***** water ***** part1

none saw this the last 2 sundays on channel 9.
that´s why i invested my money in water.
not because some guy here writes opm is up 20% and other crap.
water is gold, and till june opm will prove it that they can make money.


The water crisis
Sunday, March 13, 2005

"A report last year claimed 70 out of Victoria's 200 largest business users refused to voluntarily review water use ... some saying they were just too busy. Is business doing enough to conserve water?"


A special investigation by Business Sunday into the role corporate Australia is playing in the nation's water crisis. While domestic use is restricted, businesses have largely escaped scrutiny. Thanks to drought, climate change and increasing demand, water cannot be taken for granted any more. With a call for industry to halve its water consumption, we look at who has and who hasn't cut back.



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CHRISTOPHER ZINN: It might be an oasis of sorts but the Rooty Hill RSL in Sydney's west has had to get wise to the real value of water.

DAMIEN CHALMERS, ROOTY HILL RSL MAINTENANCE MANAGER: Well I believe from what Sydney Water tell us it's 56-thousand a year we're saving on our water bill.




CHRISTOPHER ZINN: Here before they started metering it they got through a quarter of a million litres of the stuff a day. An audit by Sydney Water showed how to save a third of that by fixing a faulty pool valve and using steam instead of hoses for kitchen cleaning.

DAMIEN CHALMERS: I didn't, at the time, believe they could help us … always looking to try and save the club some money.

CHRISTOPHER ZINN: It's relevant ... hospitality goes through about one fifth of all the water used by Australian industries. In the manufacturing sector, food and beverages are the biggest consumers… but now they look to investment instead of water to quench their thirsts

DAVID WOOLDRIDGE, ARNOTT'S PLANT MANAGER: We have had to invest in some capital out there 140-thousand dollars from that investment we've been able to achieve savings around 70-thousand dollars per year which, with a payback of around two years is certainly a very worthwhile project..

CHRISTOPHER ZINN: Arnott's installed a now legendary low cost nozzle to keep the kernels rolling, more water efficiently, in their corn chip production line.

DAVID WOOLDRIDGE: A 250-dollar investment gave us savings of around 40-thousand a year, just in using less water throughout the process.

CHRISTOPHER ZINN: Not all savings are as dramatic as that. In Melbourne and Sydney new plans require top end users to prepare water conservation plans. And an industry where 95 per cent of the product is just water has already started.

JULIAN SCOTT, TOOHEYS OPERATIONS MANAGER: We've reduced our consumption from just under five litres or water per litre of beer packed, to basically four litres of water per litre beer packed, which is a round the world class benchmark for a brewery in terms of water consumption.

CHRISTOPHER ZINN: At Toohey's they called in the auditors from Sydney Water when they put in a new plant to pasteurise the beer. Fine tuning helped save 1.3 million litres a day and reveal the so called hidden costs of water such as disposal.

JULIAN SCOTT: And there's also energy savings associated with water cost reduction, there's chemical treatment savings so, there's a very good business case for it.

CHRISTOPHER ZINN: In Victoria, the Government wants industries to double production while halving water consumption. At Toyota in Melbourne they have already cut the water it takes to make a car from six to three thousand litres.

PHILIP VELLA, TOYOTA PAINT SHOP: We've already reduced over 150-million litres already now that equates to say 500 average households.

CHRISTOPHER ZINN: One strategy is to use recycled instead of drinking water. The paint shop in this Camry production line used 80 per cent of the water and energy required to assemble the entire car...

PHILIP VELLA: In the spray booths we have circulation water which the over-spray goes through. That water used to be made up from our clean drinking water. So we're using laced water to make up sludge forms instead of using our clean drinking water.

CHRISTOPHER ZINN: No one is able to take water for granted anymore thanks to drought, climate change and growing demand. But crystal clear freshwater water remains so apparently cheap — it doesn't always enter the business equation.

IAN KIERNAN, CLEAN UP AUSTRALIA: At a dollar a tonne, there is very little respect for it, but what we need is we need to reform water use; we've got to look at reformation of how we manage it, better handle it better.

CHRISTOPHER ZINN: Ian Kiernan helped Taronga Park Zoo set up a recycling scheme to clean and reuse water. But many businesses can get 1,000 litres of freshwater for less than a dollar which hardly encourages such investments. Now top end users face higher rates as well as sticks and carrots to encourage water thrift…

FRANK SARTON, NSW UTILITIES MINISTER: Our program is about is requiring them to do water savings plans so they become aware of the potential savings and then providing them with an incentive fund at the same time and the other incentive, of course, is the different structure of price which will give them a bit of a push along.

