Australian Water Summit

Highlights of Water Pricing & Trading Conference 2009!

2009-09-18T15:25:00.004+10:00

IIR’s Water Pricing & Trading Conference was held with great success at the Rendezvous Hotel in Melbourne on August 25-26.

Delegates attending from across Australia’s water industry were able to get a well rounded understanding of current issues and challenges facing the market, and a good deal of insight into how pricing and trading practices will develop going forward.

Dr. Lin, Crase, Executive Director, La Trobe University

Dr. Lin Crase of La Trobe University kicked things off by looking at the efficacy of the Federal Government’s while others, such as Synergies Economics Consulting Principal Euan Morton put pricing into the context of wider ranging water reforms.

Euan Morton, Principal, Synergies Economic Consulting

There were presentations dealing with various state regulatory outlooks – and a specific spotlight on Victorian water companies approach to pricing.

James Cox, CEO, IPART NSW

Brett Mathieson, Manager Regulation, Yarra Valley Water

A large section of Water Pricing & Trading looked to deal with the very different challenges of urban versus rural water pricing. Highlighted presentations from this area included well organised presentations from LECG’s Dr. Richard Tooth on Urban Water Pricing and Dr. Teri Etchells of Melbourne University discussing water markets and accounting in the rural context.

Dr. Richard Tooth, Senior Advisor, Allen Consulting Group

Dr. Teri Etchells, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Melbourne School of Engineering

Water Pricing & Trading – the third event in the Australian Water Series portfolio for 2009 was a very successful event judging by feedback from speakers and delegates, with a lot of attendees agreeing that the market will continue to improve and develop over the next 12 months.

Securing water: What is the best and fairest way to secure water for the environment?

2009-08-07T09:17:00.002+10:00

A river can be described as “over-allocated” when its entitlement regime allocates too much water to users and not enough to the river, its aquifers and the wetlands dependent upon it.

One of the essential steps in solving an over-allocation problem is to fix those parts of the allocation system that caused the problem to emerge. Otherwise the problem will re-occur. Fixing the causes of over-allocation commonly involves complex changes to legislation, governance arrangements and water resource plans that inevitably take time to negotiate and implement. It’s a lengthy, time-consuming process.

In the meantime and parallel with the reforms necessary to prevent re-occurrence, the existing over-allocation problem has to be solved by a) changing the rules used to determine how much water each entitlement holder gets; and/or b) securing a larger proportion of entitlements for the environment.

To read full article, click here.

Article from Droplet 18.
URL - http://www.myoung.net.au

speaker presentations!

2009-07-03T09:38:00.000+10:00

In the 2nd AWS e-newsletter, we released snippets of speaker presentations for your viewing.

AWS presentation - Tom Rooney, Waterfind

AWS presentation - Ken Matthews, National Water Commission

AWS presentation - Joe Flynn, Water Industry Alliance

AWS presentation - Graeme Newton of Queensland Water Infrastructure

Enjoy!

Cheers
Serena
Part of the AWS team

AWS E-Newsletter Edition 02

2009-06-29T09:21:00.000+10:00

Hi everyone!

Edition 02 of the Australian Water Summit has just been sent out.

This issue covers the highlights of the conference - with exclusive excerpts of speakers on video! We also released James Cox's (CEO of IPART NSW) white paper!

The AWS Linkedin group is active and buzzing. If you're not a member of the group yet, join today by clicking here!

Here's a screenshot of the 2nd edition of the newsletter.

Click to view more!

If you would like to receive this every bi-monthly, send an email to us and we'll add you to the distribution list of the newsletter.

Till next time,
The AWS team

Water policy delivers scary possibilities

2009-06-25T16:27:00.000+10:00

Taken from The Age today, what do you think about this?

Direct link to article here.
VICTORIA'S water policy is a shambles. The tip of the iceberg was exposed by the state's top water adviser, David Downie, who admitted last week that the assumptions underlying the Government's promise to pump 75 gigalitres of water a year from the Goulburn River from 2010 have "now proven to be wrong".

The admission was made during a freedom-of-information tribunal hearing into the billion-dollar north-south pipeline now under construction. The pipeline is designed to deliver water to Melbourne from the already stressed Murray-Goulburn basin. This is despite the fact that irrigators in this area haven't been able to get more than a fraction of their water entitlements due to 11 years of drought.

The water was meant to come from the first stage of the $2 billion Foodbowl Modernisation Project. Upgrading to irrigation channels is supposed to generate an additional 225 gigalitres of water to be split between the environment, irrigators and Melbourne. Independent experts point out that most of the so-called savings from seepage find their way into the river system anyway.

Downie admitted "government policy was made before the business case was done". Any water that comes to Melbourne via the pipeline will be at the expense of the Murray River, which is already dying due to acidification from the mouth up. This threatens the viability of most South Australian cities dependent on Murray water and equally the viability of the irrigation towns and farms that produce $9 billion in farm gate revenue.

