Queensland to scale down Gold Coast desalination plant

A Gold Coast desalination plant that provided safe drinking water to residents of Brisbane during the 2011 floods is now expected to be scaled down by the Queensland government in Australia.

High operating costs and an inability to get the Tugun desalination plant working at full capacity have been blamed for the decision.

Operating costs of the Tugun based desalination plant until the end of April stood at A$14.2m ($14m).

Queensland Minister for Energy and Water Supply Mark McArdle has requested a full review of the plant in order to evaluate how best to achieve effectiveness in the short to long-term.

The A$1.2b ($1.19m) plant was originally envisaged to be a 50 megalitres per day desalination plant that addressed shortage of water supply on the Gold Coast.

The government under Peter Beattie almost tripled its capacity to 125 megalitres per day, and the plant is operated under an alliance between Seqwater, Veolia Water Australia and John Holland Pty.

The plant is currently operating in ‘hot standby’ mode, which saves about $10 million per annum, compared to continuous operation at one third capacity. However it also creates additional asset risks as the plant was not designed to go through frequent stop/start cycles.

McArdle claims that the drinking water requirement during the floods could have been met with the plants original capacity of 50 megalitres.