”$40m saving” in water plan

By Geelong Story Updates
Taxpayers would save $40 million under a proposal to give the private sector control over a project to supply recycled water to Shell’s Geelong refinery, according to proponents.
Geelong’s Recycled Water Irrigators Association has called on Barwon Water to reconsider its proposal for the $65 million northern reclamation plant.
Shell has committed $25 million to the scheme but state and federal governments have been squabbling over who should pay most of the remaining $40 million.
Irrigators association member Theo Jacometti said Shell could receive the same amount of recycled water at a $40 million discount to taxpayers.
He said the $40 million savings would flow from combining the project with Lara company Plains Water Consortium’s plans for a recycling station at Werribee Treatment Plant.
The Independent revealed in October that the consortium planned to spend $120 million building a plant to desalinate waste water at Werribee and pipe it to the Moorabool Valley for agriculture.
Mr Jacometti said the private sector could supply Shell with six megalitres of water a day for 30 per cent of the cost of the reclamation plant.
Under the irrigators association proposal, waste water would be piped from Geelong’s northern suburbs to Werribee, refined to class A and returned to Geelong.
“The cost of twoway piping to send sewage to Werribee and return treated water to Geelong is about $800 a metre, which is a total cost of $20 million,” he said.
“As a rule of thumb, the capital cost of reverse osmosis desalination and the associated classA treatment is $1 million per megalitre per day.”
Based on these figures, infrastructure to supply shell with its daily water requirement of six megalitres would cost $26 million.
“Why spend $40 million from the public purse when there’s already enough privatesector investment committed to realise the same goal?”