Page 4036 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 16 Sept 2009
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this morning, and we have of course experienced ongoing water restrictions over a considerable period of time. Even with significant investment in the water security projects, the two that we have talked about, we know that, with projected population growth in the region, for some time to come we will be facing signfiicant water challenges again. The two projects, to extend the size of the Cotter Dam and build the pipeline to the Googong Dam, based on the documents that my office has looked at from Actew, will deliver us water security until around 2035.
What that does is underline that there is an ongoing issue of water security for the ACT. If we continue to increase our population, if the projections of climate change come through, which they do seem to be, and with the continuing signfiicant fall in inflows, we are not talking about the answer forever and it underlines the fact that these water security projects are not the be-all and end-all.
Out of the range of major projects put on the table by Actew, the expansion of the Cotter Dam did seem to be a sensible one. The Cotter catchment is one of our better ones in terms of rainfall, and the aim of having two catchments, one in the east and one in the west, seems sensible.
To be clear here, the Greens are not opposed to the Cotter Dam expansion. However, it remains important to put the development of the Cotter into the context of a comprehensive water policy. That comes against a background of diminishing inflows, as I said, pressure on the Murray-Darling system, increasing costs for the high-security water permits that the Googong project relies on and the growing population in Canberra. Living in a river city, we face quite different issues to what a coastal city might face and we have to think about this very carefully.
The Greens, as we said probably the other week, were concerned at the use of the call-in power for this development. The Minister for Planning has still not been clear about his reasons for using the call-in power and perhaps when he finally does table the statement of reasons on that call-in power—perhaps that will be today, perhaps a little later—we can be a little clearer about why he thought a call-in was required.
It seems nonsensical to have a project such as this one, which has had significant planning time and is going to be significant in its construction time, rushed through the planning system, which removed some of those opportunities for checks and balances. I wonder whether, in light of what has been revealed about the project in terms of its cost, my colleagues on the opposition bench might have some regrets about so willingly supporting the use of the call-in power on this project.
By now, we are all familiar with the cost blow-out pathway, and I think Mrs Dunne has elaborated a time line quite clearly this morning. But in 2005, when Actew first put it on the table, we were sold on it at a cost of $120 million. It is important to note that this price did not include catchment remediation, which would have already implied that extra costs be factored into that initial cost. So right from the start, the price tag we were given was not an accurate one.
In 2007, the price was confirmed at $145 million. This was a price that the ICRC had confirmed, though that was already expected to rise by 30 per cent. However, by
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