Australia’s Southern Seawater desalination plant goes into operation

The $450 million expansion of the southern seawater desalination plant was opened last week with the first intake of seawater.

Premier Colin Barnett and Water Minister Bill Marmion were on site in Binningup to activate the flow of seawater into the facility for treatment and delivery as drinking water.

Mr Barnett dubbed the occasion as another step towards “drought-proofing Perth.”

“When the expanded plant is fully operational we will have the capacity to provide about half of Perth’s water needs via climate-independent desalination,” he said.

The expansion now doubles the Southern Seawater Desalination Plant’s capacity to 100 billion litres a year, on top of the 45 billion litres available from Perth’s Seawater Desalination Plant.

Delivery of four large water pumps to the expansion project from Germany is expected in the coming days to improve long-term efficiency.
The new pumps will be installed and then tested in March and the first drinking water will be delivered to the Integrated Water Supply Scheme shortly afterwards.