DESALINATION PLANT LIKELY TO BE BUILT IN VICTORIA.

Publication: AsiaPulse News

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COPYRIGHT 2007 Asia Pulse Pty Ltd

MELBOURNE, June 22 Asia Pulse - Twenty years ago no one would have believed we would be buying it in bottles, let alone drinking it from the ocean.

Water is now so scarce Victoria is resorting to desperate measures.

Desalination may seem like a pipedream, but for a sunburnt country girt by sea it's a potential saviour in plentiful supply.

That's the hope in the once verdant garden state as record drought plunges Melbourne's reservoirs below 29 per cent capacity.

And so it is that the only state holding out on the federal government's $A10 billion ($US8.46 billion) plan to save the Murray-Darling Basin is now leading the four-member jurisdictions in a radical plan to purify sea water for human consumption.

A desalination plant is the centrepiece of an unprecedented .9 billion drought busting package, announced this week as the Victorian government moves to quench the thirst of an ever expanding population.

The plant will be...

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