11 April 2008

Water in Canberra the most expensive in Australia

11 April 2008 | Maelinar

The ABC have This story that our water prices are set to become the most expensive in Australia.

It closely mimics the recommendations of the 2007 report reported here

Incriminatingly, the rate rises will help pay for expensive infrastructure, that it would seem the Government is going to purchase for ACTEW. Benny Hill just turned in his grave, for somebody just started playing his soundtrack really loudly in Canberra.

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aronde7:44 pm 17 Apr 08

I find this discussion quite interesting. I just received my water and sewerage account for $169. Of that ONLY about $43 relates to actual consumption of water of 26 kilolitres. So even if I somehow managed to miraculously halve my water usage with water tanks and the like I would only save $22 a quarter and still be up for all the fixed costs on the bill of about $126. Where is the incentive in that to reduce consumption?

la mente torbida2:47 pm 14 Apr 08

“Bring on an election with some sensible candidates” – an oxymoron if ever I met one

smokey412:12 pm 14 Apr 08

Of course Canberra water should be the most expensive. Everything in Canberra costs more. Canberra is part of the Murray Darling basin which has very limited access to water. Water passes through Canberra. It does not belong exclusively to Canberra but to the Murray Darling basin.

cranky9:32 pm 12 Apr 08

Ruff,

Have seen reference to that figure in previous reports.

Sonic has released water from the Corin, Cotter, and Bendora system, simply to top up the flows from the Murrumbidgee. We should have first call on this storage – repeat STORAGE – not the bloody fish. A vast investment being literally peed down the river at the whim of our local dictator.

I don’t think our investment is being used to our advantage.

RuffnReady9:00 pm 12 Apr 08

Environmental flows are important to rivers as you can see from what has happened to the Snowy River (it has all but disappeared as it gets less than 5% of it’s original flow due to the Jindabyne Dam), and all the problems in the Murray system (eg. salt water from the ocean continues to move upriver due to lack of flow). There is a lot of science behind decisions on environmental flows. Do you have a source for that 70% figure is have you just pulled it out of the air? I’d be very surprised if that were true.

Actually, the real reason probably relates to use of the water further downstream by irrigators.

cranky8:27 pm 12 Apr 08

Simple, Ruff,

Sonic in his infinite wisdom decided the fish in the Murrumbidgee were far more important than the people of the ACT, and emptied about 70% of our storage down the river over the last 5-6 years.

The time is fast approaching when these clowns will be held accountable for their lunacy.

Bring on an election with some sensible candidates.

RuffnReady4:16 pm 12 Apr 08

BTW, I just read the Terry Dwyer paper and I’m very surprised by it – the ACTEW Future Water Options paper suggests that the ACT region has enough water for a million people, and that we only use 4% of our total available water!? How then have we had a wet, cool La Nina summer and only added about 7% to the dams while under stage 3 water restrictions? It just doesn’t add up.

RuffnReady4:04 pm 12 Apr 08

“…to ensure the security of the water supply.”

That’s a bloody laugh! Dam capacity is not the problem – the problem is not enough rain falling in the catchment! lmao

RuffnReady4:03 pm 12 Apr 08

So this is to pay for the Cotter Dam improvements?

I still don’t understand why we need to build a bigger dam when the ACT govt could surely make an agreement with Snowy Hydro to use Tantangara for some portion of Canberra’s water supply. The water could be released from Tantangara and pumped out of the Cotter to Googong, with the added benefit that you could do it seasonally and improve the health of the upper tract of the river.

captainwhorebags8:59 am 12 Apr 08

I was paying $200 a year for water and sewerage to a block of land without a house on it. I rang ACTEWAGL and they told me that it was part of the lease conditions, so I can just pay it thanks very much. I joked with my family that I should have taken a bucket of sewerage to their office and said “I’m paying you to get rid of this, here you go”

Six months down the track, my builder also had to pay ACTEWAGL several hundred dollars for the privilege of connecting to a network I’d already been paying for.

Oh, and ACTEW might be government owned, but my water bill says “ActewAGL Retail Ltd, acting as agent for ActewAGL Distribution which operates the assets of ACTEW Corporation”. Sounds fairly complex for a simple government operation, no?

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