Tackling our water crisis

Hamish Heard
Primary producers have welcomed a company’s plans for a $120 million desalination plant to sustain an industry potentially worth $1 billion to the Geelong region.
The producers said many local businesses and farmers faced ruin without drastic measures to increase water supply to the local agricultural industries.
Last week the Independent revealed that Lara-based Plains Water Consortium was planning to desalinate water recycled at Melbourne Water’s Werribee Treatment Plant.
The company would supply the water to agriculture in the Moorabool Valley and north of Geelong.
Fruit and vegetable king Frank Costa, whose Geelong-based company supplies produce to Coles supermarkets, threw his weight behind the proposal this week.
Providing agriculture with a sustainable water supply was the “number-one priority” for Australian governments, Mr Costa said.
Supplying recycled water so local farmers could implement intensive agricultural practises promised an employment boon for the region.
“If land was available close to home and we were guaranteed water (my company) would certainly look at growing a lot of produce in the area and that would definitely mean a lot of jobs,” Mr Costa said.
Austins Barrabool Wines owner Richard Austin said the only missing component to capitalising on the Moorabool Valley’s perfect soil for farming was reliable water supply.
Mr Austin believed Geelong’s wine producers could capitalise on water shortfalls in other Australian wine regions if State Government allowed local industry to tap Melbourne’s waste water.
“Everyone knows the wine industry has been under pressure with this wine glut but there are signs of it disappearing soon and that creates an opportunity to extend our enterprise,” he said.
“But if we don’t have water those opportunities just can’t eventuate.”
Mr Austin predicted an “explosion” of viticulture in the region if the Government gave a green light to the desalination and piping project.
Pettavel Wines owner Mike Fitzpatrick said efforts among the region’s wineries to establish Geelong as one of the country’s leading wine regions would be in vain without more water.