IT WILL be more than four years before the Sydney desalination plant produces a drop of water again, if the water level at Warragamba Dam declines at the same rate as the last time it topped out in August 1998.

Even if levels drop at the same rate as the fastest decline it would be two years before the dam falls to 70 per cent – the point at which the desalination plant would be turned on.

Assuming the former rate, a private owner of the plant – to be announced by the State Government this year – will take more than $500 million from NSW taxpayers without producing a litre of water.

Based on estimates from the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal, a private sector owner would take $591 million in ”availability charges” from Sydney Water – payment for keeping the plant available.

Taking away fixed costs, including $1.1 million a month to be paid to the plant’s operator, Veolia Water, and financing debt on the expected $1.1 billion price tag – which excludes a possible privatisation of the $600 million pipeline – a little over $50 million a year will go to the owners in profit.

The Greens MP John Kaye said: ”Labor’s desalination plant was always a white elephant, but the coalition are now taking away the opportunity to turn the plant off and avoid $600 million of wasted availability charges,” he said.

Interested bidders include local and international, a number of investment banks and pension funds from Canada and Korea.

Warragamba Dam, one of the largest domestic water supply dams in the world, is likely to continue to spill if the Bureau of Meteorology’s long-range forecast for more rain proves correct.

The Bureau of Meteorology NSW climate manager, Dr Aaron Coutts-Smith, warned NSW residents to brace for more wet weather.

He said there was a 60 per cent chance of above average rainfall throughout autumn when low pressure systems off the east coast are more prevalent.

”There are increased odds of above average rainfall over the next three months, but most of that will be west of the divide,” he said.

”We can’t tell whether it will come in heavy showers like Thursday’s downpour or whether it will be more evenly spread.”

Over $500 million … Roads Minister Duncan Gay’s projected damage bill for this year’s floods. Photo: Adam Hollingworth

THE state government’s failure to responsibly manage the thousands of weirs and levees which impede the flow of waterways has made flooding worse than it should be, says a water governance expert.

Jamie Pittock, of the Australian National University, called for urgent action to rectify or remove hundreds of dangerous, redundant or illegal weirs which he said were “pushing water out of channels and onto flood plains and so inundating areas that might not otherwise be flooding”.

The Roads Minister, Duncan Gay, has put the damage bill for this year’s floods at well over $500 million, and weather forecasts predict even worse weather for next month.

A NSW government review of weirs starting in the late 1990s found there were 3328 licenced structures built on the state’s waterways. Of the 882 inspected, one-third were assessed as in need of removal, modification or better management to reduce adverse impacts.

Applying this one-third ratio to the total number of licenced weirs (not just those inspected) suggests as many as 560 weirs might require removal, modification or better management. However, by 2008, according to Dr Pittock’s figures, only 57 had been removed or modified. These figures do not include unlicenced or illegal weirs, the number of which is not known.

The government relied largely on voluntary action by the infrastructure owners such as farmers and local councils to make improvements, Dr Pittock said, but two-thirds of the known weirs had licences without expiry dates, making intervention difficult. In addition there were legal and financial barriers to removing abandoned, ownerless and illegal weirs. A powerful regulatory system was needed to enforce the necessary improvements, said Dr Pittock, who is director of international programs for the UNESCO chair in water economics and transboundary water governance at the university.

“The fact that there are so many of these structures out there that the NSW government itself recognises are redundant or dangerous or their records are inaccurate, tells us they are not being competently regulated. You can’t manage what you can’t measure,” Dr Pittock said.

The Herald called the Office of Environment and Heritage and the Office of Water, the Environment Minister, Robyn Parker, and the Minister for Primary Industries, Katrina Hodgkinson, seeking comment. A spokeswoman for the Minister for Primary Industries said weirs were ”managed by a variety of sources, it could be State Water, it could be local councils, it could be a range of people”. A spokeswoman for the State Water Corporation said: ”All of State Water’s weirs are licenced and all of our weirs are managed under an asset management plan.”

The flood management system needed to be re-engineered to remove bottlenecks created by antiquated levee systems, Dr Pittock said. He also called for the restoration of ancient flood plains, such as those along the Danube in Europe, to be secondary channels during flooding which could catch flood peaks and release floodwater slowly. While the cost would run into hundreds of millions of dollars, it would be “less expensive than the damage from the sort of floods we are seeing”, he said.