Current August 2016 by australianwater

urrent C

THE AUSTRALIAN WATER ASSOCIATION MAGAZINE AUGUST 2016

Volume 1 No 3

CASH FLOW HOW ALTERNATIVE FINANCE MODELS CAN RESHAPE THE WAY PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE IS FUNDED.

Fairer sector: gender diversity in water

The best of water-sensitive urban development

Spotlight on Australian Water Award winners

Peter Walsh Major Projects Leader - Comdain â&#x20AC;¢ â&#x20AC;¢ â&#x20AC;¢

Hattah Lakes Environmental Flows Project FutureFlow Irrigation Modernisation Project GMW Connections Project - Main Contractor (TransCom JV)

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Current CO N T EN TS

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T H E AU ST R A L I A N WAT E R A S S O C I AT I O N M AG A Z I N E

FEATURES

48 500 tonnes of wet wipes are removed from our sewers each year.

14 30 36 73

COVER STORY Growing pressures are opening up new opportunities for involvement in financing infrastructure but the way ahead is far from straightforward.

BEST ON SHOW The best water projects and brightest water professionals were thrust on the national stage at Ozwater’16. Here’s why.

FROZEN CEILING The water sector has been striving to increase gender equality in recent years but how much progress has been made?

SENSITIVE TOUCH Three Australian developments are taking a suburb-wide approach to the latest in water-sensitive urban development principles.

PREVENTING A WIPE-OUT How Sydney Water used data and humour to help keep wet wipes from clogging their sewer system.

That’s the weight of 60 T-Rex. Keep wipes out of the pipes

Learn more at sydneywatertalk.com.au/wet-wipes

Only 6% of the available recycled water from Melbourne’s water treatment plants is being used for agriculture currently.

SW68 08/15

SWC0364 841x594 A1 Posters Dino.indd 1

29/10/2015 6:09 pm

P44 University of Melbourne Research Fellow Rachel Carey Australia, in opportunities for innovation in irrigation.

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Current CO N T EN TS

T H E AUST R A L I A N WAT ER ASSO C I AT I O N M AG A Z I N E

NEWS

TECHNICAL

CEO welcome

From the President’s desk

Association news

Australian Water Award winners

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INDUSTRY 30

Robert Vertessy

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Bureau of Meteorology’s

Mentoring spotlight Gender diversity in water

Integrated water cycle management Industrial remediation Stormwater management Water’s role in war Water quality and property values Catchment management Passive multi-barriers and runoff Water-sensitive urban design Customer engagement Redesigning customer experiences Wastewater management

Water-sensitive urban development Floating solar power Innovation in irrigation Alternative infrastructure financing National Water Account

EVENTS 82 85 86

Association events calendar NSW and QLD QWater Conference Social pages

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Current

T H E AUST R A L I A N WAT E R ASSO C I AT I O N M AG A Z I N E

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Jonathan McKeown Email: jmckeown@awa.asn.au Marketing Manager: Ashleigh James Email: ajames@awa.asn.au TECHNICAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE: Frank R Bishop (Chair); Chris Davis, Australian Water Association; Dr Andrew Bath, Water Corporation; Michael Chapman, GHD; Dr Dharma Dharmabalan, TasWater; Wilf Finn, WaterNSW; Robert Ford (rtd), Central Highlands Water; Ted Gardner (rtd); Antony Gibson, IXOM; Dr David Halliwell, Deakin University; Dr Lionel Ho, AWQC, SA Water; Des Lord, University of Western Australia; Dr Robbert van Oorschot, GHD; John Poon, CH2M; David Power, BECA Consultants; Dr lan Prosser, Bureau of Meteorology; Dr Ashok Sharma, Victoria University; Diane Wiesner, Science Plus Consulting Group. Water e-Journal Editor: Anne Lawton Email: journal@awa.asn.au

Current is the ofﬁcial quarterly magazine for members of the Australian Water Association. 655 Paciﬁc Highway, St Leonards, Sydney, NSW 2065 Phone: (02) 9436 0055 Email: info@awa.asn.au

369a Darling St, Balmain, Sydney, NSW 2041 Managing Editor: James Chalmers Email: james@mahlabmedia.com.au Deputy Editor: Cecilia Harris Email: cecilia@mahlabmedia.com.au Graphic Design: Matt Caulﬁeld, Gary Humphrys, Katherine Gennusa Account Manager: Stuart Singleton Email: stuart@mahlabmedia.com.au Advertising Manager: Samantha Hogben Email: sam@mahlabmedia.com.au

EDITORIAL SUBMISSIONS: Acceptance of editorial submissions is at the discretion of the editors and editorial board. TECHNICAL PAPERS: Submissions should be 3000–4000 words long and accompanied by relevant graphics, tables and images. To submit a paper or for more detailed submission guidelines, please email journal@awa.asn.au NEWS AND FEATURES: News tips, submissions and press releases should be sent to cecilia@mahlabmedia.com.au COPYRIGHT: Current is subject to copyright and may not be reproduced in any format without the written permission of AWA. Email cecilia@mahlabmedia.com.au DISCLAIMER: The Association assumes no responsibility for opinions or statements of fact expressed by contributors or advertisers. Mention of particular brands, products or processes does not constitute an endorsement.

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From the CEO

RENEWED FOCUS ON SECURITY GOALS FOR WATER’S FUTURE Held in Melbourne during May, Ozwater’16 received overwhelmingly positive feedback from members and participants. We achieved record attendance for both the conference program and the exhibition. The attendance survey evidenced high approval ratings for the keynote presenters, technical presentations, workshops and posters. Our annual Awards Gala Dinner hosted 950 people who gave our award winners a worthy acclamation for their achievements. Many thanks to the members who participated in the program and special thanks are extended to the Ozwater’16 Organising Committee and to our host, the Victorian Branch. Work has already commenced for Ozwater’17, which is to be held in Sydney. The Federal election returned the Turnbull Government with a significantly reduced parliamentary majority. Reforms seeking to better align the economy with changing markets will remain a fractious process, likely subject to increased cross-bench negotiations. This may further complicate water policy work at a national level. During the election campaign, the Association released a discussion paper titled Water Security for All Australians. The paper reinforces the role that water plays as an economic driver for Australia’s future prosperity and the need to raise the importance of water security. The paper articulates the need for long-term planning and investment, and a ‘whole of government’ approach to the management of future water requirements. I encourage members to read the paper and foster discussion on the issues raised. As part of this important advocacy work, the Association will be developing a scorecard on the varying levels of water security across the country. This scorecard will reflect the work of our State, Territory and Commonwealth Governments and their various agencies and departments, our economic, health and environmental regulators, and our water utilities. The scorecard will be launched at Ozwater’17 next May. The Australian Water Community Survey was launched in July and will remain open until mid-August. The survey has two streams of questions: one for consumers and one for people within the water industry. The Association is working with ARUP on this project and the findings will be released in October at the IWA World Water Congress in Brisbane. Meanwhile, a number of our branches have recently undergone elections. It’s been exciting to see the increase in members putting themselves forward for nomination. Candidate statements are on the Association website and make for inspiring reading. I would like to thank our members who are moving on from our branch committees for their service to the organisation, and for supporting our State Managers so well. I look forward to meeting with new committee members over the coming months. Finally, I want to pay tribute to Frank Bishop who has stepped down from chairing our Editorial Committee for the Water e-Journal, a role he has delivered with distinction since 1981. Frank will be remaining on the Committee, but his contribution to the Association over more than 40 years is a record that is unlikely to be matched. Frank’s work deserves special acknowledgement and the gratitude of all our members. We will be profiling the contributions that Frank has made to the Association in the next edition of Current.

REFORMS SEEKING TO BETTER ALIGN THE ECONOMY WITH CHANGING MARKETS WILL REMAIN A FRACTIOUS PROCESS.

