere summer.

The risk remains that Qatar could aim its cheap gas at Asian markets, whereas it had been assumed it would target the US and Europe.

Which all means Queensland's hopefuls could find their preferred Asian markets a lot harder to crack, or offering lower prices, than they have long hoped.

See - Courier Mail - Cheap Qatar gas threat looms.

Anna Bligh threatens to use recycled water if Traveston Dam not built ...

Brisbane could run out of drinking water unless the federal government backs the nation's greenest new dam, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh warned yesterday.

"Ultimately the lives of more than two million people and their ability to drink is at stake here," she said.

"The next time a drought hits southeast Queensland, and it will, I want to make sure people have got the water they need to drink and to conduct their lives."

Ms Bligh said the state government would have to build two new desalination plants or resort to recycled water for drinking if federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett blocked the proposed $1.5 billion Traveston Dam on environmental grounds.

See - The Australian - Brisbane must have dam, Anna Bligh warns.

Also see - Courier Mail - Dam alternatives too costly.

Traveston Dam gets approval ...

Sunday Mail:

Traveston Dam gets approval

13 September 2009

The controversial $1.6 billion Traveston Crossing Dam has been given environmental approval and could get the go-ahead from Federal Government within weeks.

Queensland Co-Ordinator General Colin Jensen has signed off on the project – with a host of new environmental conditions, including more protection for endangered fish, frogs and turtles in the Mary River.

Work will start at the site near Gympie by early next year if federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett gives his approval. Bruce Highway upgrades will also begin with the work.
...

See - Sunday Mail - Traveston Dam gets approval.

Coal seam gas - the case for ...

ABC News:

Australia's methane gas could power the world: expert

12 September 2009

Australia's abundant methane gas reserves found in coal seams could help power the world, according to a gas industry consultant.

Addressing a major offshore oil and gas industry conference in Darwin this week, Tony Regan of Tri-Zen International says there are also rich reserves of methane gas within coal seams in the Gladstone and Bowen Basin region of Queensland.

"These are large world scale projects, expect to see some consolidation," he said.

"But at the moment, we have got five projects, potentially 28 million tonnes within five years. That's more than existing Australian northern production."

Mr Regan says that globally there are more reserves of coal methane than conventional natural gas reserves, and Australian reserves represent about 40 per cent of the world's proposed new projects.

"CBM [coal-bed methane] in Australia is very, very significant," he said.

"Australian energy development is hugely significant. Those projects there represent about 50 per cent of the total global proposed new capacity."

See - ABC News - Australia's methane gas could power the world: expert.

Coal seam gas - the case against ...

Eureka Report recently interviewed Don Voelte, chief executive of Woodside Petroleum.

In his view, the coal seam gas industry is overrated for the following reasons:

• CSG is at the start of a steep learning curve on extraction, transport and storage.

• smarter players have defined a large resource and sold out.

• the companies which have bought in now need to try to determine how to make money from CSG.

• dealing with the associated water will cause headaches.

Climate change - focus on the means ...

The Australian:

Focus on the means

7 September 2009

Our present approach to solving global warming will not work. It is flawed economically, because carbon taxes will cost a fortune and do little, and it is flawed politically, because negotiations to reduce CO2 emissions will become ever more fraught and divisive. And even if you disagree on both counts, the present approach is also flawed technologically.

Many countries are now setting ambitious carbon-cutting goals ahead of global negotiations in Copenhagen this December to replace the Kyoto Protocol. Let us imagine that the world ultimately agrees on an ambitious target. Say we decide to reduce CO2 emissions by three-quarters by 2100 while maintaining reasonable growth. Herein lies the technological problem: to meet this goal, non-carbon-based sources of energy would have to be an astounding 2.5 times greater in 2100 than the level of total global energy consumption was in 2000.

These figures were calculated by economists Chris Green and Isabel Galiana of McGill University. Their research shows that confronting global warming effectively requires nothing short of a technological revolution. We are not taking this challenge seriously. If we continue on our current path, technological development will be nowhere near significant enough to make non-carbon-based energy sources competitive with fossil fuels on price and effectiveness.

