SA Water Infrastructure

Mr BELL (Mount Gambier) (15:14): I rise today to talk about a major crisis that we are about to face and very few people know about, and that is to do with SA Water and the supply of water and sewerage. I have been contacted this week by five developers in Mount Gambier and all have the same story. They have been either approved to start the development or lay infrastructure, and all of a sudden all approvals have been withdrawn.

Upon further analysis, many are telling me that they now need to do a network analysis of our region. This is basically going to mean that there is not enough capacity in the sewerage system or the water ability to grow the South-East at all. That means that, over the next 12 months, there will be zero developments in our region. So for a government that is wanting to get more housing into regional South Australia, our developers and our region are at a real crossroads.

I have some very serious questions around this. How can we get to a point where developers have put millions of dollars of their own money into these developments, and either the state government or previous state governments, or SA Water, have not had the foresight to say that we have no capacity in our system for growth and development? We are going to face a terrible situation where developers are millions of dollars out of pocket.

I spoke with one developer yesterday. He has laid all the pipes for the water and the sewerage, and now he has been told that the development application has been withdrawn. So all the workmen—and it is a big site with many machines and people working there—are going to be laid off, they have to go away and he has to wait for this network analysis team to come and do the work. If they find that there is not enough sewerage capacity, that infrastructure will take many months if not years to develop out to Finger Point or to get water from the Blue Lake into our region.

He will face going bankrupt because by the time he gets workers back on site, there will be further delays. Most of these blocks have already been sold; however, he will not receive any funding for that because he cannot connect the water and sewerage. This is an absolute disaster and I cannot believe that we are in this position. Who was asleep at the wheel when this stuff should have been done to make sure that we had enough capacity for growth in our region?

I will just talk about a couple of developers who have contacted me, and I am talking about five developers in the last two weeks. Obviously, the message has got out, and I can tell you now that if this is happening in Mount Gambier it will be happening everywhere else in regional South Australia.

Just this week, my office was contacted by a developer overseeing two significant land developments in Mount Gambier comprising over 400 residential plots, along with essential community amenities, such as child care, health care and retail facilities. The first stage of this development was recently completed, with a cost to the developer of over $1 million just for the sewer mains and onsite pump station, but of course it has nowhere to go now because it cannot be connected to the infrastructure that is already there.

Groundwork had begun on the next stage, which was going to release another 38 allotments, after initial water and sewerage plans were approved in October last year. However, eight months later, they are still to receive the DAFI agreement. I am about to tell this developer that DAFI agreement is not coming because there are much bigger problems, which have been alluded to.

In terms of another local developer who I sat down with and spoke to last week, he had a very similar story, and complete frustration. Their project comprises 100 residential plots that are ready to begin but are currently stalled, awaiting official approval from SA Water. Again, I will be telling him it is very unlikely that that is going to be coming.

The prolonged wait threatens to divert tradespeople to other projects, causing other major delays. A third development, consisting of 24 residential plots in Mount Gambier, will not be proceeding due to the exorbitant time delay in SA Water and their approvals. It is imperative that the government looks at this as a matter of urgency because there are millions of dollars at stake, and I just cannot believe we are in this situation.