DEAR News Of The Area,
FOR the past several years, Port Macquarie-Hastings Council (PMHC) has been investigating the possibility of updating the Hastings-Camden Haven water production system to guarantee security of supply for the foreseeable future.
The work under consideration included the installation on an upgraded Filtration Plant at Cowarra Dam to process a larger volume of water pumped from Koree Island, and a large solar-powered desalination plant on Ocean Drive south of Port Macquarie.
It is disappointing that the PMHC recently announced that the upgrade would be confined to the installation of the Cowarra Dam Filtration Plant, and a large Wastewater Treatment Plant in Thrumster.
Because this is a non-renewable energy project, ratepayers will have to bear the full cost of $160M.
Including the solar-powered system would have resulted in a major contribution by both the State and Federal governments, meaning that the total cost to ratepayers would have been only $100m.
The cost of operating the improvements would have been a fraction of the ongoing cost ratepayers will now have to bear.
Regards,
Mike Dibbs,
Port Macquarie.
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