Downie also told the tribunal that the desalination plant might not be completed until 2012, a point that differs from claims by Water Minister Tim Holding. He is still publicly clinging to the promise that the plant would be completed in 2011.

The scary thing is that while the Government continues to have unrealistic expectations for its water policies, the more sensible options for Melbourne such as connection of water tanks to the home, water harvesting and recycling are being closed off.

Apart from prayer, the answer might be tankers or tugs and water bags from Tasmania providing Tasmanians are prepared to sell a small fraction of the waste water that runs into the sea after generating hydro-electricity.

There is a simple reason why the desalination plant is stalled. The two consortiums bidding for the plant, the French multinationals Suez and Veolia can't raise the money. Their financial partners are, respectively, Macquarie Bank and, originally, ABN Amro — an organisation taken over by the Royal Bank of Scotland, which has experienced the largest financial loss in British history and was bailed out by the Bank of England. (Some of the RBS bits are currently being sold to the ANZ Bank, where they are attached to licences in China, India and Vietnam.) Financially, it looks as if the desalination plant is in limbo.

Public-private partnerships are on the nose with investors around the world. They can't raise money in $50 million dollops, let alone the $500 million dollops required to fund the $3 billion to $4 billion desalination plant. Given global financial markets, the only way Suez or Veolia could raise $4 billion is by having an iron-clad contract with the Victorian Government to supply Melbourne's water for 30 years with built-in price escalations that exclude competition.

This is the sort of deal that both companies created for the supply of water in France and many other countries, which began to unravel in the late 1990s with the Grenoble corruption case.

This resulted in directors of a Suez subsidiary and local politicians being sentenced to jail over a $3 million bribe. The French courts also found the subsidiary overcharged customers, using fraudulent accounting methods and ordered it to return all water fees from 1990 to 1998 to the city. According to the Italian Inter Press Service, it also cancelled Suez's contract in Grenoble.

A report commissioned by Ralph Nader in 2005 and available on his website says: "Despite Veolia's global track record of corruption, broken promises, environmental degradation, price gouging. obfuscation, misdirection and secrecy, the world's largest water company continues to enjoy substantial support within powerful pockets of financial and political circles."

Veolia now delivers Adelaide's water supply. According to Christopher Sheil, a University of NSW historian, in an interview with the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists: "When a corporation wins a highly unpopular contract over public goods like water, it gets the privatising government by the balls.

"Politically, the government cannot allow the privatisation to fail. This opens up large arbitrage opportunities to the firm, which effectively gets its operations government-guaranteed".

SA Premier Mike Rann, who is suing upstream states for more Murray water, said in respect of the SA-Veolia deal done by the previous government, you can't unscramble an egg. Will the next premier of Victoria say the same thing about the Brumby Government's water policies?

THANK YOU!

2009-06-12T12:38:00.000+10:00

IIR Conferences would like to thank all delegates who attended the 7th Annual Australian Water Summit held from June 3-5 2009 at the Hilton Brisbane.

The event created a lot of valuable discussion points on issues of significance currently facing the water industry including Federal, State and Local Government perspectives, water reform, water pricing and challenges facing the industry over the next few years.

Do you have any feedback on the Summit, what aspects you liked and didn’t like?

Do you have any questions for your colleagues or for the speakers?

We value your feedback greatly so don’t be afraid to post your questions and remarks in this informal platform.

Alternatively, email them through to us.

The upcoming newsletter will have a coverage of the event, so stay tuned!

Signing off,
The AWS team

Changes to the AWS 2009 program

2009-06-02T10:19:00.000+10:00

Hi everyone!

Only 1 day to go before the conference commences!

To keep everyone updated and in the loop about what's happening, there have been some changes to the program due to unforeseen circumstances.

Please be advised that the following speakers have been forced to withdraw from the 7th Annual Australian Water Summit agenda and are unable to provide replacements.

The following apologies have been issued on behalf of both speakers.

David Downie, General Manager - Water, Department of Sustainability & Environment Victoria
“David Downie deeply regrets that he is unable to attend the conference. A number of complex inter-jurisdictional policy negotiations have come to a head and the Minister requires David's urgent attention on these. David apologises for any inconvenience caused by this and regrets he will not be able to make his planned presentation on water value and pricing matters.

Ian Mooney
A/Director Executive Services
Office of Water
Department of Sustainability and Environment Victoria
_____________________________________________________

John Black, CEO, QLD Distribution Entity
“As you may have seen in recent media, the government has decided to review the water reform agenda, so work on establishing the Distribution Entity has been suspended until their decision is known. This places us all in an unenviable position and unfortunately prevents Mr Black from making his planned presentation to the Summit.

I reiterate Mr Black’s sincere apologies for the short notice of his withdrawal, and hope that the event is nevertheless very successful for you.