Jonathan McKeown Australian Water Association Chief Executive

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ZINFRA. BUILDING REPUTATIONS

Mike Stokes Renewals and Backlog – Program Manager South East Water “The Zinfra team working on South East Water’s sewerage program on the Mornington Peninsula has been excellent. Together we are on track to successfully deliver 135km of our 230km sewerage services project to 16,500 properties in 18 months. This is one of Australia’s largest projects of this type to be completed in such an accelerated timeframe. Working with Zinfra has made delivery of this project easy. The members of the team have remained consistent for the project, making relationships effortless to manage, and they bring extensive experience with large scale, fast-moving pipeline projects to the table.”

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From the president’s desk

RISING TO FUTURE CHALLENGES WITH HELP FROM DIVERSITY Ozwater’16 in Melbourne was one of the best that I’ve had the privilege to attend. Atmosphere, themes, participation – you name it, Ozwater’16 had it. Delegates were challenged on many fronts, from where Australia stood in the delivery of safe and secure water, to the increasing influence the younger generation will have, to a novel alternative funding option for major infrastructure, and an increasing focus on understanding customers and their desires. I congratulate all involved, as I believe this was an outstanding example of what your Association is all about – the provision of information and the latest trends and avenues to network. It surely couldn’t get much better. While we were very pleased with the number of attendees based on the budget we had set ourselves, participation still represented a relatively small portion of our membership base. Wouldn’t it be great to get in excess of 75% of our members seeing Ozwater as a must-attend event? Allow me to dream. Let me now move to the topic of inclusiveness in the work place. By this I mean more than gender diversity or Aboriginal employment; I mean accepting people for who they are and what they can bring to the business. We were certainly challenged to look at this in regards to the younger generation through one of our keynote speakers at Ozwater’16, Holly Ransom. In many respects, this means challenging our norms. I recently attended a lecture where it was argued that our actions set the standard we accept. The example given related to girls being discouraged from doing ‘hard’ maths at school, as it wasn’t considered necessary to get on in life. This was often reinforced by women in their families who hadn’t needed to do hard maths to succeed in life. It wasn’t the cool thing to do. This lead to the perception that hard maths was beyond women. Even the word ‘hard’ reinforced the norm. This potentially excludes women from many opportunities. I’m sure you’ll have many other examples of this nature, and we hear time and again about people being offended by the comments or actions of others. In many circumstances, this is as a result of not knowing the people around you, what they stand for and how your actions impact them, and what they can contribute if we are really open. Our workplaces are generally highly diverse with people from various backgrounds working together, but do we really know enough about them to gain the advantages of their experiences? How often do we take the opportunity to get to know the people who work around us, thus improving our work place and performance as a result? Like many things in life, reality is what we define it to be rather than what it can be. I believe that diversity provides significant opportunity for our businesses. My challenge to us all is to get to know our colleagues to the point where we can ensure they are able to participate fully in work activities, rather than feel under threat due to unfounded perceptions or being unappreciated. Set yourself the challenge of never letting an inappropriate activity go unchallenged and set new norms for a more inclusive and much more successful industry.

HOW OFTEN DO WE TAKE THE OPPERTUNITY TO GET TO KNOW THE PEOPLE WHO WORK AROUND US, THUS IMPROVING OUR WORK PLACE AND PERFORMANCE AS A RESULT?

Peter Moore Australian Water Association President

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Association news

WATER SECURITY

MEASUREMENT ON THE CARDS NEW ADVOCACY PLATFORM TO HELP ENGAGE COMMUNITIES

THE SCORECARD WILL SHINE A LIGHT ON WATER POLICY THAT IS WORKING WELL AND POLICY THAT IS NOT SO EFFECTIVE, TO HELP SECURE OUR WATER FUTURE. CORRECTION CURRENT, MAY 2016 The Australian Water Association acknowledges the May edition of Current included information provided by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) about Tasmania’s median water prices that was incorrect. The ABS reviewed ﬁgures presented in Water Account 2013-14, ﬁnding that Tasmania’s average per kiloliter price paid by households is in fact $2.65, not $3.52 as originally published.

The Australian Water Association’s members have said that water security for all Australians is their number one priority. To align with this, the Association has launched an advocacy platform aimed at raising the importance of water security among the community and government, with plans to create a national water security scorecard, which will be launched at Ozwater’17. The scorecard will shine a light on water policy that is working well and policy that is not so effective, to help secure our water future. Entitled Water Security for All Australians, the platform is designed to start a discussion with governments at all levels about how our community can gain conﬁdence that our water requirements are secure. It will also encourage innovative ideas and promote evidence-based policy. In July, the Association released a discussion paper which deﬁnes what water security means, acknowledges the work already being done around Australia to promote water security, and offers a summary of policies from the major parties. Created with the insight of industry experts and partners, the scorecard will assess water security levels across Australia with regard for government policies and investment plans. It will compare current security with community expectations. To develop the scorecard, the Association will draw on its annual community survey and other publicly available information from government departments, economic and environmental regulators, water utilities, and expert agencies such as the Bureau of Meteorology, the CSIRO, Infrastructure Australia and the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Water Security for all Australians evolved from the Association members’ priorities which include: increasing community awareness of water management, ensuring safe drinking water quality in regional and remote areas, enhancing Australia’s ability to lead in water innovation and a whole-government approach to water management. The Association invites industry and community, including utilities and businesses, to offer input and support in the development of the scorecard and advocacy platform. For more information, contact Ashleigh James, Senior Policy Analyst, at ajames@awa.asn.au.

AUSTRALIAN WATER SURVEY The Australian Water Association’s Australian Water Survey 2016 was launched in July with the nation-wide study aimed at gaining insight into public perception of water in Australia. The survey closes August 12 and both stakeholders and community are encouraged to take part. Divergent from years past, the 2016 survey combines both the previous State of the Water Sector Survey and the Consumer Outlook into one, aiming to uncover data that is directly comparable, while also streamlining the collection process. Aside from shaping education initiatives and advocacy campaigns, the 2016 survey will also play a large role in informing the Association’s Water Security for All Australians scorecard. To take the survey, visit www.australianwatersurvey.com.au

AWARD NOMINATIONS NOW OPEN Nomination for the Australian Water Association’s Water Awards are now open, with state and territory finalists in the running to take out the Australian Water Award national title at Ozwater’17. Australian water professionals can be nominated under a range of categories, including individual, organisational and student awards. To nominate an Australian water professional in your state or territory, visit bit. ly/297s6TO

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ZINFRA. BUILDING REPUTATIONS

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From the president’s desk

HOW OFTEN DO WE TAKE THE OPPERTUNITY TO GET TO KNOW THE PEOPLE WHO WORK AROUND US, THUS IMPROVING OUR WORK PLACE AND PERFORMANCE AS A RESULT?

Peter Moore Australian Water Association President

www.awa.asn.au

PRODUCTS. SUPPORT. EXPERTISE.

Contact a Hach office near you: www.au.hach.com | 1300 887 735

Association news

WATER SECURITY

MEASUREMENT ON THE CARDS NEW ADVOCACY PLATFORM TO HELP ENGAGE COMMUNITIES

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Australian Water Awards

LEADING WATER’S INNOVATORS

WATER PROFESSIONAL OF THE YEAR This year’s Australian Water Association Water Professional of the Year has been lauded for his outstanding contribution to Australia’s water sector, but Osmoflo Director and co-founder MARC FABIG said it’s the global reach of his team’s work that really keeps him motivated. “Osmoflo delivers water projects using innovative Australian technology on a global scale. The company has developed a host of new technologies in-house that can be applied globally,” Fabig said. “Seeing Osmoflo complete large-scale projects that provide communities with water brings both the company and myself a lot of satisfaction. Whether that community is Broken Hill in New South Wales or Muscat, located in Oman in the Middle East, we feel great pride that we have been able to contribute in a meaningful way.” Osmoflo delivered engineering, procurement, supply and construction of a seawater reverse osmosis plant to ACWA Power Barka. Located 60km north west of Muscat, the plant will service the city and surrounds. “The Barka project stands out for me on a personal level. Delivering a project that will provide a water source to 250,000 people in Oman, and in such a short time frame, was extremely challenging but also rewarding,” he said. Fabig said that it is the power and reach of innovative technology that excites him about the water industry’s future, with the opportunities to grow and expand increasing more each year. “The water industry is an industry of the future, it is not an industry that will come and go with disruptive changes,” he said. “The exciting thing for me is the technological developments possible in the industry. Australian companies can and will continue to innovate with world-class developments.” And Osmoflo is the perfect example of growth through innovation. Having launched the company in

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1991 with his wife, Annie, Fabig now leads a team responsible for more than 100 long-term operation and maintenance agreements worldwide. “Starting from a small two-person Australian company, we’ve developed into a significant global force, having delivered more than 450 projects, with an annual turnover in excess of $100 million,” he said. “The fact is this was achieved with a very talented and hardworking team, my good fortune and privilege was just to be able to lead the team.” With many Australian water businesses looking to expand their market reach, Fabig said companies should try not to limit themselves in technological application. “There are so many areas of technology that can benefit the water industry, improving quality, service level and reducing cost, sometimes with relative simplicity and taking advantage of technologies developed in other fields,” he said. And regarding his own success? Fabig puts it down to keeping a steady eye on innovation, while also supporting the life-blood of his business: people. “My advice would be to invest in innovation and your people. The water industry is constantly changing, so it’s important to be at the head of the pack and not get left behind,” he said. “Success of a business hinges on its people; ensure you recruit the best and continue to invest in development of those people.”

