SA Water are planning to make an additional 20 GL of recycled water available from the Bolivar Waste Water Treatment Plant.
The Virginia Pipeline Scheme delivers about 17 gigalitres of recycled water per year from the plant to more than 400 growers north of Adelaide.SA Water planned to make an additional 20 GL of recycled water available to the region.
A consortium made up of two South Australian firms, Tonkin Consulting and Leed Engineering and Construction, and Spain's leading water technology and horticultural companies, Valoriza Agua and New Growing Systems (a subsidiary of Primaflor), has put forward a proposal to use the 20 gigalitres. That proposal has been accepted by the State Government and the project will now move to the feasibility stage where the potential economic and employment benefits will be examined.
But existing growers, such as Penfield farmer Daniel Hoffman, were concerned the scale of the enterprise proposed by the consortium would put them out of business."We desperately need the water, we've been meeting with them [SA Water and the State Government] over the last 12 months to try and work out where we can put this water," Mr Hoffman said."A lot of the farms here don't have enough water for the production they're doing now, and if they had that extra water we could double production and employ a lot of people."If they're going to release this water it should come to the existing growers especially the ones paying huge bills on mains water."
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