In Copenhagen this December, the focus will be on how much carbon to cut, rather than on how to do so. Little or no consideration will be given to whether the means of cutting emissions are sufficient to achieve the goals.

Politicians will base their decisions on global warming models that simply assume that technological breakthroughs will happen by themselves. This faith is sadly - and dangerously - misplaced.

Green and Galiana examine the state of non-carbon-based energy today - nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal, etc - and find that, taken together, alternative energy sources would get us less than halfway towards a path of stable carbon emissions by 2050, and only a tiny fraction of the way toward stabilisation by 2100. We need many, many times more non-carbon-based energy than is currently produced.

Yet the needed technology will not be ready in terms of scalability or stability. In many cases, there is still a need for the most basic research and development. We are not even close to getting this revolution started.

Existing technology is so inefficient that - to take just one example - if we were serious about wind power, we would have to blanket most countries with wind turbines to generate enough energy for everybody, and we would still have the massive problem of storage: we don't know what to do when the wind doesn't blow.

Policymakers should abandon fraught carbon-reduction negotiations, and instead make agreements to invest in research and development to get this technology to the level where it needs to be. Not only would this have a much greater chance of actually addressing climate change, but it would also have a much greater chance of political success. The biggest emitters of the 21st century, including India and China, are unwilling to sign up to tough, costly emission targets. They would be much more likely to embrace a cheaper, smarter, and more beneficial path of innovation.

Today's politicians focus narrowly on how high a carbon tax should be to stop people from using fossil fuels. That is the wrong question. The market alone is an ineffective way to stimulate research and development into uncertain technology, and a high carbon tax will simply hurt growth if alternatives are not ready. In other words, we will all be worse off.

Green and Galiana propose limiting carbon pricing initially to a low tax (say, $5 a tonne) to finance energy research and development. Over time, they argue, the tax should be allowed to rise slowly to encourage the deployment of effective, affordable technology alternatives.

Investing about $100 billion annually in non-carbon-based energy research would mean that we could essentially fix climate change on the century scale. Green and Galiana calculate the benefits - from reduced warming and greater prosperity - and conservatively conclude that for every dollar spent this approach would avoid about $11 of climate damage. Compare this with other analyses showing that strong and immediate carbon cuts would be expensive, yet achieve as little as $0.02 of avoided climate damage.

If we continue implementing policies to reduce emissions in the short term without any focus on developing the technology to achieve this, there is only one possible outcome: virtually no climate impact, but a significant dent in global economic growth, with more people in poverty, and the planet in a worse state than it could be.

Bjorn Lomborg is director of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, author of Cool It and The Skeptical Environmentalist, and adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School.

The Australian - Focus on the means.

Anna Bligh bans Gordon Nuttall betrayer Brendan McKennariey ...

The Australian:

Nuttall's betrayer banned by Bligh

10 September 2009

The Labor-linked company director who allegedly bribed former Queensland minister Gordon Nuttall has been banned from doing business with the Bligh government.

Brendan McKennariey, the star witness in corruption charges against the former Labor MP, was told yesterday he was no longer welcome to tender for Queensland government contracts.

The move comes after revelations in The Australian yesterday that Mr McKennariey's company, GBG Project Management Services, has just been awarded a $430,000 contract as part of the upgrade of the Lotus Glen Correctional Facility in Cairns.

In the Brisbane Magistrates Court yesterday, Mr McKennariey was named as the source of a string of alleged corrupt payments to Mr Nuttall while GBG was doing work for the government.

Mr McKennariey, a former ALP member and long-time friend of Mr Nuttall, has not been charged and GBG's recent taxpayer-funded work was awarded, without a tender process, through a subcontractor on the prison upgrade.

Public Works Minister Robert Schwarten - who once cancelled a contract with one of Mr McKennariey's companies, leading to a successful lawsuit against the government - yesterday said he was not welcome to do business with the government.

"It is well known that I got rid of Mr McKennariey in 1999 over concerns with another contract and it is fair to say he is not welcome to tender with the government and he is not on any of our pre-qualification lists," Mr Schwarten said.

"The decision to award the sub/sub-contract to GBG was made independent of the Bligh government."

State Opposition Leader John-Paul Langbroek said the latest revelations should put further pressure on Premier Anna Bligh to launch a royal commission.