THE WATER INDUSTRY IS AN INDUSTRY OF THE FUTURE, IT IS NOT AN INDUSTRY THAT WILL COME AND GO WITH DISRUPTIVE CHANGES. OSMOFLO DIRECTOR AND CO-FOUNDER MARK FABIG

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WHILE AUSTRALIA HAS ALWAYS BEEN A GLOBAL LEADER IN WATER TECHNOLOGY, THE WINNER OF THE WATER PROFESSIONAL OF THE YEAR TITLE ADDS ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF TOP-NOTCH LEADERSHIP FOR AUSSIE WATER COMPANIES TO MEASURE THEMSELVES BY.

YOUNG WATER PROFESSIONAL OF THE YEAR For KATHRYN SILVESTER, success in the water industry is about far more than simply excelling at her job. At Ozwater’16 in May, the Sydney Water wastewater specialist was named 2016’s finest young water professional, an honour she puts down to proactively getting involved in the industry. “I probably put my hand up to volunteer for too many things,” Silvester said. “But I just gain so much from working with people who are passionate. I draw energy from it. I am able to meet some incredible people and achieve amazing things with them. “I put a lot in, but I get so much out as well.” This year’s Young Water Professional of the Year sits on the International Water Association’s Australia Committee, and IWA’s Strategic Council, involving herself as member of their Sustainable Development Goals working group. Silvester was chair of the YWP National Conference, sits on the Australian Water Association’s National and NSW YWP committees, is a member of the AWA’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene committee and also volunteers her time with Engineers Without Borders, and WaterAid. Regarding her line of work, Silvester said wastewater is a more engaging field to be working in than many might think. “We really need to change the mindset around wastewater treatment plants. They’re a place for resource recovery,” she said. “We can recover finite elements and nutrients, and really use them. Waste is a really exciting place to be working. With her reputation for industry involvement, it comes as no surprise that Silvester’s motivation for working with wastewater comes from working among like-minded professionals. “It’s really fantastic to have people who have that shared passion and vision for what is often thought of as a waste. You’re not fighting against people, you know, they all see the value in what’s being done,” she said. And it’s taking an innovative approach and encouraging thinking that takes a

different perspective that’s landed Silvester in the spotlight as a true advocate for the value that young water professionals bring to the industry. “Older professionals have the experience but young people bring a new and diverse perspective to the table,” she said. “Young people need to come in, step up and get involved in strategic discussions about the future of the sector. Having young people shake it up a bit is really important, so that we’re not just doing things that we feel comfortable with – things that we know work, but don’t challenge or allow us to improve on what we’re doing.” Looking forward, Silvester is excited to see how the Sustainable Development Goals are taken on by the Australian water industry, which, Silvester said, has huge potential to change the industry. “The Sustainable Development Goals aren’t like the Millennium Development Goals; they’re not just for developing countries, they’re for us as well,” she said. “I think it’s interesting that it hasn’t been given much time in Australia, but it has huge implications for the water sector and what we can achieve. “We can really leverage off these goals to drive new innovations, ﬁnd better ways of doing things, including energy and resource recovery, but also increasing the equitable and sustainable water solutions we are able to provide for all Australians.”

WE REALLY NEED TO CHANGE THE MINDSET AROUND WASTEWATER TREATMENT PLANTS. THEY’RE A PLACE FOR RESOURCE RECOVERY. SYDNEY WATER CHEMICAL ENGINEER KATHRYN SILVESTER

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Australian Water Awards

RESEARCH INNOVATION AWARD

PROGRAM INNOVATION AWARD

WINNER: ADVANCED CONDITION ASSESSMENT AND PIPELINE PROJECT

WINNER: ALLWATER’S ENERGY MANAGEMENT PROGRAM

A collaboration between representatives of Sydney Water, Water Corporation, City West Water, Melbourne Water, Yarra Valley Water, South Australia Water Corporation, Queensland Urban Utilities, South East Water, Hunter Water Corporation, Monash University, University of Technology Sydney, University of Newcastle, UK Water Industry Research and the Water Research Foundation of the USA.

Jeremy Lucas, Performance & Innovation Manager, Allwater

Damnika Vitanage, Asset and Infrastructure Resource Coordinator, Sydney Water (Water Utility Lead on the project) The ACAPFP project was a world first and has been five years in the making. Its main focus has been the large, cast iron water pipes critical to water supply networks worldwide. Until now, it’s been very difficult to predict the life span of these pipes and what factors are responsible when water mains burst. The results of the research are helping utilities get the best possible data and ensure pipelines are only replaced near the end of their life. Sydney Water has already saved millions of dollars, and similar results have been achieved by other water utilities in Australia and overseas. The fact that there are billions of dollars worth of water mains buried underground across the globe gives you an idea of how beneficial this research will be. The success of the project was due to the quality of the people involved, but also the collegial collaboration between partners.

To become the ﬁrst Australian water utility to get energy accreditation was a real milestone and a critical ﬁrst in a regime of lower capital and pressure on operating costs. The program started two years ago when we performed a gap analysis on energy usage across all areas of our water business before implementing and documenting a quality systems framework within [energy management systems standard] ISO 50001. An important element was taking trade waste free-ofcharge and turning it into energy using anaerobic digestion at our wastewater treatment plants. Under the Energy Management Program, we have not only decreased power usage, we can take advantage of spot pricing and export energy to the grid. Winning the Program Innovation Award was an excellent recognition of the hard work and collaborative effort across the business. For me though, there’s always more to do and smarter ways of doing things. Technology is driving water utilities to real-time monitoring across many areas and it’s an exciting time. I’ve been in the water industry for 20 years and expect to be here for another 20. My advice to others is you have to be passionate and persistent to succeed in the water industry. Push through the red tape and celebrate wins as you go.

BEST OZWATER POSTER WINNER: PETER PREVOS, MANAGER SYSTEM MONITORING AND REPORTING, COLIBAN WATER The poster describes the annual Tap Crawl event, which involves Coliban Water employees tasting water from all 19 of our drinking water systems. The crawl is aimed at improving customer-centric service and it’s an outcome of my dissertation on using marketing theory in water utilities. While many efforts to improve customer experiences fail to include employees, the Tap Crawl brings the customer experience into the ofﬁce in a fun way. It also gives us better intelligence about water taste across the region.

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I’m honoured that my work has been recognised. My ambition is to promote the idea that customer-related problems should attract the same scientific rigour that we apply to engineering problems. I’d encourage others in the industry to look beyond the physical sciences in order to build customer-centric organisations. Water utilities used to be managed by engineers, now they are heavily influenced by economists. In the future they should be influenced by social scientists.

