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Water
The Water Campaign
The City of Perth is a member of the Water Campaign – an international program to reduce water consumption and improve local water quality. The Water Campaign is an ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability program (see link at right), supported by the Department of Water (see link at right) in Western Australia.
On 27 January 2004 the Council endorsed the City of Perth’s participation in the Water Campaign. Since joining the Water Campaign the City has been formally recognised as having completed the following Water Campaign milestones:-
- Milestone 1: Calculation of total water consumption in the City’s corporate operations and services, and calculation of total water use in the community
- Milestone 2 Corporate:
- Establishment a 20% reduction target for water consumed in the City’s operations and services
- Establishment of a target to improve the City’s impact on local water quality, through our corporate operations and services, by achieving 55 points of corporate water quality actions by 2011/12 - Milestone 3 Corporate: The development of a Corporate Water Strategy that outlines an action plan on how to achieve the goals set out by Milestone 2.
- Milestone 4 Corporate: The implementation of the actions outlined in Corporate Water Strategy and to reach 20% of the targets.
- Milestone 5 Corporate: The re-inventory of water consumption and quality and review of progress towards the targets.
Scheme Water used by the City of Perth – Sector breakdown
In 2007/2008 the City of Perth used 111,942kL of scheme water in our corporate operations and services.
The City has reduced its use of scheme water by 43%, from the 2001/2002 baseline of 166,537kL. This has been achieved through a range of water efficiency measures, and by converting from scheme to groundwater for the irrigation of a number of open spaces, parks and gardens.
The City’s actions to reduce water consumption and improve local water quality include:
- the redevelopment of Point Fraser, a stretch of the Swan River foreshore, to include a wetland to treat stormwater from the urban catchment, and vegetated swales to infiltrate and treat local stormwater runoff (see link at right)
- the installation of dual flush toilets and water saving shower heads in Council Housetrial waterless urinals in Council House
- the implementation of metering and monthly monitoring of the City’s use of groundwater via our bores, and
- the planting of waterwise vegetation and the implementation of an automated irrigation system. This replaced the use of overhead water canons and reduced the City’s use of groundwater for irrigation on Ozone Reserve.
Scheme Water used by our Community
Commercial Office Buildings
Recently the City of Perth partnered with the Water Corporation to investigate water consumption in commercial offices. Commercial offices were targeted as they consumed approximately 35% of all scheme water supplied to business customers in the city, equating to approximately 1.8 billion litres of water or 720 Olympic swimming pools.
The outcome of this partnership has been the production of a report 'Water Efficiency - Perth Commercial Office Buildings', that outlines water benchmarks for the industry, a typical water balance for buildings and recommendations for saving water.
Water restrictions
Western Australia now has rostered watering days for use of garden sprinklers. Both scheme water and bore water users must adhere to rosters.
To find out your rostered watering days see the Water Corporation website (see link at right).
Waterwise Councils Program
The City of Perth was recognised as one of the first Waterwise Councils in Western Australia on 3 June 2009. This program is run by the Water Corporation and the Department of Water, with assistance from the ICLEI Water Campaign.
This program assists the City to adhere to the Governments water efficiency measures, and to be proactive in implementing measures to improve water management principles.
In order to ensure constant improvement in water efficiency and quality, and maintain its Waterwise status, the City, through its Corporate Water Strategy strives for continuous improvement
Claisebrook Lake – Water Quality Review
The City of Perth has engaged GHD, a leading environmental consulting group, to analyse, investigate and propose an alternate treatment as well as operational methods for the existing stormwater retention basin at Claisebrook Lake in East Perth.
Since the lake was constructed in the mid 1990’s there have been a number of issues such as;
- Prolific aquatic weed growth detracting from the lake’s amenity and aesthetic value;
- Turbidity of the water in the lake, resulting in loss of visual appeal;
- Water temperatures in the lake which can be relatively high and as a result may contribute to biological and aquatic weed growth;
- A short retention period particularly during the summer months has not allowed biological measures to take place which have been previously explored to achieve an acceptable result.
The initial phase of the project will involve collection and collation of water quality data for the site over a 12 month period commencing 25 July 2012. Water Samples will be collected from a number of locations including the Claisebrook drain.
Water samples will undergo a series of tests in order to establish the chemical and biological make up of the individual water samples to determine the possible and primary causes of the various lake issues. These tests will include but are not limited to dissolved metals, turbidity, nutrients, iron and bacteria.
View the progressive updates:
For more information please contact City of Perth, Parks and Landscapes Unit on 9461 3365.