"Without a royal commission, there is no way of knowing what business transactions this government is entering into are above board and which are dodgy," he said.

During the brief mention in Brisbane, Mr Nuttall, 56, - who was barefoot and wearing a suit - gestured to his family sitting in the court's public gallery, touching his hand to his heart.

According to the bench charge sheet tendered to the court, Mr Nuttall is facing 15 charges: five of official corruption, five of receiving or soliciting secret commissions and five of perjury. Police allege that while Mr Nuttall was serving as industrial relations minister and then health minister in the Beattie government, he corruptly received sums of money from Mr McKennariey - and then lied about it at a secret CMC hearing.

It is alleged Mr Nuttall received at least four payments from Mr McKennariey between December 2001 and July 2005, the largest being $10,000.

Police allege that on December 10, 2001 - when Mr Nuttall was IR minister - he corruptly received $10,000 from Mr McKennariey. The next payment allegedly was made on Christmas Eve in that year, when Mr Nuttall received $1200 from the businessman.

On December 29, 2004, when Mr Nuttall was health minister, he allegedly received $4000 from Mr McKennariey. In July the following year, there was allegedly another payment of $2000.

Police also allege there was at least one other payment - of an undisclosed amount - in 2005, in which Mr Nuttall asked Mr McKennariey for money.

The perjury charges relate to a secret CMC hearing shortly after Mr Nuttall retired from politics in September 2006. Police allege he knowingly gave "false testimony" to the CMC hearing relating to five separate matters.

They allege he said he did not know that "Simon David McNeillage engaged Brendan John McKennariey and Graham Michael Doyle to deliver training under a contract with the Department of Industrial Relations".

Police say Mr Nuttall told the CMC he had not discussed Mr McKennariey's business dealings with him. He also allegedly told the CMC he was not aware of any involvement of GBG and Mr McKennariey in wastewater issues. A fifth perjury charge relates to Mr Nuttall's alleged false testimony to the CMC that he "did not receive payments of funds by other benefactors other than Ken Talbot".

A committal mention was set down for October 5, with the view to the committal hearing being held in January. Outside court, Mr Nuttall's solicitor Neil Richardson said his client would plead not guilty to all counts and Mr Nuttall was "very confident" he could beat all the charges.

See - The Australian - Nuttall's betrayer banned by Bligh.

Gold Coast seawater desalination plant pumping at full capacity ...

... but faults not fixed until mid 2010.

Brisbane Times:

Gold Coast desal plant pumping at full capacity

7 September 2009

Construction is finished at the Gold Coast's $1.2 billion desalination plant, and the new complex is pumping at full capacity ahead of its operational handover before the end of the week.

The plant is now pumping out about 3000 litres of water every second.

The first handover, scheduled in the next few days, will transfer operational management from the Gold Coast Desalination Alliance to Veolia Water, who will become the private operators of the plant.

But the plant won't be formally handed over to its owners, WaterSecure, until a number of defects have been remedied.

"At the moment that's looking like some time around the middle of next year," WaterSecure chief executive Keith Davies told AAP.

Mr Davies said a higher grade of steel had been ordered for pipework and this would not be installed until the end of June 2010.

But Mr Davies said at the moment the plant was operating at capacity.

"Today we're running flat out, pumping 133 million litres a day, but the plant has been built with expansion in mind ... something around 170 megalitres (Ml) per day," he said.

"We'd need to put extra equipment into the plant, but that could be done."

The plant is capable of supplying enough water for the daily needs of nearly a million people.

The massive water storage tanks at the plant, which each hold 15Ml of fresh drinking water, are filled and emptied into the water grid more than four times each day.

When the sea water arrives at the plant through a 2.2km-long underground pipeline, it's pumped through mesh screens to remove any large waste.

Mr Davies says it's a tribute to the engineering and construction of the plant, and the quality of local sea water, that virtually no waste has been collected yet.

"Any waste is dropped into a container the size of a small wheelie bin," he said.

"The bin has been in place for almost a year, and so far it's never been emptied."

See - Brisbane Times - Gold Coast desal plant pumping at full capacity.

Where is the water being pumped to ...