BEST OZWATER PAPER AND PRESENTATION WINNER: CATHERINE PORT, MANAGER OF PRODUCT AND ASSET MANAGEMENT, SYDNEY WATER The paper and presentation were called ‘A risk-based approach for management and regulation of wet weather overﬂows’. Basically it describes the method Sydney Water developed for risk assessment of wet weather overﬂow points that could then be used as a regulatory measure for performance and improvement. It considers waterway ecosystem health, public health and aesthetics to encourage

investment for the greatest environmental and community gains. The cost-beneﬁt for Sydney Water under this approach compared to traditional methods is in the order of $5-billion and there’s been lots of interest in the work locally and internationally. Winning the award was a complete surprise but it is fabulous for me and my team – we’ve worked incredibly hard on this.

Proudly sponsored by WSAA

INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECT INNOVATION AWARD WINNER: UNITYWATER’S SUNCOAST-COOLUMMAROOCHYDORE SEWAGE TREATMENT PLANT RECONFIGURATION Simon Taylor, Executive Manager Infrastructure Planning and Capital Delivery, Unitywater It is really uplifting for the project to be recognised at a national level. It touched on many different cost-saving elements and involved plenty of thinking outside out of the box. For example, as part of the diversion of services during project delivery a sewer main that was not yet in service was used as a temporary water supply main. This meant there was no need to build temporary infrastructure in an environmentally sensitive area. Traditional thinking would have seen us simply create bigger versions of the existing treatment plants but our engineers delivered a solution that closed down a plant, drilled a pipeline under the Maroochy River and built a wetland at the Coolum plant to help treat sewage. In all, the $24 million project delivered a whole-of-life saving of $57 million compared to the original business case. It also meant the Maroochy River receives six tonnes less of nitrogen and 1.5 tonnes less of phosphorous each year. The next significant capital project is another first for Unitywater – an upgrade to a sewage treatment plant combined with the delivery of a waste-to-energy facility. Our advice is to keep challenging your first approach to a solution and all those assumptions that go into the initial planning of a project.

WATER INDUSTRY SAFETY EXCELLENCE AWARD WINNER: TASWATER’S VACUUM TRUCK SNORKEL Co-inventor Mathew Loone, Coordinator Plumbing, TasWater The snorkel idea was developed when two guys were six metres down a sewer pump station, wet well on the end of a vacuum hose de-watering the well. There were risks with working in a confined space and exposure to raw sewage. Our solution is attached to the vacuum truck hose and lowered into the well via a hoist or Hiab. While submerged, the snorkel still allows air to be drawn into the hose to maintain vacuum operation. It has not only improved de-watering efficiency, it has eliminated the need for operators to enter confined spaces and reduced manual handling. I think it is one of those ideas that works due to its simplicity. It can be utilised throughout the industry. Co-inventor Haydn Charlton, Water Services Operator, TasWater It is always better to eliminate risk rather than to use controlled measures and that’s what our invention achieves. I am immensely proud to have it recognised at a national level. We will continue to challenge how we do things and come up with better, safer work practices so we can all go home safe and well at the end of the day. To others I’d say: if you can see a better way to do things, speak up and share your ideas because if we all work together we can develop a safer and more efficient workplace.

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Australian Water Awards

UNDERGRADUATE WATER PRIZE WINNER: SCOTT ROY’S ‘PASSIVE FLOOD BARRIER’, UNIVERSITY OF THE SUNSHINE COAST It’s very satisfying being recognised by my peers in the water industry but I’m actually relieved to win – the other finalists delivered great presentations! My project came about when I was made aware of basement car park flooding a few years ago at an Engineers Australia meeting. The purpose of the Passive Flood Barrier is to reduce the surface area necessary to operate a flood barrier system and prevent premature activation. The design I came up with uses hydrostatic forces to automatically activate and retract below surface level during extreme storm events. It also uses removable screens or baskets to reduce ongoing maintenance costs and enhance the field life of the unit. I think it won the Undergraduate Water Prize because it was novel and included a good mix of theory, design, construction and testing. I’m currently finalising patents for my design and commercialising the product through Flow Defence. I’m also

working as a Drainage Engineer for SMEC. I’d say to others in the ﬁeld: don’t be afraid to ask questions, trust your instincts, be patient, be proactive and put the hours in.

MY PROJECT CAME ABOUT WHEN I WAS MADE AWARE OF BASEMENT CAR PARK FLOODING A FEW YEARS AGO AT AN ENGINEERS AUSTRALIA MEETING. SCOTT ROY

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AUSTRALIAN STOCKHOLM JUNIOR WATER PRIZE WINNER: MOHAMED JAKARIA, QUEENSLAND ACADEMIES HEALTH SCIENCES CAMPUS. My research challenged the current methods used in wastewater treatment and offered an alternative, low-maintenance and ecologically friendly solution. During a previous Year 11 research project I’d come across an aquatic plant called Elodea Canadensis, which is actually referred to as a weed because it is highly invasive. But it’s also a very effective cleaning agent. In Year 12, I wanted to continue that work to see if it would have any positive effects for wastewater treatment because it is very accessible – you can just buy it from aquariums. I found using the plant for cleaning wastewater would do the same job as – or better than – existing methods and didn’t require as much maintenance. The concept needs to be further reﬁned to have commercial signiﬁcance, but this treatment method could be implemented in future. I feel incredibly honoured and grateful to represent Australia at an international level so I’m thankful to the judges and teachers who guided me. I think I’ll continue my research on

water but right now I’m studying the Bachelor of Biomedicine at the University of Melbourne. My advice to people my age or younger is to challenge current methods and don’t be afraid of failure because 80% of my experiments have failed. But the 20% that succeeded brought a new perspective to the ﬁeld of wastewater treatment.

IN YEAR 12, I WANTED TO CONTINUE THAT WORK TO SEE IF IT WOULD HAVE ANY POSITIVE EFFECTS FOR WASTEWATER TREATMENT BECAUSE IT IS VERY ACCESSIBLE. MOHAMED JAKARIA

INQUIRY INTO THE FUTURE OF WATER IN RURAL AND REGIONAL NSW An Upper House committee is inquiring into water augmentation in rural and regional New South Wales. General Purpose Standing Committee No. 5 will look at demand and supply, the suitability of existing water storages, flood risks and technologies to mitigate flood damage. The committee will also consider the social, economic and environmental aspects of water management practices in New South Wales and elsewhere. This comprehensive inquiry will run over the next 18 months and the committee encourages participation from all stakeholders and community members. For more information visit www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/gpsc5 or email gpsc5@parliament.nsw.gov.au or telephone (02) 9230 2318 Follow us: @nsw_upperhouse

Z10433

The submission closing date has been extended until Sunday 14 August 2016.

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T H E AU ST R A L I A N WAT E R A S S O C I AT I O N M AG A Z I N E

I N D U S T R Y F E AT U R E S INSIGHTS INTO AND ANALYSIS OF THE FORCES SHAPING THE AUSTRALIAN WATER INDUSTRY.

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WEATHER WATCHER Ex-Director Rob Vertessy opens up about the Bureau of Meteorology’s unprecedented decade of change.

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FROZEN CEILINGS The water industry has been striving to redress gender inequality in its ranks. But is the effort having enough impact?

LONG-DISTANCE RELATIONSHIP Working on opposite sides of the country doesn’t have to pose a hindrance to a successful mentoring pairing.

QUENCHING THE URBAN THIRST Water-sensitive urban development has never been more vital. Here are three projects pushing the boundaries.

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SUN ON THE WATER Floating solar power arrived in Australia last year. So what’s all the fuss about?

MAPPING THE FLOWS What the Bureau of Meteorology National Water Account shows about the shifting fortunes of the states.

THE FARMS RACE Climate and population are putting pressure on agriculture but advanced tech is helping keep farmers in front. FUNDING FLOODGATES Do alternative ﬁnancial models have a role to play in public water infrastructure funding and, if so, what exactly should they look like?

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Robert Vertessy

Leading through change AFTER A LONG CAREER IN WATER AND WEATHER, RECENTLY RETIRED BUREAU OF METEOROLOGY DIRECTOR ROBERT VERTESSY SPEAKS UP ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE FUTURE OF THE BUREAU. AUSTRALIAN WATER ASSOCIATION: You worked with CSIRO, and started with the Bureau in the capacity of Deputy Director of Water. How has your background inﬂuenced your role as Director? Robert Vertessy: Prior to coming to the Bureau, I worked for 20 years within the CSIRO. I started off as a young researcher there in 1987. For most of the time that I was there, I was involved in the cooperative research centre. In that time I had the opportunity to think about the utility value of the research that we were doing, and work closely with stakeholders to ensure that what we were doing met a need. It wasn’t blue skies research. It was mission-directed, applied work. That really formed a particular approach for me. It made me want to do the best job I could in understanding stakeholder needs, and then direct the research portfolio to meet the need. The longer I stayed there, the more responsibility I was given.

