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Tasmania plans to export water
to mainland by tanker
Matthew Denholm | The Australian
02 June 2007
TASMANIA is considering plans to export billions of litres of fresh water from its wild rivers to parched mainland cities using supertankers.
A number of companies, including one chaired by former prime minister Bob Hawke, are negotiating to capture excess water from swollen rivers on the state's high-rainfall west coast.
Although the Tasmanian Government was initially sceptical, state Water Minister David Llewellyn told The Weekend Australian he now believed the idea stacked up economically -- and could be used to benefit Tasmanians as well as mainland consumers.
Mr Llewellyn said a proposal from Solar Sailor, a NSW company chaired by Mr Hawke, to export 50 billion litres of water a year from Tasmania, was just one of a number before the Government.
"I don't think it's pie in the sky," Mr Llewellyn said. "It comes within the realms of possibility when you judge it against the cost of desalination and large infrastructure costs.
"And it's a resource that Tasmania has. With proper consideration and assessment and long-term planning it could be used to the advantage of development of drought-proofing arrangements here in this state."
Mr Llewellyn said Tasmania's fresh water supplies were equivalent to two Murray-Darling systems. The state has a population of about 485,000, or 2.3 per cent of Australia's total, yet it has 12 per cent of the nation's water.
Mr Llewellyn said revenue from the sale of water otherwise flowing from rivers into the sea could be invested in dams and irrigation infrastructure in the state's dry north and east.
"If we derive money from that type of enterprise, then that money could be used to develop the infrastructure elsewhere that provides water for people," he said.
"In other words, it's a way of actually building a pipeline from the west coast to the east coast -- without the pipeline."
Tasmania's west coast, home to wild mountains and swollen rivers, often complains of an excess of rain while parts of the state's east and north are in drought.
Although only one of a number of proposals, Solar Sailor is understood also to be in discussion with several mainland states as potential customers for Tasmanian water.
Solar Sailor designs vessels partly powered by "sails" made of solar panels that generate solar energy and also utilise wind.
The company's chief executive, Robert Dane, who has held talks with Tasmania's Department of Primary Industries and Water, has flagged using several supertankers to ferry water to centres along the eastern seaboard, including Sydney, Melbourne and Queensland.
The idea has the support of Tasmania's West Coast Mayor Darryl Gerrity. It is from his sprawling and mountainous municipality that the bulk of the water would be taken.
Mr Gerrity said he would first like to see a state-wide water authority set up to assess the state's future water needs. Once that was done, he believed there would be plenty of scope to capture water from the region's rivers and creeks for export.
"They're all overflowing: plenty of rain; plenty of water," he said. "And with global warming, the projections are that the west coast is going to get wetter and the east drier."
Water that passed through hydro-electricity stations was returned to river systems across the state to run out to sea. From Hobart's Derwent to the Pieman and Gordon in the west, river water was not harnessed for drinking. "It all goes down the gurgler," he said.
However, he was unsure whether mainlanders would like the brown tinge to Tasmanian river water, the result of natural staining from tannin in button grass.