Toowoomba Regional Council buys new office furniture ...

More chaos within Toowoomba Regional Council ...

The Chronicle:

Council tight-lipped on senior exec

3 September 2009

Toowoomba Regional Council’s acting CEO has denied top executive Jo Molin was forced to resign last week.

Brian Pidgeon yesterday confirmed the former Director of Strategic Services had given notice on August 24 — about nine months after she moved from Western Australia to fill the long-vacant position.

When The Chronicle called to speak to Ms Molin yesterday, she had already left the council. Mr Pidgeon would not comment on when she had her last day.

Councillor Noel Strohfeld, who is the portfolio leader for her department, yesterday was not aware she had resigned.

He seemed shocked by the news.

"It would be sad to see her go," he said. "She’s done a tremendous amount in the time she’s been here."

Relations between Ms Molin and some other councillors were noticeably frayed during her last four months.

In April, her department was blasted over delays with the development of a job-creation strategy.

Two months later, the make-up of an economic development advisory committee was pulled apart by councillors.

An attempt to convince the council to join a global warming preparation scheme, led by her staff, also failed.

Mr Pidgeon would not comment on circumstances surrounding Ms Molin’s quick departure or say where she was headed.

"Council wishes her well in any future endeavours," he said.

He refused to comment further.

"All matters concerning staff and their employment are confidential," he said.

At this stage no-one has been appointed Acting Director of Strategic Services.

Attempts to contact with Ms Molin yesterday failed.

See - The Chronicle - Council tight-lipped on senior exec.


The children are just not playing well together. And Cr Strohfeld is really being kept in the loop.

How much will her payout be ...

Veolia Water company sued by South Aust. government for massive overcharging ...

The Australian:

State sues water firm for millions

1 September 2009

One of the world's largest water companies has been accused of misleading and deceiving South Australians over a contract signed 14 years ago, prompting the Rann government to launch legal action for damages that could run into tens of millions of dollars.

Acting Premier Kevin Foley yesterday announced the unprecedented legal action by a state government after a statement of claim was filed in the SA Supreme Court against United Water, owned by giant French company Veolia.

The legal case has been lodged by SA Water -- the government agency that manages the United Water contract.

Veolia Water is involved in the construction of the Sydney desalination plant and is running southeast Queensland's desalination plant on the Gold Coast. It is a branch of Veolia Environment, which has business arms in public transport, energy and waste management.

South Australian Water Minister Karlene Maywald said any damages won if the case were successful would be passed on to consumers through reduced increases in future water prices.

"We're on a pathway to double our prices of water, and any return of dollars will of course reduce the ... quantum of that increase," she said.

The contract at the centre of the dispute was signed in 1995 by the then Liberal government when it privatised the management of South Australia's water and waste water systems. The pricing structure was signed off again by the Liberals during a 2001 review.

Opposition finance spokesman and former Liberal treasurer Rob Lucas said yesterday the Rann government renegotiated SA Water's contract with United Water in 2003.

"If they are saying it's a bad contract, why didn't they do something about it in 2003?" he asked. "If it was so obvious, why didn't they renegotiate then?"

However, The Australian understands that while the amendments to the contract were signed in 2003, they were first agreed to under the Olsen Liberal government in 2001.

In its statement of claim, SA Water alleges that United Water improperly included research, business and industry development costs in its lump sum service charges from about January 2000.

It claims the water company included all of its corporate overhead costs, including costs that related to United Water's other operations, such as those those in New Zealand and Ballarat.

Under the terms of the contract with South Australia, there is a pricing review every five years. The 15-year contract comes up for renewal next year.

Mr Foley said it was not until the 2006 review, the first conducted by the present Labor government, that "serious concerns" about elements of the contract were raised.

"We have been in negotiation and discussion with United Water since that period, and have been unable to resolve or reach a point where we can move forward with an agreed pricing formula," Mr Foley said.

"This is an unprecedented action by a state government, but it is in the interests of the South Australian taxpayer and South Australian water users.

"It is our view and strong case that will be argued that the effect of this behaviour by United Water leads into the tens of millions of dollars in terms of overcharging for services."

See - The Australian - State sues water firm for millions.