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This in turn gave me the opportunity to focus on building the capability of staff. Capability development is critical. It’s very important in a technical agency or research institute to make sure that you are continually working with your people to grow them. AWA: You were successful in securing funding for the 10-year Improving Water Information Program. How did you go about this and how has the program contributed to transforming Australia’s approach to water research and analysis? Vertessy: It all goes way back to my early research career. I spent a lot of time doing local scale experimentation in catchments and trying to model the water balance off the landscape – how rainfall gets partitioned into runoff and recharge, and soil moisture recharge and so on. A bugbear of any modeller is always data – getting access to reliable, good quality data in a timely fashion. It’s very costly. From a very early time, I had come to appreciate the value of hydraulic observations and raw data. When it came to the Millennium Drought through the 2000s, it was acutely evident that we as a nation had flown into a serious water security crisis largely blind. It’s not so much that there wasn’t enough data, but that it was too difficult to mash it up together to repurpose for the needs at hand. Water data is typically collected by about two hundred different organisations around the country for their individual business purposes. There was never a way to roll it all out to develop a comprehensive view of the nation’s hydraulic status. In the final years of my time at CSIRO, I built up a research program proposal to try and bring together Australia’s water

WHEN IT CAME TO THE MILLENNIUM DROUGHT, IT WAS ACUTELY EVIDENT THAT WE AS A NATION HAD FLOWN INTO A SERIOUS WATER SECURITY CRISIS LARGELY BLIND.

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Robert Vertessy

AUSTRALIA’S WATER SECTOR HAS MANY CHALLENGES, AND THE BIG ONES THAT THE BUREAU CAN HELP WITH RELATE TO OUR HYDRO-CLIMACTIC VARIABILITY. data, at least for the research community, so that we could do a better job. At the time, we were going around various government departments seeking support for this idea. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet was building the new national water reform strategy, which [then-]Prime Minister Howard ultimately announced in 2007. The concepts that I was presenting had a lot of appeal to the policymakers who were trying to do this major water reform piece. In a way, the rest is history. It’s now ﬂourished into something that has major utility value for the water sector and the public at large. The data was always there but it had not been leveraged in the way that the opportunity provided. It took a lot of effort but in the grand scheme of things, given the size of the water sector, it wasn’t such a big job to get Australia into a completely different

state of play. We’ve multiplied the value of the national data assets many times over because it is now being analysed. It is getting used more and more in decision-making. AWA: What do you think are the key challenges facing the water sector, and the country, in the future? Vertessy: Australia’s water sector has many challenges. The big ones that the Bureau can help with relate to our hydro-climatic variability. It’s a cliché, but this is very much the land of droughts and floods, making it hard to manage water resources. The problem is that variability is being enhanced now by climate change. There’s no question that already we are experiencing deeper, more severe droughts and floods. In fact, in the 10 years I’ve been at the Bureau, we have witnessed the driest period on the historic record, followed by the wettest period in the historic record. And we have lurched back into some pretty serious drought in a few areas. It just goes to show how volatile, or how unreliable, water is. In many ways, the sector has responded really well to mitigate that problem with the advent of desalination and recycling plants, and water grids. These have all really helped to make us more resilient to water security shocks but we aren’t inoculated. There are many parts of the country that are still very susceptible economically and societally to this climate variability. We need to find ways to harden water security to provide more early warning to communities and businesses.

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Photography: Steve Keough/Bureau of Meteorology

Robert Vertessy

AWA: As the Bureau’s products evolve, how do you foresee their use in the industry developing? Vertessy: It will remain an evolutionary process. What you always see, whether it’s water information or mobile phones, is a slow uptake at first, but you then begin to see a virtuous feedback loop. The more people use it, the faster the rate of uptake becomes. It’s the classic theory of network. I envisage that’s the way it will play out. In fact just in the past year, as we’ve worked closely with industry groups like the Australian Water Association (AWA), we have seen a very significant upswing in the use of these products. As long as we stay focused on working with end users and shaping the products to suit their needs in the future, we’ll see an accelerated uptake and have a positive spin-off benefit in terms of outcomes. The information only creates value when people adopt it in decision-making, and you derive other economic or societal dividends from it. We’re really focused on that adoption piece at the moment. This is why the relationship with the AWA, and other groups, are so important. The Bureau has always been in the top tier of international environmental intelligence, certainly in the top 10 around the world. That’s been possible because many of the environmental intelligence functions of government are embodied into one agency. The fact that the Bureau does weather, climate, water resources, a fair bit of ocean and space weather together inside one institution, allows us to do the integration piece very well, and to leverage a special advantage that comes from integrating different forms of information. That’s particularly acute in the case of water and its proximity to weather and climate, for instance.

environmental intelligence. That’s where we want to be. We want to be talking about what’s going on. We’re marching into a future where resources are being depleted, the climate is changing, and the demands for environmental goods and services are increasing because of population growth. Everything says that environmental intelligence will be more critical to our lives in the future than it’s ever been before. Running against the tide, in a way, is the requirement of public sector agencies to do more with less. There are really four themes to the Bureau’s new strategic plan for the next five years. The first is greater efficiency, and that largely means automating more of our forecast production systems so that they require less human input. The second will be focusing on that utilisation space – it’s one thing to produce lots of great information, but you don’t realise its value unless people are adopting it. You’ll also see the Bureau striving to engage more and more with its stakeholders. Already we have specialists embedded in businesses around the country. We want to get our high-end specialists to do less slavish, manual, repetitive tasks and more sophisticated interpretation and communication, unlocking their intellectual value for the benefit of other people. The final pillar of our strategic plan is growing our business development capability. The stark reality is that, like all public sector agencies providing a public good, our budgets are not going up. They’re actually going down. More and more, you’ll see the Bureau focusing on customisation of its services for particular client sectors. Every day I’ve come into the Bureau, I’ve had this very keen sense of existential purpose that what we’re doing matters. That has been a thrill every day. The other side is the talent of the people and their ethos. This is a very value-driven organisation that is all about excellent public service for community benefit. And you can feel that ethos thriving in the organisation every day. I feel a huge sense of privilege for having led this organisation. It is a remarkable institution, operating for over a hundred years. It’s been a bloody privilege to run it, I have to say; it’s been incredible.

AWA: Where do you see the Bureau going in the future? Vertessy: We’re really transforming the Bureau to be less of a back-room ofﬁce to more of a national newsroom for

This interview was conducted prior to Dr Vertessy’s retirement at the end of April, prior to the widespread ﬂoods in recent months.

One thing I’m most proud of about the water information program is that we have actually done that. We built the early warning system, that the country still needs, to live within that variable hydro-climatic environment. It’s only going to get worse with climate change.

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Mentoring

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THE AWA MENTORING PROGRAM PAIRS UP YOUNG PROFESSIONALS AND SEASONED PROS WITH THE SAME WATER PASSION. HERE, CURRENT SPEAKS TO A COUPLE THAT PROVE JUST HOW STRONG MUTUAL INTEREST CAN BE.

KATHY MARTINA M

artina De Zilva was paired up with Kathy Northcott because of their shared interest in technical development within wastewater treatment. There was just one issue – at the time, they lived 400km apart. But the distance didn’t stop them from striking up a professional relationship that’s now ﬁve years old and going strong.

