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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-06-30 Daily Xml
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Warren Reservoir

Mr KNOLL (Schubert) (15:35): Thank you, Deputy Speaker. I am sorry for whatever I did wrong. I apologise unreservedly in advance and arrears!

I rise today to continue the legacy that is the opening up of the Warren reservoir. It is one of the legacy issues that having the honorary title of member for Schubert I carry on, and I thought I would give a bit of a history lesson today to bring people up to speed on this topic.

The Warren reservoir is one of three reservoirs at the southern end of my electorate. The other two are the Barossa reservoir famous for its whispering wall, and the South Para, which at 4½ gigalitres is the second-largest reservoir in the state behind Mount Bold. The Warren reservoir was built on the South Para between 1914 and 1916. Edgar Bradley was the construction supervisor and resident engineer overseeing the construction of the Millbrook reservoir.

So he could travel between the two construction sites, Mr Bradley was given a Model T Ford for $444. He had to learn to drive so that he could make the 30-kilometre journey from the Warren to the Millbrook in just one hour. Before he had his car, the trip by horse and buggy took a full 2½ hours to cover. The Warren holds 4.8 gigalitres covering 105 hectares and, according to the SA Water website, if the Warren supplied the whole state, it would last about eight days.

Currently anglers with permits can access designated areas between 8am and 5pm daily. The Warren also provides contingency supply to the South Para. But the Warren reservoir is important to my electorate for another reason because it is the catchment reservoir that holds the water that supplies Barossa Infrastructure Limited, which supplies roughly 50 per cent of the water to my electorate, to the beautiful Barossa Valley.

That water comes down via third-party access from the SA Water pipe network from the Murray where BIL buys Murray River water licences, stores that water in the Warren reservoir and then uses it in peak and off-peak times to augment the underwater and groundwater supplies in the Barossa to help grow what is arguably (or inarguably) some of the best grapes grown in the world.

It is an extremely important reservoir when it comes to the financial and infrastructure hub of the Barossa. It helps to genuinely supply life to the Barossa but it is also important for another reason, and it could be opened up for greater tourism opportunities through the provision of greater access for fishing—which it currently has at the moment and we are looking to extend that—but also in terms of providing more opportunities for families for nonpowered recreational boats and nonmotorised sports in the Barossa.

Last week, minister Hunter—and obviously my invite to his press conference announcement was lost in the mail—came up to the beautiful Warren and announced $20,000 to create a master plan and early works program for the Warren reservoir. That sounds really good, the announcement was great, the photo was there, front page of the Herald and that is all wonderful, except the more I look into this issue and the more I listen to the previous member for Schubert, the more I realise that this is a project that should have been done a long, long time ago.

The bigger picture here is about opening up the reservoir for kayaking and for other passive water sports, and, as a former rower with my school, I would like to see the Barossa schoolboy and schoolgirl rowing regatta held on the Warren reservoir. If I were to go back over the history, Ivan tells me that this process started in 2004 and it took him in earnest, basically from that time to 2011, to get the minister for environment over the line. Just when he got the member for Colton, who was the minister for the environment and water at that time, over the line, and he said, 'Yes, we should do it', it was only a few months after that that the minister got dumped, then minister Hunter came in. So poor Ivan had to start all over again in order to get minister Hunter to realise that this is a great opportunity, and he did. To Ivan's credit and to the minister's credit, he did, and that was in 2011.

A committee was established to look at the process of taking this further, and that committee was disbanded the moment that I got there. After the election I rocked up to the first meeting, minister Hunter walked in and said, 'Our work here is done. Thanks very much. Let's wrap it up, pack it up and go home.' Since then, not much has happened. This process has taken so long that careers in local government have ended before this program was put in place. The long-term Barossa Council CEO David Morcom is no longer there, and Bim Lange, who was the head of engineering works, has retired but is lucky enough to try to see this project finished because he is now on the Barossa Council.

Can I say to the minister and to the government that we welcome the $20,000, but we cannot delay this project any further. The minister, in his press conference, failed to give a time line on finishing this project. I would like to say that I am a young man and I expect to see this project delivered long before I retire from this house.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Unfortunately your time has expired today. I am wondering if you were in a four or an eight, or you were actually the cox. Don't answer that. The member for Kaurna.

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