Sustainability Report 2006/07Overview
Recycled water is a valuable resource and a key tool in achieving our vision of a sustainable water future. Use of recycled water improves the sustainability of our water supplies by conserving drinking water, river water and groundwater. It protects the environment by reducing discharges of treated effluent to our bays and oceans, and frees up water for the environment and economic growth.
However, we face significant challenges to meet increasing demand for recycled water and the need to provide a product suitable for a variety of end uses. Recycled water can be used for irrigating grazing land and crops, in horticulture, industrial processes, toilet flushing and garden watering in residential dual pipe schemes, and to keep sports grounds and open spaces green.
Melbourne Water and the retail water businesses are working towards the Government’s targets of 20% recycling by 2010 and additional substitution of 6200 million litres of recycled water for drinking water by 2015, increasing to 10,000 million litres by 2030.
We worked together with the retail water businesses to investigate a number of potential recycling projects to help meet these targets and produce a Metropolitan Reuse and Recycling Plan. This plan summarises the priority projects to be included in the next Water Plan for Melbourne, as required by the Victorian Government. Further investigation into the technical details and cost of these potential projects will continue in the coming years.
Recycled water supplied this year
Together with the retail water businesses, we supplied 66,742 million litres of recycled water in metropolitan Melbourne this year. This equates to 23.2% of the sewage treated in Melbourne, exceeding the Government’s water recycling target of 20% by 2010. Melbourne Water contributed 61,984 million litres of recycled water to this total, which equates to 21.5 percentage points of the 23.2%.
Demand was slightly higher than last year mainly as a result of the continuing drought and water restrictions, and reduced availability of river and groundwater supplies west of Melbourne.
Melbourne Water also used 15,930 million litres of recycled water for conservation and management of the biodiversity values of the Ramsar-listed habitat at the Western Treatment Plant.