Mentor

Mentee

Kathy

Martina

Veolia Research & Technical Manager

Melbourne Water Process Engineer

Age:

Time in industry

20 years

5 years

Northcott

KATHY NORTHCOTT, VEOLIA I’ve got a strong interest in professional and workforce development and I always have. Learning what motivates people and encourages people to get on board with lifelong learning has always been an interest of mine. When I saw there was a Young Water Professionals mentoring program about to be launched in Victoria, I thought it would be a really good opportunity for me to share my experiences as a professional engineer, and try and impart a little bit of knowledge onto the next generation of water professionals. As a mentor, I keep a pretty open mind. The good thing about the Young Water Professionals mentoring program is they survey you upfront and say, “what do you think you can actually bring to the mentoring program? Do you think you’d bring general career development or more of a technical perspective?”. I speciﬁed that I’d probably be more appropriate in providing mentoring in the technical area. Our pairing was probably a little more challenging than some of the other mentor-mentee relationships in that year. Somehow, the two most geographically distant mentor and mentee ended up being paired together, which was based on our mutual interest in a technical mentoring arrangement.

De Zilva

Industry experience gap

15 years

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Mentoring

We had to be more organised and structured than some of the other mentoring relationships. We made a commitment in the first year that we would catch up at least once a month. There were two main areas that Martina and myself focused on. One was ongoing professional development within her technical field. At the time, Martina was on a pathway to get chartered engineer status through Engineers Australia. She was very focused on getting my feedback and advice on each of the modules as she worked through them. The other area was exposure to industry projects and industry contacts. Martina’s role was starting to expand beyond proposals into project engineering and process engineering activities, which is where she really wanted to be. She would ask me about processes she was working on, technology she was struggling with, ask where she could get more information and who she could talk to about it. I was able to use my existing industry networks and contacts to help her get the knowledge that she needed. Thinking about the journey that Martina was on helped me see how I could take her learning and apply it to the team that I worked with on a day-to-day basis. It was a mutually-beneficial arrangement. Professionally, Martina’s very focused and goal-driven. This encouraged me to continue participating and working with her, because I saw genuine change and genuine growth. It was just so much of a privilege to be part of that, to see her achieve her objectives and goals career-wise. That was really rewarding for me. I would definitely encourage both mentors and mentees to get involved in the program. Give it a go, but keep in mind that you are sharing some pretty heart-to-heart stuff. You need to feel comfortable with that person to be able to share those feelings about where you’re going and how you’re progressing in an honest and candid way.

experience in the same field I was working in and would have specific advice. I wanted them to have technical knowledge and understand how that particular career path progresses. That’s why I went with the AWA mentoring program instead of workplace programs. I’d actually met Kathy before we’d been introduced to our mentors. I thought she sounded really interesting and had a lot of good technical background, but she’s in Castlemaine and I’m in Bairnsdale, so it wasn’t going to work. Then we found out that we had been paired together. We both started laughing. It was funny that we were so geographically separated and we were partnered. In our first session, we shared with each other what we wanted to get out of the program. We then covered all the essential stuff. I’d ask for her advice on what I had to do for my performance development goals. I’d talk to her about scenarios at work, or any other problems I was having, and we’d just talk them out. It was informal – that’s the way we’ve always kept it. Kathy has worked in operations and utilities, in water and wastewater roles. I was looking to develop myself into that field and she made a lot of great suggestions because she had been through it all before. Being a young woman in a male-dominated field, she’d also encountered a lot of the same challenges that I had encountered – trying to get recognised for the work that I was doing. She’d obviously used all of the skills she had fostered and all the challenges that she’d overcome to give me lots of great advice. That also came with technical knowledge as well – she was able to give me really specific advice that someone in a similar workplace, but not necessarily in a similar position, might not know or understand. I get along with Kathy really well – she’s really fun, which makes it easy to talk to her. It has been five years since we joined the official AWA mentoring program and we still catch up. It’s worked out really well for us. Kathy is a fantastic professional in her field. If she were my manager, I would be over the moon. The mentoring program is totally worthwhile. I would recommend it 100% to any young graduates, but also anyone looking to mentor. There have been times when I have thought, “work is getting the best of me and I’m drowning in it,” and Kathy would call me up and ask, “Hey, how are you going? Let’s have a chat.” It’s been fantastic.

THINKING ABOUT THE JOURNEY THAT MARTINA WAS ON HELPED ME SEE HOW I COULD TAKE HER LEARNING AND APPLY IT TO THE TEAM THAT I WORKED WITH ON A DAY-TO-DAY BASIS. IT WAS A MUTUALLY-BENEFICIAL ARRANGEMENT.

Mentee MARTINA DE ZILVA, MELBOURNE WATER I studied a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering at Melbourne University, graduating in 2009. I then completed a Masters of Environmental Engineering. In 2011, I started in consulting with AECOM and was given a post in Bairnsdale. I was a part of the AWA Young Professional’s Network and had heard about the mentoring program. I thought, “That sounds good. I’m in a regional area, so it would be nice to keep some connections with other people in Melbourne, and also find a mentor.” So I signed up. I really wanted a mentor who had

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To get involved in the Australian Water Association’s mentoring program, as either a mentor or a mentee, contact your state branch.

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displays flow and pressure across a water network, enabling operators to monitor performance. The system helps to identify any abnormal events, their locations and any customer complaints or operating actions. Energy is a major component of a water utility’s operating costs and, with rising energy prices, a smart network provides the ability to model and optimise system efficiency by automating the control of pumps and valves. A recent paper from the Better Infrastructure Initiative stated that by lifting the quality of our existing infrastructure, there’s an opportunity to save money, deliver better services more quickly and trigger valuable innovation. In other words, there are significant improvements that can be made to our existing infrastructure and smart water has a role to play. For example, SUEZ is working in Barcelona, one of Europe’s smartest cities, where Aquadvanced™ operates across a network of 3.9 million people delivering 200 GL/year of water through a network of 4600 km of pipes. Through this partnership the city has demonstrably reduced water losses and optimised its network operations. Similar partnerships are in place in Versailles, France (20 GL/year), Macao, China (90 GL/year) and Casablanca, Morocco (190 GL/year). SUEZ is actively seeking opportunities to work with water providers to introduce this technology in Australia. 1

Re-establishing Australia’s Global Infrastructure Leadership – Garry Bowditch, John Grill Centre for Project Leadership, University of Sydney – February 2016.

Gender diversity

FIXING A LEAKY PIPELINE THERE ARE AMPLE POOLS OF FEMALE TALENT IN THE WATER SECTOR BUT WOMEN REMAIN UNDER-REPRESENTED IN LEADERSHIP POSITIONS. WHY IS THE INDUSTRY’S PIPELINE LEAKING AND WHAT’S BEING DONE TO STEM THE FLOW? By Cecilia Harris

hat the Australian workplace has a gender diversity problem is no secret. Despite one in two Australian workers being women, just one third of senior managers are. And at the pointy end of the management chain, the picture is even worse. Lamentably, the picture in water-related vollamisqno rosier. In water utilities, women sectors are just under half as likely as men to be senior managers. In scientific research, more than 60% of staff are women, but just an eighth of executives are. Those in the industry point to three key obstacles to women achieving parity with men – weak retention, under-representation in senior positions and a substantial pay gap between the sexes. Aside from basic notions of fairness, the lack of diversity can wreak a financial toll on lagging firms. In 2012, the Grattan Institute reported women’s increased participation across the workforce has the potential to bump Australia’s GDP by $25 billion within

the next 10 years, with the beneﬁts falling in the laps of those industries attracting top female talent. Queensland Urban Utilities CEO Louise Dudley is one of the most senior women in the Australian water sector but said she eagerly awaits the day when people cease being surprised by her gender. “At the end of the day, our workforce should be a representative of the community we serve,” she said. “We’re contemplating a future where utilities need to be much more customer-focused. We need to be more innovative and forward thinking. Without diversity, I don’t know how we’re going to get there. It’s that important.”

SEEPING OUT More women are choosing to study subjects conducive to careers within water science and engineering than ever before. But retention is proving to be one of the largest roadblocks to achieving gender diversity within the sector.

