Past review
15/05/2012
The Bundaberg water supply scheme is situated in the area around Bundaberg, Childers and Gin Gin.
This water supply scheme is made up of two sub-schemes:
- Kolan River sub-scheme, including:
- Fred Haigh Dam
- Bucca Weir
- Kolan Barrage
- Lower Burnett sub-scheme, including:
- Ned Churchward Weir
- Ben Anderson Barrage
- Bingera Weir.
The scheme has more than 1,100 bulk customers with medium and high water access entitlements
Two dams form the main storage infrastructure:
- Fred Haigh Dam
- Paradise Dam
Water is supplied through this scheme to the city of Bundaberg, as well as the communities of Burnett, Kolan and Isis shires.
It also serves irrigators who produce various crops. Bundaberg is known as a big sugar-producing area, but other crops include tomatoes, watermelons, rockmelons, capsicums, zucchini, beans, macadamia nuts and avocados.
Industries also benefit from this water scheme, in particular sugar mills.
The Bundaberg distribution system consists of a number of channel sub-systems:
- Gin Gin sub-system – draws from Fred Haigh Dam using the Monduran pump station and the Tirroan Pump Station.
- Bingera sub-system – supplied from the main Gin Gin channel. It has three pump stations: the Bullyard, Bucca and McIlwraith pump stations. In combination they use eight pumps.
- Isis sub-system – supplied from the Burnett River’s Ben Anderson Barrage through the Don Beattie pump station. The system includes four pump stations: Don Beattie, North Gregory, Quart Pot and Dinner Hill.
- Woongarra sub-system – borders the north and south-eastern sides of the City of Bundaberg. It includes two pump stations: Woongarra pump station with five pumps and Walker Street pump station with four pumps.
- Abbotsford sub-system – supplied from the Kolan River. It has only one pump station: the Abbotsford pump station, with has two submersible pumps.
- Gooburrum sub-system – supplied from the Kolan River through the Gooburrum pump station. It supplies the coastal strip north of Bundaberg.
The QCA’s recommended irrigation prices to apply to the Bundaberg water supply scheme and the Bundaberg distribution scheme for the 2012–17 regulatory period are outlined in the respective Executive summaries for each of our Final Report.
These recommendations were accepted by the Queensland Government, and the new price path came into effect on 1 July 2012.
This SunWater water scheme review forms part of the review that the QCA undertook in 2011–12 for the Queensland Government: the SunWater Irrigation Price Review 2012–17.
You can read more about the pricing review on our project home page. You can also view the submissions for the water schemes that we received, the consultants’ reports and issues arising from face-to-face consultation with stakeholders.
We recommended a new irrigation price path, to apply from July 2012 to June 2017 – with prices moving in a direction that better reflect costs. For the majority of schemes, our recommended prices result in increases to fixed prices and reductions in usage prices.
The irrigation revenue earned by SunWater in some schemes does not cover the cost of operating and maintaining irrigation assets. In these schemes, QCA could show the ‘cost-reflective’ price, but could only recommend prices that increased by up to $2/ML per year plus inflation.
The QCA’s recommended prices were accepted by the government.