Protest looms over power project bills

A group of Karratha residents are planning to protest outside City Hall on Saturday over bills for the Pilbara Underground Power Project.

Residents are being hit with bills of up to $3468 per household relating to the PUPP, which they have to pay by the end of the month or in instalments with interest over a four-year period.

Karratha resident Dani Hage is the protest organiser and has also started a petition against the manner in which ratepayers were being billed.

"Hitting us all in a lump sum with one month to pay with our rates and our power bill seems a little unfair, and then having to pay interest on top of that, particularly seeing as a lot of people don't even have (underground power) yet," she said.

"The other concerning part is the small businesses and the LIA getting slogged."

Ms Hage also said the protesters were looking to see if the City could postpone payments for three months.

"There are a lot of people with discrepancies in their payments," she said.

The City has been bombarded with more than 700 calls to their customer service team about the project since billing figures were released.

But City chief executive Chris Adams said they envisaged most people would be able to make the payments through their proposed scheme.

"We are encouraging people who don't think they will be able to pay the charge to contact us so we can work with them to develop a tailored plan to suit their circumstances," he said.

Mr Adams said the council had considered a range of payment options to split the cost evenly and charging was based on the gross rental value of properties.

"Given this is a power project, (the) council decided that a payment model based on the power capacity of each property was the fairest way of attributing the charge," he said.

The project, run by Horizon Power, was originally costed at $130 million, with the City due to pay 25 per cent of that cost, working out to about $3300 per household.

But in August 2012, Horizon revealed there had been a $100 million blowout and this resulted in a revised total to be contributed by the City of $34.55 million.

A Horizon spokeswoman said their original costings were based on the best information available at the time.

"What wasn't accounted for in the business plan was the significant cost inflation experienced in the region due to the mining boom, which resulted in significantly increased labour and accommodation costs," she said.

"This escalation doubled the cost per lot in 2009-11."

She also said Horizon did not anticipate further cost blowouts.

"Contractors are currently continuing to remove poles in areas where the power has been undergrounded in phase one of the project," she said.

"A request for tender is expected to be advertised externally towards the end of August to select contractor/s to complete the next phase of the project, which will commence in the Karratha Light Industrial Area and Bulgarra."