IF YOU PRESENT A HURDLE TO WOMEN IN DOING THEIR BEST WORK, THEY WILL GO SOMEWHERE ELSE. QUEENSLAND URBAN UTILITIES CEO LOUISE DUDLEY

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“If you recruit somebody into a culture that’s not inclusive, then they’re not likely to stay. They won’t feel valued, their voice won’t be heard,” Dudley said. “There are so many opportunities coming up for women. As an organisation, if you present a hurdle to women in doing their best work, they will go somewhere else.” So what are the hurdles? “The women I have spoken to leave their roles in organisations for a number of common reasons,” South East Water Chair Lucia Cade said. “These include a lack of, or very slow, career progression, a lack of senior role models to aspire to, and being stigmatised as ‘not career-focused’ if they need to work part-time after having children.” Lack of support for workers with carer responsibilities suggests that progression will be unreasonably difﬁcult for women returning to work. “Many women need to work part-time for a while and part-time roles are, generally, technically and managerially inferior. This is dispiriting,” Cade said. “Once working part-time, some women feel they have been assumed to not have career aspirations or be truly committed to their careers. This, too, is dispiriting.” And retention is as much about culture as it is development. Cade said creating a workplace that embraces diversity

MANY WOMEN NEED TO WORK PART-TIME FOR A WHILE AND PART-TIME ROLES ARE, GENERALLY, TECHNICALLY AND MANAGERIALLY INFERIOR. SOUTH EAST WATER CHAIR LUCIA CADE

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Gender diversity

GENDER PAY GAP This is how many extra days per year the average woman would have to work to earn the same as the average man:

WATER: Supply,

SCIENTIFIC

ENGINEERING

sewage & drainage

research services:

design and consulting:

days

by actively meeting the needs of all employees, including support for carers, is paramount to cultural change. “Some managers find it challenging to cope with the cycles of maternity leave and part-time work that is a part of many women’s lives if they have children. They struggle to find meaningful ways for part-time people to work, leaving staff feeling devalued,” she said. “I have pulled up people who describe people as ‘only’ working part-time. I point out that they are also ‘only’ paid part-time and their productivity per hour spent at work is often exceptionally high as they cram as much into a working day as they can. How many full-timers take that attitude every day?” Bureau of Meteorology Groundwater Unit Manager Elisabetta Carrara believes evening the playing field by introducing equality in parental leave entitlements helps. “I am a real advocate for paternity leave,” she said. “If men could take time off similar to women, when it came time to hire the employer wouldn’t be thinking, ‘oh, this person might get pregnant and I’ll need to find someone else. I’ll go with the man, rather than the woman.’ It would also benefit father-child bonds.”

BREEDING SUCCESS Exacerbating retention problems is the deficit in female staff making headway into managerial, executive and principal positions. As a result, there are fewer female role models. “When young women see that there are other women who have successfully attained those senior positions and

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days

had families, they learn these things are possible,” Engineers Australia Women in Engineering National Committee Chair Jo Kirby said. “Having female role models is essential. If younger people don’t see women there, they’re going to think there will be nothing for them either.” She recalled one of her previous workplaces, which typiﬁed a ‘boys’ club’ atmosphere. “There was no way I was going to become a lead engineer while there was a posse of fellows, who had always been there,” Kirby said. “It’s not that they treated me badly, I just knew I would never break into a senior position.” Carrara said having women in senior and key managerial roles is also an important step in reducing implicit bias and discrimination. “It is essential to have female mentors. You don’t realise the unconscious bias until you really start working alongside it,” she said. Unconscious bias has taken the spotlight as a scourge of diversity. Hiring practices, employee recognition processes, leadership styles and negotiation behaviours are all breeding grounds for discrimination. “Quite often, female engineering graduates get picked early in their

days

graduate career as good organisers and steered into project management roles, which, of course, steers them away from their technical expertise,” Kirby said. “There’s a common conception that women have a different headspace – that they don’t always go for things they are not fully qualiﬁed for. This is not always the case. It’s not just about being outgoing. It is also about how women are perceived when they are going for big roles. It’s about whether they are taken as seriously as a man who backs himself in the job.” Dudley said that unconscious bias is an issue all the way to the top, with many people’s assumptions favouring masculine authority. “Some people insist on talking to the male colleague, even though you’re the more senior person in the room,” she said. “I’ve had people ask me what my role is at QUU. When I tell them, ‘I’m the CEO’, their response is usually, ‘Oh’. If you’re going to a function or meeting, it’s a good idea to work out who’s who ﬁrst. A lot of people assume that the CEO couldn’t possibly be a female.” And the pay gap? Data shows that this is an area where some of the water sector is doing better than other Australian industries. Dudley said: “If you’re doing

HAVING FEMALE ROLE MODELS IS ESSENTIAL. IF YOUNGER PEOPLE DON’T SEE WOMEN THERE, THEY’RE GOING TO THINK THERE WILL BE NOTHING FOR THEM EITHER. ENGINEERS AUSTRALIA WOMEN IN ENGINEERING CHAIR JO KIRBY

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Gender diversity

WOMEN IN WATER: THE FIGURES

Overall

CEO

Key Management

Senior Managers

WASTE: COLLECTION TREATMENT & DISPOSAL

80.6%

19.4%

88.9%

11.1%

76.7%

23.3%

83.9%

16.1%

WATER: SUPPLY, SEWAGE & DRAINAGE

79.7%

20.3%

100%

84.2%

15.8%

88.5%

11.5%

SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH SERVICES

38.2%

61.8%

87.5%

12.5%

84.6%

15.8%

53.4%

46.6%

ENGINEERING DESIGN AND CONSULTING

79.8%

20.2%

97.3%

2.7%

87%

13%

87.7%

12.3%

51.2%

48.8%

84.6%

15.4%

72.6%

27.4%

67%

33%

AUSTRALIAN AVERAGE

THE SAGE PILOT SAGE (Science in Australia Gender Equality) is an Australia-wide program promoting gender equity and diversity in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM). In 2014, the SAGE Pilot – an adaptation of the UK’s Athena SWAN Charter – was created. Organisations in the SAGE Pilot are subject to an evaluation and accreditation framework addressing the improvement of gender equality policies and practices. In June 2015, SAGE called for participation and 32 institutions signed to the program, including major universities, medical research institutes and environmental science institutes. The pilot requires all participants to collect, analyse and present data on gender equity and diversity policies and practices.

WORKFORCE COMPOSITION

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the same job, you should be paid the same. That’s just a basic human right.”

ON THE GROUND WGEA data shows while many organisations are on board with creating gender diversity policies, there’s still room for building steadfast strategies. GHD Australia General Manager Phil Duthie, who recently implemented gender diversity initiatives within the company, said having a policy is quite different to putting it into practice. “A company can have a policy but, unless it is actually being implemented, it just sits on the shelf,” he said. Duthie said educating staff is crucial to ensuring the entire company is on board with policy implementation and cultural transformation. “I’d recommend companies take the time to educate the leaders of their business, managers in particular,” he said. “If knowledge of the things you’re trying to achieve rests in the executive’s mind, and not in the manager’s mind, you create a barrier to moving forward.” Educating management also helps alleviate recruitment bias, helping broaden

the pool of candidates, according to South East Water’s Lucia Cade. “If we over-emphasise attributes for new hires that are only based on the attributes of people currently in the roles, then we will continue to limit ourselves to new hires that look exactly like past hires,” Cade said. QUU’s Louise Dudley said development of female staff requires a top-down approach, with managers and senior leaders engaging in the process. “It’s about providing an opportunity for people to fulﬁl their potential,” Dudley said. “There’s still a lot of women saying, ‘Look, I don’t think that I’ve got the skills for that,’ when, in fact, they do have the skills. I think we’ve got to get over that as women. We are good enough.” Cade said promotions need to be merit-based, offering all candidates the opportunity to excel through the application of personal strengths, rather than role statements. “Merit is more than technical ability, even if the role is a specialist technical role. It is more than years of experience in a similar role in a similar organisation,” Cade said. “This includes opportunities for secondments, working on

GENDER EQUALITY STRATEGY & TARGETS Employers with gender policy

66.7%

85.7%

Employers with gender strategy

33.3%

SUPPORT FOR CARERS & PAID PARENTAL LEAVE Employers with policy supporting family or caring responsibilities

Employers with strategy supporting family or caring responsibilities

66.7%

11.1% 43.9%

79.2%

25% 54.6%

22.1% 21.6%

4.2% 29.7%

55.4%

57.6%

16.5%

28.6%

14.3% 14.3%

Gender pay gap

18.5% 47.2%

20.6%

24%

14.6% Source: Workplace Gender Equality Agency.

special projects, all those things that can help someone demonstrate their abilities and readiness for the next step,” she said.

