They have been deemed too expensive and would therefore impose a substantial additional burden on water users.

The projects were guaranteed to deliver a known quantity of water every year for a calculated capital cost.

By contrast the minister and Premier John Brumby are happy to race ahead with the construction of the north-south pipeline to deliver an unknown annual volume of water without even completing a business case.

The minister has been asked several times how much it is going to cost to get a megalitre of water through the pipe, and he has failed to answer the question on every occasion.

If he answers the question based on getting only one-third of the savings, then the cost to urban water users will be shown to be huge.

If he answers with a lower cost per megalitre it will indicate to irrigators that he intends to take the full 75 gigalitres every year.

NEIL PANKHURST,

Tongala