DESALINATION PLANT

Ms THOMPSON (Reynell) (15:41): During the parliamentary break I had the privilege of touring the Adelaide Desalination Project. We have all heard about it, there has been lots of controversy, and there have been some unfortunate events surrounding it; particularly I recognise the death of a worker in that project which, of course, is a most horrible event and has, unfortunately, also served to obscure some of the achievements of the desal plant because they have been so aware themselves that a worker died in the process.

However, it is time to pay respect to that worker and his family but also to praise the work of the thousands of people who were involved in the desalination project, and generally with an excellent safety record, marred, as I said, and it is hard to go past that. We do forget, also, that at the time the decision was made to build a desalination plant, the east coast of Australia was in a desperate situation. Prime minister Howard stated that he did not want to talk in 'apocalyptic terms' about whether towns would run out of water completely:

'The longer it goes on, the harder the impact. These are just stark facts,' he said. The dry spell is expected to wipe up to $10 billion from the Australian economy in 2006-07. Australians could face big food price rises.

In the face of these possible catastrophic events; in the knowledge that Adelaide was running out of water; that the pipes had already been lowered to enable us to get water from the River Murray as its level fell; and that the salination of the River Murray was getting dangerously close to the fact that, even if we did have water coming from there, we would have to erect a mini-desal plant at each reservoir to enable us to drink. We use the term 'drinking water', but we need at all times to remember that drinking water is also used for industry. Without our drinking water supply, our manufacturing industries and many of our service industries would be heavily hit and possibly have to shut down.

It is good to revisit some of the achievements. The plant is up and running, and many people do not know that for some months now they have been drinking a shandy of desalinated water, both in the south and in the north, with the fairly extensive works to connect the Happy Valley and the Hope Valley reservoirs.

There have been many visitors to the desalination plant because, within the industry, it already has a record for achievement. The energy efficiency of 3.7 kilowatts per kilolitre is a benchmark performance. An ambitious target for energy efficiency was set, and so far that has been exceeded. While the target was 4.5, 3.7 has been consistently achieved, and the plant operators are hopeful that that will be maintained.

The efficiencies come about from a number of innovative measures: a patented 'blind split' reverse osmosis membrane, recovery of reverse osmosis water to optimise the sea water that comes up to decrease pumping requirements, elimination of intermediate process tanks via direct coupling of ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis systems, and 99.9 per cent of the pre-treated backwash water is recovered.

There is an additional outfall energy recovery of 1.3 megawatts and, indeed, 40 per cent of the energy needs of the plant are generated on site through energy recovery measures, including a turbine at the bottom of the outfall shaft. As the water returns to the sea, it drops down a shaft and turns a turbine which generates a large amount of electricity, and this innovation is repeated at many points throughout the plant. It has been environmentally sensitive, with extensive community consultation and environmental consultation, and there have been many people trained in new skills through the plant.