Water privatisation. The debate yet to come.

“The announcement for a proposal to extract 50 billion litres a year from the Yarragadee aquifer by a private consortium, intended for Perth’s water supply is highly speculative and many years from realisation” Hon Alison Xamon MLC, Greens spokesperson for water said today.

“The North Perth Groundwater Basin is an area under increasing pressure for horticultural and agricultural use.  Any proposal to extract large volumes of water will need to engage in extensive social, economic and environmental investigations to determine long term sustainability for the local communities” Ms Xamon said.

“It is very clear that existing groundwater extractions and surface water diversions are impacting wetlands, native vegetation and cave ecosystems within the interconnected superficial aquifer.  Further extractions from the connected groundwater system would further impact on river baseflows, and water availability for ecosystems particularly along the Dandaragan Scarp.  These areas are some of the most biodiverse areas of Western Australia.”

“Any consortium which considers they can simply drill a hole and pipe water to Perth without making appropriate due diligence investigations to safeguard their shareholders is seriously out of its depth when trying to enter the immature Western Australian water market” Ms Xamon said.

Clear requirements from the Department of Water and the  Department of Environment and Conservation are that such a proposal would require significant geological, hydrogeological, hydrogeochemical, and a suite of vegetation surveys and community engagement before proceeding to independent assessment.  Any speculative venture that embarks on this process, must apply the environmental precautionary principle.

“Yet in Perth, a comprehensive water conservation strategy which will ‘hard-wire’ continual water use savings is yet to be attempted.  If the bucket is leaking, you don’t keep adding expensive fresh water to the bucket. You fix the leaks.  Pressure reduction trials conducted by Water Corporation showed that significant water use savings can be made economically with little social and community impact.  This is an urgent improvement to make before adding more water to the system” Ms Xamon said.

Further the community is yet to have a discussion regarding the privatisation of the essential element of water for our drinking water supplies.  The Northwater proposal is highly speculative and fraught with potential concern for WA water consumers. 

“Is Water Corporation content to permit a profit driven consortium to have long-term contractual guarantees for water provision, and what will this mean for water prices?  The international experience of privatisation of water supplies is highly fraught for ordinary water consumers,” Ms Xamon said. 

“The Greens are very keen to have this debate and bring it out of the boardroom and into general community discussion.”