The Australian Water Forum is fortunate enough to have Dr. Carla Boehl as a guest. Dr. Boehl has qualifications in Civil Engineering and water resources management. Her Doctorate was on Private Sector Participation in water utilities. She was based in Belgium with McKinsey & Co. as a Research Analyst for over five years before coming to Australia in 2006 to join Citiwater in Townsville.
Dr. Boehl, thank you for agreeing to be interviewed by the Australian Water Forum. Can you first of all tell us a little about your professional and academic background?
I left my job as Research Analyst with the top global management consulting company McKinsey & Co in Brussels to move to Australia in August 2006 (about a year). My first degree is in Civil Engineering (University of Porto in Portugal), and my post-graduate studies focused on Water Resources Engineering and Management (International Master of Science Program at the University of Stuttgart in Germany in cooperation with Rutgers, the Sate University of New Jersey, USA, where I also studied for 6 months) and Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) of water utilities. For my Ph.D. Thesis I developed a Knowledge-Based Decision Support System to help utility managers deciding when confronted with privatization as an option to increase the company efficiency and need for investment. I completed my doctorate at the University of Stuttgart while working for 5 years with McKinsey, travelling the world consulting for national governments and top players of the Global Water Practice.
Your Ph.D. was on private sector participation in water utilities. What is your impression of the state of water utilities in Australia?
The Australian water industry in highly fragmented. Approximately 300 urban utilities provide water and wastewater services in Australia’s six states and two territories, which is a very high number taking into account that the 22 largest only serve 73% of the population. Australian utilities could benefit more from economies of scale. Most rural water industry assets in Australia have traditionally been government-owned and managed but in some jurisdictions, assets are being privatized or being passed to producer-controlled entities, as an option to meet investment needs and increase efficiency. Privatisation contracts can only be good if, like any other contract, they are well thought and carefully planned. All major metropolitan suppliers are generating real returns on their assets, but rural governments tend to charge prices sufficient to maintain capital.
Australia is experiencing a water crisis, with major river systems drying up, and severe shortages of water for domestic consumption. What do you think Australia can learn from other regions that live with limited water supplies…like the middle-east?
The MENA region is home to 5% of the world’s population and has access to 1% of the global fresh water resources. And unless dramatic steps are taken, the situation can only get worse.
Desalination is a matter of fact in the middle-east. The Gulf region is by far the biggest market for new desalination projects on a capacity basis. It is also the biggest market in terms of the amount of capital investment required. Saudi Arabia and UAE (the third most water-deprived country in the world) alone account for 80% of the region’s capital investment needs.
In Saudi Arabia, water is really the big issue. Farmers are used to using flood irrigation but the aim now is to manage water resources better by drip irrigation. This is one example of what Australian farmers could also do (and some are already doing).
Almost all Australia’s major cities have turned to desalination as a reliable source of water. Do you think this is the right solution for Australia?
The number of small industrial and municipal plants purifying brackish, river and wastewater will continue to grow at a slightly faster rate than in the past, reflecting the need to use lower quality raw water sources in many Australian communities.
Australia has a installed desalination capacity of 240,000 m3/d. It has less than 10 plants used for public water supply but a substantial number of mines and power stations have their own plants.
A limited number of small desalination plants (<1,000m3/d capacity) are used for household water supply. One example is a A$3.5 million SWRO plant at Penneshaw run by the South Australian Water Corporation. The plant treats 250 m3/d of seawater to supplement the town’s dam water supplies. Penneshaw is a small community on Kangaroo Island, 100km south of Adelaide.
Desalination plants supplying water for public consumption in large cities are not perceived as the solution. Non-seawater applications currently dominate the market; an exception is Perth.
Desalination technology significantly improved in the last decade and desalination costs decreased, making it more competitive. It might be a good solution for some Australian cities, however, I believe the right solution for Australia is Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) and people should concentrate their efforts in IWRM more than on choosing one specific technology for water treatment.
