Govt won''t buy Areva desalination plant The government has decided to abandon a plan to buy the Erongo Desalination Plant from Areva Namibia.This was announced by the minister of agriculture, water and forestry, John Mutorwa, yesterday during a meeting held at Swakopmund to discuss the water supply to the coastal areas of the Erongo Region.
According to Mutorwa, discussions between the government and NamWater about moving towards desalination as a source of drinking water started in 2008.
“What was said during those consultations was that, if nothing was done about our water supply, we would have a problem by 2015. Now we have a water problem,” he said.
At the time Cabinet provisionally approved a presentation made by the national desalination task force. According to Mutorwa, this included a plan that the government had to immediately start building a desalination plant or buy one.
“Once the water situation became critical, the plan for government to build a desalination plant was no longer viable. By that time, however, Areva had already built its own desalination plant. In the meantime Areva’s leadership came to brief us that their mine, Trekkopje, was not progressing as it should because of a drop in uranium prices, and that we could use its desalination plant,” said Mutorwa.
Following consultations with Areva, Cabinet decided to find out if Areva would be interested in selling its desalination plan to the government.
According to Mutorwa the government’s negotiating team presented a report about the sale of Areva’s desalination plant to Cabinet at the beginning of the year and Cabinet in principle approved this report.
“Issues regarding the financial implications were however referred to the Cabinet’s committee of finance and on the basis of this committee’s report, Cabinet rejected the purchase of the desalination plant,” said Mutorwa.
According to him, the government will go ahead with its plan to build a desalination plant based on the public-private partnership model.
“Government has not declined to have anything to do with Areva. We will still get water from their desalination plant. It is just the purchasing of the plant which was rejected and we are still talking to them,” said Mutorwa.
The Erongo desalination plant can produce 20 million cubic metres of drinking water from seawater per year.
According to Mutorwa, Rössing Uranium has not yet submitted its application for a permit to the ministry to extract seawater for its planned desalination plant at the coast. The Ministry of Environment and Tourism recently granted the mine a clearance certificate.
“They must now apply for the permit. When this application reaches us, we will deal with it. We have not received it yet,” said Mutorwa.
JESSICA BOTES