Vic govt off hook on desal funding deal

June 1st, 2010

The consortium building Victoria’s first desalination plant has secured finance for the project, sparing the state government from the need to dip into public funds.

AquaSure, which is building the plant on Victoria’s southeast coast, has attracted enough investors to fund the $3.5 cheap air max shoes billion project.

The Victorian government had agreed to step in as a last resort if AquaSure could not raise sufficient funds.

Treasurer John Lenders announced on Thursday that step would not be necessary.

He said AquaSure had attracted more than 20 nike shox 2010 additional investors as of this week, raising $1.7 billion.

“This should silence those who said this project and other public private partnerships could not be built in the current cheap nike shox nz global economic nike air max shoes environment,” Mr Lenders said.

“In awarding the contract to build and operate nike shox shoes the desalination plant I provided a financial guarantee to ensure the project could go ahead despite the impact of the ongoing global financial crisis.”

Mr Lenders said AquaSure had indicated that without government backing the desalination plant would have struggled to get off the ground due to a tightening global credit market.

Construction of the plant, near Wonthaggi, started last month and is expected to be completed at the end of 2011.

It will generate 150 billion litres of drinking water a year.