Our Water Our Future

Melbourne Water and our alliance partners are working with the Victorian Government, the retail water businesses, the community and other stakeholders to deliver a major capital works program to secure our water supply for the future, including water sources that do not depend on rainfall.

Our Water Our Future – The Next Stage of the Government’s Water Plan sets out a $4.9 billion infrastructure program to boost Victoria’s water supplies, and prepare for the possibility that the record low inflows to reservoirs may continue.

Major projects include:

A desalination plant for Melbourne near Wonthaggi
Modernising of Victoria’s Food Bowl irrigation system to capture lost water for farms, the environment and Melbourne
Expansion of Victoria’s water grid, including the Sugarloaf Pipeline, to transfer up to 75,000 million litres of water a year from the Goulburn River to Melbourne
Reconnecting Tarago Reservoir to Melbourne’s water supply system
Upgrading Melbourne’s Eastern Treatment Plant to provide 135,000 million litres of recycled water
Supporting the retail water businesses to deliver water conservation programs for homes and industry.

The new projects will increase the total supply for Melbourne by 240,000 million litres a year by 2011 – about half of our current annual water use.

A collaborative approach

To deliver this significantly expanded capital program, Melbourne Water has implemented alliance partnering – a collaborative style of engaging project partners that harnesses a team approach and reduces capital risks in a tight labour market.

Over the next five years, four program alliances will handle numerous water asset creation and maintenance projects.

Sugarloaf Pipeline

Melbourne Water is responsible for funding and constructing the $750 million Sugarloaf Pipeline project linking the Goulburn River near Yea to the Sugarloaf Reservoir in Melbourne’s north-east. The project is being constructed by an alliance.

We are also contributing $300 million towards the Government’s $1 billion Food Bowl Modernisation project, which will save about 225,000 million litres of water through improvements to irrigation infrastructure across the Goulburn and Murray river systems. Water savings will be shared equally between irrigators, Melbourne and the environment.

The pipeline project involves:

Constructing a 70-kilometre pipeline from the Goulburn River to Sugarloaf Reservoir
Building two pumping stations near Yea and a balancing water storage facility
Upgrading the Winneke water treatment plant
Upgrading the water distribution network to increase the area supplied from Sugarloaf Reservoir
Investigating hydro-electricity generation options on the downstream end of the pipeline.

In April, we began working with our alliance partners on planning, environmental assessments, engineering designs, community and landowner consultation, project management and construction.

The alliance completed survey works along preferred pipeline corridors, including core drilling works and approved requirements for the first stage of the Winneke upgrade.

We also contacted property owners and explained whether they would be affected, and announced a $5 million grants program to provide long-term social benefits to communities along the preferred pipeline corridor.

Reconnecting Tarago

Reconnection of the Tarago Reservoir to Melbourne and Westernport region water supplies is the first major water supply project to be delivered under the Government’s Next Stage Water Plan.

The Tarago Project aims to ensure the sustainability of the Tarago Reservoir catchment and its waterways, increase the security of local and regional water supplies, and provide community benefits.

Work on the Tarago treatment plant began in November. It is located in Drouin West, nine kilometres south-west of the reservoir on the route of the existing Tarago-Westernport Pipeline, and is scheduled for completion in mid-2009.

We have worked closely with the Baw Baw Shire Council on the project, and during 2007/08 made improvements to the town planning provisions in the Tarago catchment. A planning scheme amendment reduces risk of water supply contamination from sewage and septic sources, and provides clear strategic and statutory direction for land use and rural activity within the Tarago catchment.

Desalination plant

The Our Water Our Future – Next Stage of the Government’s Water Plan includes the $3.1 billion desalination plant to be constructed near Wonthaggi, which is being managed by the Victorian Government as a public-private partnership.

The desalination plant will deliver 150,000 million litres of water a year to Melbourne, Geelong, South Gippsland and Westernport. It will be capable of providing about one- third of Melbourne’s annual water supply from a source that is independent of rainfall.

The project will include an 85-kilometre underground pipeline to connect the plant to a transfer main at Berwick and then to Cardinia Reservoir.

To prepare for the integration of the desalination plant into our water supply system, we undertook investigations into water quality, operational requirements, issues associated with securing entitlements to the water, resource and yield planning, network augmentation, use of renewable energy and other sustainability features.

Conserving our precious resource

In the face of prolonged severe drought, Melburnians are saving water at record levels. Although Melbourne has one million more people today than in the early 1980s, we were able to cut water consumption to levels last seen during the Ash Wednesday summer of 1982/83.

Last summer Melbourne used about 102,000 million litres compared with 111,800 million litres the previous summer – a reduction of 9%, and 22% lower than the average of the past five years.

Despite these savings, Melbourne Water and the retail water businesses are working collaboratively to ensure secure water supplies for the future and to meet the Government’s goal to reduce water consumption by 30% by 2015 compared with the 1990s.

This year, we developed the Melbourne Joint Water Conservation Plan. The plan aims to meet the water conservation actions and targets set out in the Victorian Government’s Central Region Sustainable Water Strategy (October 2006) and the supporting Water Supply-Demand Strategy for Melbourne (October 2006) for the period 2007 to 2015.

Under the plan, the water authorities have committed to the following targets:

30% reduction in per capita drinking water consumption by 2015 to 296 litres per person per day, from the 1990s average
30% reduction in per capita residential water consumption by 2015 to 174 litres per person per day, from the 1990s average
8000 million litre saving by 2015 in the non-residential sector.

Melbourne Water and the retail water businesses also continued to support the Victorian Government’s Our Water Our Future behavioural change campaign. This year Melbourne Water contributed $1.1 million to the campaign, which is managed by the Department of Sustainability and Environment on behalf of the metropolitan water authorities.

This year the campaign focused on promoting Stage 3a water restrictions through the media; continuing the Water Saver Garden Centre program, which provides education and practical advice to customers on developing and maintaining water-efficient gardens through accredited garden centres; and the Water Learn it Live it! schools program, which educates and motivates young people to save water.

Detecting and fixing leaks

Melbourne Water invested $4.5 million this year to detect and repair leaks as quickly as possible, focusing particular attention on aqueducts. Upgrades and maintenance works on our aqueducts will save a total of about 500 million litres of water a year.

A water-based spray-on liner was applied to 450 metres of the Coranderrk Aqueduct, which delivers drinking water to Silvan Reservoir. Comprehensive preparation and bypass arrangements were required to enable these works to be undertaken.

Four kilometres of the downstream section of Maroondah Aqueduct were relined in March, complementing works the previous March. Melbourne Water teams also rebuilt and repaired the foundation of bluestone pitchers from which the Wallaby/Silver Aqueduct was built more than 100 years ago.

The six-strong pipe repair team fixed 180 leaks in Melbourne Water pipework, with two crews operating at times during the year. This year, we also trialled new correlation (acoustic) technology and a water balancing process.

Melbourne Water’s leakage and loss rate is about 1%.

Sustainability Report 2006/07