Darren Cleary - Belmont Desalination plant interview
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Darren, how do you expect the community will respond to the news that they'll be paying $90 an extra per year to pay for the Belmont desalination plant?
00:12 The Belmont desalination plant is critical to ensuring the water security for the region.
00:18 I think the community will appreciate that investment is required to ensure that we can provide water to the community through all conditions including drought.
00:26 Of course no one wants to pay more but the investment is required. It is an efficient and prudent use of our money and it is an investment that is desperately needed.
00:38 So we're really pleased that we're now at this next major phase of the project where we are putting out our modification report from the Environment Impact Statement.
00:48 That is really addressing the issue of we want to change the operation from a temporary facility that only operated in drought to one that's available as a permanent facility.
00:57 So we can make the most of this investment and ensure that we provide the region with the water security that it needs.
01:03 And how significant is this project in terms of securing the region's long term water security?
01:09 It is really significant. It adds 30 megalitres a day of capacity to our supply which is about 15% of demand.
01:18 But what's really important about it is it's called rainfall independent.
01:22 So obviously as a desalination plant it's not reliant upon the rain falling and that's what's so important about this facility.
01:27 And that does make a really big difference and adds a substantial amount of time in the amount of water we have available in drought.
01:35 [BLANK_AUDIO]