Archived Industry News for Water Professionals

The NSW Office of Water has released the Performance Monitoring Report for NSW water utilities for 2009-10, providing an overview of the current status and future water supply and sewerage needs of NSW.

The New South Wales Government has announced it will review plans for the construction of the Byrrill Creek Dam that were scrapped by the previous state government, which favoured the expansion of the nearby Clarrie Hall Dam.

Melbourne has experienced the largest single weekly gain since September 2010 after posting a .9%, or 17 billion litres, over seven days.

Research into how variations in atmospheric and ocean variations contribute  to droughts and floods such as those recently experienced across south-east Australia and Queensland has been presented at a workshop hosted by the South Eastern Australian Climate Initiative (SEACI), a three-year, $9 million research program investigating the causes and impacts of climate variability and change throughout south-eastern Australia.

CSIRO has awarded a five-year research fellowship to Dr Wenju Cai to head up a new research team to conduct work into  better understanding the impact of climate change on Australia, with particular focus on the extremes of flooding and droughts around the country.

The Northern Territory Government has launched a new $15 million plan, Alice Water Smart, for the management of Alice Springs’ water supplies.

The NSW Office of Water has called for submissions on the proposed Water Management (General) Regulation 2011, which will be formed through repeal of the Water Management (General) Regulation 2004 and the Water Management (Water Supply Authorities) Regulation 2004.

The NSW Government has introduced an interim aquifer interference regulation to ensure that the State's aquifers are properly protected while a final aquifer interference policy is developed in consultation with the community.

The NSW Office of Water has released The NSW Water and Sewerage Strategic Business Planning Guidelines assist local water utilities to prepare and implement a strategic business plan and financial plan for water supply and sewerage in accordance with the Best-Practice Management Guidelines.

A new body, the Victorian Environmental Water Holder (VEWH), has been formed to manage Victoria’s environmental water entitlements.

The Murray-Darling Basin Authority, in conjunction with Goulburn-Murray Water, has announced that the refilling of Lake Mulwala has begun as of July 8.

The Federal Government will invest an additional $38 million in initiatives designed to improve the quality of water entering the Great Barrier Reef lagoon.

The South Australian Government has released its Stormwater Strategy, developed by the Stormwater Taskforce which was established in September last year.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has released pricing principles for price approvals and determinations made under the Water Charge (Infrastructure) Rules (WCIR).

Decreasing autumn and winter rainfall over southern Australia has been attributed to a 50-year decrease in the average intensity of storms in the region – a trend which is forecast to continue for another 50 years.

The eWater CRC has achieved a major breakthrough by allowing users to simulate the way human behaviour impacts household water use, with the release of Urban Developer, a new tool to support Integrated Urban Water Management (IUWM), after a successful beta testing period.


Traditional models of the urban water system require the user to specify demand as an input to the modelling system. Urban Developer offers a major step forward, with the incorporation of a demand estimation component – the Behavioural end-use stochastic simulator (BESS) – developed by Mark Thyer, a senior lecturer at the University of Adelaide, and colleagues.


The power of the BESS framework lies in its incorporation of algorithms which estimate an individual household’s use of common household water-using appliances. The framework provides probabilistic simulations of water consumption from individual end-uses such as shower, toilet and washing machine at the individual household scale at sub-daily time steps (hour or minute).


A further enhancement under development will model the way weather affects outdoor water use. The prototype model for outdoor water use, incorporating the behavioural impact of weather drivers on outdoor water use variability on the individual household, is currently being refined for inclusion in future releases.


“Urban water use is changing,” Thyer says. “Smart-metering and other detailed water use monitoring projects are continually improving our understanding of urban water use. With this in mind, BESS has been designed with a flexible and generic framework that enables it to be updated in the future. This provides Urban Developer users with the additional future benefit that, as knowledge of urban water use improves, the BESS framework can incorporate this new knowledge to provide improved estimates of urban water use and improved reliability of water savings from integrated urban water management design solutions.


“The benefit of the BESS framework is that it will enable users of Urban Developer to estimate the impact on demand at the household scale of changes in uptake of water efficient appliances and household occupancy,” Thyer says.

Research at the University of Melbourne and the Bureau of Meterology has overturned conventional ideas of ocean circulation.

An international science team led by Dr Trevor McDougall  of the CSIRO Wealth from Ocean Flagship has developed a new thermodynamic definition of seawater properties which has been accepted by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission.

Applications have been called for the third round of the Federal Government’s stormwater harvesting and reuse grants under the National Urban Water and Desalination Plan.

A letter signed by eight leading ecologists, all members of the Australian Academy of Science, has expressed concern that there is a lack of scientific input to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s  (MDBA) water plan.