Tugun desalination plant ranks third in water taste test yet Coasters rarely get to drink it

THE expensive water from the Tugun desalination plant is one of the best tasting waters in Queensland. Unfortunately, Gold Coasters rarely get to drink it.

Tugun Desalination plant produces the third-best tasting water in Queensland.

THE Gold Coast can boast having the third-best water in Queensland, but not many locals get to slake their thirst with it.

Yesterday, water from the desalination plant was judged the third-best water in the QWater Best of the Best Queensland Water Taste Test.

Some of the inner workings of the Tugun desalination plant. Photo: Steve Holland

Since May, the state’s third-best tasting water has hydrated people in Brisbane and Ipswich while Mount Crosby treatment plant is shut down.

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The desalination plant has been cranked up to 100 per cent providing up to 133 million litres a day.

But the plant, built in 2010, generally operates in ‘hot standby’ mode, ready to increase production if and when required.

The Tugun desalination plant.

In the past two years, the plant has increased production seven times, four times to supplement Gold Coast water supply when either the Molendinar or Mudgeeraba water treatment plants were shut down for maintenance, or due to Cyclone Debbie.

Unlike the other finalists in the water tasting competition, the desalination plant is an expensive drop.

Member for Currumbin Jann Stuckey told the Bulletin last month the cost was $800 per megalitre of water during continuous production, including chemicals, energy and waste disposal.

QLD Water Best of the Best Water Tasting Competition at Gold Coast Turf Club Bundall. Troy Pettiford from the Whitsunday Regional Council samples some of the water. Picture Glenn Hampson

That compared to $123 per megalitre at conventional treatment plants drawing water from rivers and dams.

Five years ago at Estimates the LNP, while in government, warned of a cost blowout and provided much different figures, with the costing per megalitre $256 for Seqwater and $4881 for Tugun — 19 times more.

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Meanwhile the difference between how to get the best tasting water from the desalination plant is also different.

Whitsunday Regional Council chief operating officer and QWater vice chair Troy Pettiford said he could pick the water from the desalination plant straight away.

“I was thinking the desalination plant was towards the end,” he said.

“They are ones with hardly any taste at all because they go through that plant which strips everything out of it and they have to put stuff back in to give it taste.”

Veolia, the company that runs the plant declined to comment on placing third in the water taste test.

Originally published as Tugun desalination plant ranks third in water taste test yet Coasters rarely get to drink it