Jodee Hutt
Executive Assistant to Chief Executive Officer
SEQ Distribution Entity (Interim) Pty Ltd
_____________________________________________________

The conference program will be restructured accordingly, you can find the latest agenda on our website at http://www.australianwatersummit.com.au/agenda.html.

We apologise for any inconvenience this unforeseen issue has caused.

If you have any queries, please comment here or send us an email.

We look forward to seeing you at the conference.

Signing off,
The AWS team

AWS welcomes a new speaker!

2009-05-19T09:02:00.000+10:00

Hi everyone

With only weeks to go before the conference, we hope that you have confirmed your spot at the conference. If you wish to attend but have not registered, click here

We have a slight program update and would like to welcome Zac Kerr, Senior Associate of Freehills, on board!

He will be speaking on:
Australian Water Industry – a legal perspective
• legal issues in meeting Australia’s water infrastructure challenge
• irrigation modernisation in Australia
• legal issues and consequences of water trading across Australian jurisdictions
• funding water projects in the current financial climate

You can keep up to date with the latest program at http://www.australianwatersummit.com.au/overview.html

Signing off,
The AWS team

Australian Water Summit newsletter and LinkedIn group launch!

2009-04-28T14:26:00.000+10:00

We are proud to announce the launch of our first Australian Water Summit newsletter!

Screenshot of the newsletter

This first newsletter features an interview with Tony Kelly, Managing Director of Yarra Valley Water and Chairman of WaterAid Australia. In the interview, Mr Kelly says the National Water Commission has been successful in its performance reporting in urban water as there are now national comparisons which assist with further improvements. Mr Kelly's media release can be found here.

We also launched the AWS LinkedIn Networking Group on LinkedIn. We would like to invite everyone to join in on the discussion, network with your peers and share information and knowledge.

If there are any queries/problems in regards to the newsletter or the LinkedIn group, feel free to send an email to us.

Till next time,
the AWS team

National Water Reform needs to focus on rural areas

2009-04-27T02:59:00.000+10:00

The National Water Commission needs to focus on rural areas and the way water is managed in those areas, says Managing Director of Yarra Valley Water and Chairman of WaterAid Australia, Tony Kelly.

Mr Kelly will be addressing the 7th Annual Australian Water Summit on June 4 and 5 in Brisbane.

He says the National Water Commission has been successful in its performance reporting in urban water as there are now national comparisons which assist with further improvements.

However, Mr Kelly says the imbalance between rural and urban areas needs to be addressed.

"On the national level… urban [areas] are only using 10 per cent of Australia’s fresh water and a majority of the balance is used in rural areas," he said. "The emphasis now needs to be on rural areas and particularly on irrigation usage."

Older irrigation systems needed to be upgraded as they could not longer meet the needs of modern farming.

Mr Kelly says the biggest national water issue in the next year and a half is the way water is managed in rural areas.

"Improving the efficiency of rural irrigation systems has been a major element in Victoria's Reform Agenda but much less so in other states," he says. "What's happened in Victoria is that we have had the urban water users funding improvement in irrigation infrastructure in exchange for a share of the water savings.

The Victorian experience will provide cheap water for urban areas, increased security for farmers and will benefit the environment.

In his address, Mr Kelly will touch on the progress of water reform in Victoria and the establishment of a state wide water grid which will link various regions together.

This would allow Victoria to optimise their supplies across the state for the benefit of farmers, urban consumers and the environment. In the past this has been compromised by a lack of coordination across utility boundaries and a lack of a state wide perspective experiencing the same water restrictions, he said.

"When the Grid is fully operational, we’ll also have access to cheaper whole-sale water. That’s got to be good for urban users and farmers because it’s going to keep pressure off the prices."

Other speakers attending the conference include Ken Matthews, Chairman and CEO of the National Water Commission; Joe Flynn, Chief Executive of Water Industry Alliance; Andrew Gregson, Chief Executive Officer of NSW Irrigator’s Council; Rob Freeman, CEO of the Murray Darling Basin Authority; and Elaine Prior, Director of Citi Investment Research.

lower lakes pipeline

2009-02-24T08:58:00.000+11:00

The Taliem Bend pipeline network will provide water to communities that previously relied on taking supplies direct from the lower lakes of the River Murray in South Australia.

Construction of the pipeline began in October and some homes had been receiving fresh water since just before Christmas and will be a boon to livestock.

http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-national/water-flows-through-lower-lakes-pipeline-20090218-8b75.html

http://www.alp.org.au/media/0209/msccw181.php

Water you doing about it?

2009-02-19T10:08:00.000+11:00

Hello and welcome to the Australian Water Summit blog!

We are excited to keep you updated and to be a part of the information source on Australian water issues.

Join us in the discussion and keep the information flowing!

- The AWS team