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Kurnell’s desalination plant questions
- It must be illegal to tell the paying public that 30% dam level is the start point for this project, 34% was the level. It’s now over 50% & rising.
- Why can’t we just put it on hold until 30% level limit? We may even have a smarter way to fix the water issue by then.
- Is it true that Bob Carr works for the bank that will be collecting all the interest from the BILLIONS they loan US.
- Are there other sleazy deals being made with Morris Lemma? If not he has the power to suspend works or cancel them.
- I am led to believe that 80% of the public are against this project & probably even more now the dam is filling.
- If this project is not stopped then Iemma is ignoring those that voted for him & we should get rid of him.
Desalination Facts
Cost of 1000 Liters $0.80
For
desalination of wastewaters and groundwaters, the energy
required is significantly less and the cost is usually less
than 50% of that for seawater desalination and maybe as low
as $A 0.20 per 1000 L for blended potable water from
groundwater. This leads us to then consider using reverse
osmosis for wastewater such as tertiary treated sewage.
Perhaps as community attitudes and trust in our technologies
improve we will be able to “close the loop” – that is fully
recycle water directly.
- Colin Creighton, Director, Water for a Healthy Country,
CSIRO
Power for the plant
Other sources of energy can be used, for example wind energy, or waste heat produced in various industries such as the mineral processing industry or especially in power generation industry where only 60 to 70% of the heat energy is used. There is also the possibility of coupling solar energy with other energy sources or using it as a supplementary source of energy, and this is being looked at around the world.
- Professor Roya Sheikholeslami, AAA Water Energy Technologies Pty Ltd, Australasian Desalination Association
To compensate for the increase in CO2 emissions produced by desalination of water for Sydney you’d need to grow plants over an area the size of Sydney.
Professor Nick Ashbolt, Head of School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of New South Wales
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Does the report into a proposed desalination plant contain the information that Kurnell residents want answered…
The answer is NO!!! -
Was the Kurnell community informed of the desalination plant?
No. The announcement has taken everyone by surprise. There has been no consultation with either council or the local community. -
Will the plant’s construction be easy on the environment? No.
The State Government has not yet decided how big the plant will be, yet any size plant would guarantee the destruction of the site’s vegetation. The construction of a plant would result in significant loss to endangered ecological communities and the destruction of potential aboriginal archaeological sites. Sutherland Shire Council has recently spent $200,000 saving this environment from being destroyed. A desalination plant will ruin that good work. -
Is there any mention that the desalination pipes with travel through the Botany Bay National Park?
No. But that’s the only way they can go. Cutting through the sandstone with tunnelling, the pipes may be ten times larger than those used by the treatment plant. -
Has any traffic impact statement been released? No.
No study addressing the traffic needs or impact on the peninsula has been released. -
Does the report mention how close the desalination pipes will be to the sewer outfall?
No! The most likely place for the pipes to draw (and release) water is from within the same proximity as the Cronulla Sewerage treatment plant (STP) outfall pipes. The STP water is tertiary treated with disinfection, so the risk of contaminated intake water is low, but there still needs to be some assurance in case of breakdown/overflow at the STP. The only alternative is to drain water from the shallow Quibray Bay, already part of Towra Point Aquatic Reserve. -
Is there any indication of the quality of the discharge water?
No! Research indicates that more than 600 mega litres of waste product, with a salinity of around 55 – 60 g/l, will be dumped backed into the ocean on a daily basis. These levels are about 1½ times the concentration of seawater. There is no doubt that this will have an impact in the immediate area around the outlet point, including the fragile The Merries Reef. -
Have possible alternatives to discharging the water back into the ocean been look at?
No! The sensible thing might be to look at whether the by-product can be used in any industrial processes or to mix the outlet water with the discharge from the Cronulla STP (freshwater). There is no mention of alternatives in the report. -
Do you know how much marine life will be sucked up into the pipes?
No! For the desalination plant to reach 45% efficiency, more than 1,100 Olympic-size swimming pools will need to be sucked through the plant per day. That includes anything else that may happen to be nearby… including small fish, plant material, shell fish and the protected weedy sea dragon. -
Is there a mention of how the discharge will affect water temperature?
No! But any change in temperature would shift the ecological balance. There is likely to be a plume of warm water around the outlet and higher temperatures have shown to promote of algae growth. -
Will the plant be efficient to run?
No. A 500ML desalination plant uses 110MW of energy to operate. That’s equivalent to one third of the entire energy produced by the Snowy Mountains hydro-electric scheme. -
Will the plant use a fuel source that is environmentally-friendly?
No. Despite the use of natural gas as a fuel source, the proposal will still result in considerable greenhouse gas production. A 500ML plant produces more carbon
dioxide than twice as many households within the entire Sutherland Sire. -
Have the method of distribution been assessed? No.
In terms of the distribution network, Botany Bay seems to be the preferred place, yet nothing has been mentioned of the construction method, or what will happen to the marine life in the bay. -
Contaminated sediments will need to be treated and/or disposed of, and what about the Orica plume?
Huge amounts of energy are required to
power desalination. And the proposed plant will require 906
gigawatt hours of electricity a year.
According to an independent analysis by
Sutherland Shire Council, the council that covers the
Kurnell Peninsula, generating amount of energy produces
almost a million tonnes of carbon emission a year, the
equivalent of 120,000 households.
The government plans to build a gas-fired power station to
power the plant, which it says will reduce greenhouse gas
emissions to about half those produced by coal.
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The potential sites for the
Kurnell desalination plant are adjacent to or
near the existing oil refinery, seen here in
white (Image: Sydney Water)
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"It's incredibly irresponsible from a sustainability point of view where we should be trying to curtail our greenhouse gas production," he says.
The next big problem, critics say, revolves around what the plant will suck in and spew out.
Plankton and fish spawn will be sucked into the plant, along with water equivalent to 1100 Olympic swimming pools a day.
And larger marine life will get trapped against the mesh, Ashbolt says.
"In this environment we have a lot of jellyfish and they're known to block the screens so they can be quite problematic and close down a plant," he says.
Meanwhile, the plant will discharge the equivalent of 600 swimming pools of concentrated brine into the ocean.
If it isn't properly dispersed, this can form a salt slug of dense, deoxygenated water, which will sit at the bottom of the sea and kill sea life.
Ian Drinnen, principal environmental scientist at Sutherland Shire Council, says there are concerns for aquatic life including sea grass beds and the weedy dragon sea horse (Phyllopteryx taeniolatus).
Drinnen also says building the plant on the land will destroy unique vegetation, including fresh water wetlands, salt marsh communities and rare remnants of swamp oak and eucalypt forest.
"The vegetation at Kurnell, pretty much all of it has been listed as one endangered ecological community or another," he says.
Is recycling a better alternative?
Leslie, from UNSW, says reverse osmosis is the right solution to Sydney's water shortage crisis, but we're looking in the wrong direction.
He says we shouldn't be looking to our oceans but closer to home, to our own toilet bowls.
Leslie has played a key role in setting up waste water recycling schemes in California and Singapore.
He says it's cheaper and more environmentally friendly to recycle sewage than seawater, and it can be done using the same technology proposed for the desal plant.
Leslie says one large pipe would collect raw sewage and pump it to a wastewater treatment plant. The treated sewage would then be run through reverse osmosis and added to Warragamba Dam.
After final treatment it would make its way to Sydney's pipes.
"It is eminently more sensible ... to recycle [waste water] than to stick a straw into the ocean," he says.
http://www.theleader.com.au/2007/06/desalination_myths_or_facts.php
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