Urban water – review of water supply planning for Australia’s non-metropolitan urban water utilities

Maintaining a reliable urban water supply to more than six million residents outside of Australia’s capital cities is important for the ongoing success and livelihood of those communities. They contribute significantly to the Australian economy and social fabric of the nation by supporting tourism, agriculture and mining industries, amongst others.

This report provides a snapshot of the status of long-term urban water supply planning being undertaken by Australia’s non-metropolitan urban water utilities. This report is based on a project conducted by the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and is funded by the Australian Research Council.

This review has emerged from concerns about the ability of water utilities in some regional urban centres to undertake adequate planning in the context of highly variable and changing supply and demand conditions. The current ongoing drought across most of the country has highlighted the vulnerability of many supply systems to unforeseen climate conditions, with Bendigo, Ballarat, Goulburn and Toowoomba being notable, but not isolated examples. Technically sound water supply planning should cater for the high variability of Australia’s climate and runoff.

There are certain elements within a water supply plan that one would expect to be evident if water supply planning is being adequately undertaken. These include consideration of population growth, climate variability, climate change and land use change, all of which have a major influence on future water supply availability and demand. This study postulates that there are two enabling steps that are necessary to create an environment in which prudent water supply planning will follow, namely:

• Institutional support – regulatory drivers, guidance, tools and datasets are available at a state, territory or national level for use by utilities in water supply planning; and
• Technical rigour – knowledge of the essential technical components of urban water supply planning.

This report reviews long-term urban water supply planning in each state and territory against these two elements. The degree of institutional support was assessed against available State policies, regulations, legislation and guidelines, whilst the degree of technical rigour was assessed with reference to an example plan sourced from each state or territory.

In some parts of Australia significant aspects of one or both of these two elements of institutional support and technical rigour for water supply planning were largely absent. This situation must be remedied if urban water supplies are to be adequately maintained in the face of uncertainties about future water availability and demand.

In states with local water utilities, financial incentives (subsidies) for completion of water supply plans in New South Wales and Queensland were less effective in ensuring completion of plans in accordance with state guidelines than regulation in Victoria. Only 29% of water utilities in New South Wales had commenced their long-term water supply plan by July 2005, which was more than two years after an example plan was made available by the State Government.

An example long-term urban water supply plan in areas outside of capital cities could be readily located in every state or territory except Tasmania, where no formal plan was able to be located. The Tasmanian Government called for tenders for a long-term water supply plan for the town of Bicheno in early 2007, indicating that an example plan is likely to be available in late 2007. In those states or territories where a good support framework had been established for water supply planners, evidence of at least one high quality non-metropolitan urban water supply plan was found.

Most states and territories have a policy, regulatory or legislative framework for managing water resource availability from an individual resource, but there is lack of consideration of how urban water utilities fit into this framework. Assigning resources from a single source for water resource planning, which has been a prime focus of the National Water Initiative, is a separate decision making process from selecting resources from a variety of sources for urban water supply planning. This distinction is not universally acknowledged across Australia and there is no formal requirement for urban water utilities in South Australia, Tasmania, Western Australia and the Northern Territory to undertake long-term urban water supply planning. Current projects to review and reform aspects of water management and regulation in Western Australia and Tasmania present an opportunity to create a regulatory driver in these states. Ideally, water supply planning should also be linked with energy and land use planning decisions in an integrated manner.