Only a couple of years ago, it was estimated by Marsden Jacob in a report for the Federal Government on water pricing that water in Canberra should cost no more than $1.56 per kilolitre and that was an estimate which double counted by assuming we had to pay for the water supply system all over again from scratch, that is it estimated what should be the full or total cost of water supply in each city if we had to replace or replicate the entire system.
Lo and behold, we now pay much more again up to $3.90 per kilolitre. For many households, annual water bills are heading into thousands of dollars, not hundreds.
For that amount of money, Canberrans should be awash with clean water not dirty river water and certainly not recycled sewage. Enough money has flowed from water consumers' pockets into the ACT Treasury over recent years to have built the new Cotter Dam already plus a new Tennent Dam and with money left over to pipe additional clean water from Tantangara Dam into Corin Dam.
Climate change may be a good thing for politicians it's a great excuse for their failure to plan and deliver a safe, reliable, adequate and reasonably-priced water supply. But the sooner people start to see through and reject such fraudulent excuses, the better off they will be.
Terry Dwyer,
Canberra City
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