Sustainability and environment programs

As a water utility, we face various challenges that impact on our operations, and we are continually looking at the most effective ways to realise opportunities to ensure our business is more sustainable.

Challenges impacting our services include:

• Increasing demand for water for community, culture and environmental purposes, as well as catchment use and development, as the population grows.
• Impacts of climate change and extreme weather events such as bushfires, floods and droughts on the environment, changing inflows to water storages, raw water quality and disruptions to energy and chemical supply chains.
• Nutrients and pathogens entering our source water catchments from modified landscapes, eroded soil, fertilisers, manure and septic systems.
• Fugitive greenhouse gas emissions from wastewater treatment plants to be mitigated to realise our net zero commitment.
• Improved circularity of our materials to minimise waste sent to landfill.
• Contamination from herbicides, non-domestic discharges and exposure from other hazardous materials entering the water and sewer networks, including contaminants of emerging concern like PFAS.
• Operation, maintenance and renewal of the water and wastewater networks while optimising sustainability and protecting heritage.

See links below on information on our sustainability initiatives.