CHRISTOPHER ZINN: In the big picture agriculture takes 70 per cent of the nation's available water with business and industry consuming about 11per cent. But in urban areas the business load can be almost one third of the total which is why Sydney Water targets business with its "Every Drop Counts" program.

FRANK SARTON: We expect the savings we're getting out of business, from the Every Drop Counts program, to more than treble in the next couple of years as they do their water savings plans and they can access funds and actually do a lot of stuff that will save water.

CHRISTOPHER ZINN: But there's a blunt warning from one of Melbourne's largest water suppliers to industry.

ANNE BARKER, , CITY WEST WATER MANAGING DIRECTOR: Business needs to save more water and if they don't want regulation then they will have to do more voluntarily but there are also enormous benefits out of an exercise to reduce water consumption...

CHRISTOPHER ZINN: Toyota at Altona is among Anne Barker's bigger customers. They even showcase rainwater tanks to service toilets and run a Japanese garden. Barker is tasked with reducing water use by 15 per cent in five years, but don't corporatised utilities have a real conflict of interest in claiming they want to sell less water?

ANNE BARKER: We have a target which the Government is absolutely holding us to reduce consumption by our customers and that's what driving an enormous amount of our activity at the moment.

CHRISTOPHER ZINN: Yet there are still some heavy drinkers out there, particularly electricity producers who need it for cooling. A report last year claimed 70 out of Victoria's 200 largest business users refused to voluntarily review water use ... some saying they were just too busy. Is business doing enough to conserve water?

JOHN CONNOR, AUSTRALIAN CONSERVATION FOUNDATION: As a whole no, but there are definitely leaders in the field that are realising that both the price of water is too cheap and it makes good business sense to be much more efficient.

CHRISTOPHER ZINN: The Australian Conservation Foundation says water here costs up to five times less than other developed nations. They practice what they preach by working out of an office with rainwater tanks which hasn't tapped into the mains for months.

JOHN CONNOR: The smart people are realising the regulatory cost curve is going to hit them pretty soon and they are getting ahead of those compliance requirements right now.

CHRISTOPHER ZINN: The big water savings may come from tweaking some thirsty industrial processes but while commercial premises may not seem quite as exciting there are an awful lot of offices. And at least one property empire is doing its bit to make sure it’s not wasting money or water

CHRIS O’DONNELL, INVESTA MANAGING DIRECTOR: 15 million litres in this building alone will reduce the cost by about 27-30-thousand dollars a year, so a significant amount of money if you apply it across 57 buildings that we own.

CHRISTOPHER ZINN: 55 Market Street Sydney is part of the Investa Property empire — and Managing Director, Chris O'Donnell has taken a leadership role to encourage staff to spot and implement water savings.

CHRIS O’DONNELL: A lot of the initiatives that we have pushed forward haven't been driven by myself, they've been driven by our employees who've come up the great ideas and what we've done is created a culture, that has allowed them to put forward those ideas and we've accepted a vast majority of them.

CHRISTOPHER ZINN: Some of the initiatives are hardly rocket science such as flow restrictors in basins, waterless urinals and dual flush toilets. There are also big savings with the fine tuning of cooling towers but the boss believes the benefits are not just environmental.

CHRIS O’DONNELL: We're doing it because the organisation wants to do it, the community wants it, our employees want it, and I think it makes a strong point of difference for us as an organisation which hopefully means that tenants will choose to come to our buildings over perhaps some of our competitors.

CHRISTOPHER ZINN: Ian Kiernan says if the water sums are done honestly then there's a very real business case for using recycled water.

IAN KIERNAN: If you add up the sum cost of that water, it maybe as much as three dollars a tonne, three times the available price then the equation changes very, very dramatically, then we really can afford to look at sophisticated technology.

CHRISTOPHER ZINN: It's apparent not all businesses have got the message to act now and save or face tough regulation later. Cleaners at the Rooty Hill RSL might use more elbow grease but the benefits are very real.

DAMIEN CHALMERS: They have to work a little harder… yeah they do, they do, than they did and honestly the staff didn't appreciate that but the management appreciated it because we're saving money.

CHRISTOPHER ZINN: Back at the Zoo, Ian Kiernan is on a ministerial round table to prove to business its worth making the change in more ways than one.

IAN KIERNAN: By showing case studies and showing the technology, and the quality of water that we've been able to present and then put the financial dynamics right alongside of that so that you show them that not only are they being good environmental citizens, but they're being good corporate citizens for their shareholders.