UPWARD MOBILITY QUU’s Louise Dudley said diversity is a no-brainer for companies looking to succeed. “I wonder where the business case is for non-diversity? That’s not something you hear people talking about,” she said. “If you just pick female or male staff, you cut your potential capability by half. On any business case: if you start out thinking like that, you fail at your first step. Diversity is essential to ensuring you’ve got good robust views, insights, and creativity coming from all parts of your organisation.” But boosting female contribution needs to be about more than the economic benefit it offers employers – it needs to be about the benefit it offers women, too. South East Water’s Lucia Cade said if it is not, many women will simply leave. “When talented women don’t see a credible career path ahead of them in the organisation, they leave to find one elsewhere. That, or they create one themselves.”

PHIL DUTHIE ON GHD’S GENDER DIVERSITY INITIATIVE We started GHD’s diversity and inclusion committee because we were looking for better business outcomes, but it was also driven by my personal experience. More than 10 years ago, we introduced diversity into the leadership team I was fronting. It clearly enriched the strategic conversations and the dynamic in the team. Our board and executive management group set the objective of 40% of our workforce, with 30% of both our professional and technical workforce, being female by 2020. It was important to establish a group like this to help generate the cultural change needed to make the transition.

What the diversity and inclusion group has done for us is improve the level of individual engagement within the business, build better outcomes in terms of flexible work policies and help to improve our parental leave arrangements for both men and women. Unconscious bias training was a really big part of what we needed to do to create the environment for our people to engage with our diversity and inclusion initiatives. With the unconscious bias training, we initially started including our leadership groups, but then made it available throughout the organisation. It helped people achieve increased self-awareness of what unconscious bias is and how it influences decisions.

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Water-sensitive urban development

TAKE THE

PRESSURE CLIMATE VARIABILITY AND INCREASED URBANISATION ARE RATCHETING UP THE PRESSURE ON URBAN WATER SUPPLIES, WHICH MEANS WATER-SENSITIVE URBAN DEVELOPMENTS HAVE NEVER BEEN MORE VITAL. HERE ARE THREE PROJECTS TO WATCH. By Hallie Donkin

ustralians may like to think of their country as one of sweeping plains and shimmering outback vistas, but the reality is Australia is one of the world’s most urbanised countries. Population growth and increasing urban development is putting pressure on urban water supplies across the country and creating a boom of interest in water-sensitive urban design, but challenges remain. Hurdles include institutional inertia, a low uptake of a triple bottom line approach, and policy and planning shortfalls. The policy environment in which new developments arise is often fragmented in its approach to the water cycle and does not reward water sensitivity. “We have to have policies that consider the whole water cycle; we need to consider the mass balance,” said Professor Darryl Low Choy from Griffith University’s School of Environment and Water. “That means water coming in, being stored, being manufactured in the city, being evaporated, discharged out of the city.” CRC for Water-Sensitive Cities CEO Tony Wong narrow definitions of problems and reactionary responses to episodes of shock meant many opportunities for transformative change were being missed. “Critical to addressing this challenge is a clear acknowledgement and better understanding of the non-market costs and benefits.” However, a growing number of new Australian developments are seeking to throw a spotlight on these advantages by harnessing advances in technology and techniques to bring water-sensitivite urban design to a suburb-level scale.

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DOWN

AQUAREVO WHAT: 42ha, 460-home development on a decommissioned purification plant WHERE: Lyndhurst, 35km south-east of Melbourne DEVELOPERS: South East Water, Villawood FEATURES: rainwater collection, wastewater recycling, peak stormwater flow reduction system, pressurised sewer, consumption monitoring app Born of a May 2014 workshop with the CRC, Aquarevo has three areas of focus: urban planning and design to manage stormwater on a flat site, green infrastructure to avoid heat-sinks and improve permeability, and intelligent systems to deliver cost-effective services. “We’re not only proving the technology, but also skilling up plumbing students on installation and maintenance,” said Terry Dalgleish, Group Manager for Capital Delivery at South East Water. “An extensive microbiological risk assessment has been conducted on the rainwater-to-hot water solution, and we’re finalising the conditions associated with the planning permit.” The final iteration of the precinct’s plans include roof-mounted rainwater tanks on each residence to supply treated rainwater to hot water systems, and an onsite

wastewater recycling treatment plant for non-potable use. South East Water has also developed two pieces of technology – Tank Talk and OneBox – to reduce peak stormwater flows by 12 to 24% and minimise sewer excavation. “Tank Talk uses forecast data from the Bureau of Meteorology, and adjusts existing rainwater volumes in the tanks to maximise the capture of rainfall,” Dalgliesh said.The remote-control telemetry technology on which Tank Talk is based, OneBox, monitors the sewer system to better manage peak flows by only releasing wastewater from each property’s tank when the system can handle the load. With smaller pipes throughout the network and the use of horizontal drilling, large-scale excavation and its expense are eliminated. OneBox, the warhorse of the development, also allows residents to monitor energy and water use, with a 70% reduction in mains water consumption expected. However, with an ambitious project come challenges, particularly with authorities. “The key is to allow time, particularly if there are elements that aren’t mainstream,” Dalgliesh said. “For example, Aquarevo will have an on-site treatment plant, which brings into play a range of additional considerations. Getting all stakeholders comfortable with that takes time, but we’ve made great progress so far.”

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Water-sensitive urban development

HUNTLEE WHAT: 7500 dwellings and a 200ha retail precinct WHERE: Hunter Valley, NSW DEVELOPER: LWP Property Group FEATURES: integrated water-cycle management to harvest and recycle 100% of the wastewater, membrane bioreactor water treatment

WHITE GUM VALLEY WHAT: 2.1ha residential infill development WHERE: White Gum Valley, 2.5km east of Fremantle, WA DEVELOPER: LandCorp FEATURES: higher spec in-house water fixtures, landscape water efficiency, resident engagement program, smart metering, plumbed rainwater, community bore Already well-advanced, White Gum Valley has sold many of its lots and completed the first stage of landscaping. The project, part of the LandCorp’s ‘Innovation through demonstration’ program, will showcase the strides that can be taken with an integrated approach. LandCorp Sustainability Manager Greg Ryan said a whole-of-development approach to sustainability was adopted from the outset. The entire water cycle was considered, including the water that comes into the precinct, is stored, is used, and which leaves the precinct. “All stormwater up to the one-in-100-year storm event is infiltrated on site through a combination of permeable surfaces, drainage cells, flush kerbs, and the use of micro swales and vegetated basins,” he said. LandCorp was fortunate to gain the support of Fremantle City Council early in the project, complementing the city’s existing water conservation strategy. “The council was keen to see a development with diverse dwelling types, densities and open spaces that showed leadership in sustainable development including reduced power and water use,” said Fremantle Mayor Brad Pettitt. “The city has been involved in similar projects to a lesser degree, but this development really raised the bar in terms of sustainability, not only for Fremantle but the whole state.” Regulatory challenges did exist, particularly regarding the community bore and the third-pipe water system (the ‘purple pipe’ for non-potable distribution), but the collaborative approach of LandCorp and council found a solution, a result that Pettitt attributes to “creative and innovative thinking”. “All lots will be provided with dual metering – one for mains water and one purple meter for the community bore connection, which will demonstrate mains water use and savings, and provide prompt notification of any leaks or water supply issues,” Ryan said. Rainwater tanks installed on single residential dwellings will also be metered. “All meters will be data logged during a three-year research and performance monitoring phase, which is about to get underway with the meter readings hosted on a web interface.”

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At the end of its 20-year construction schedule, Huntlee will comprise four villages and a town centre. And its 7500 residential dwellings and 200ha retail precinct will consume vastly less drinking water than the state average, with wastewater reuse and energy efficiency initiatives making it a sustainable development. Integrated water-cycle management (IWCM) provides purified wastewater harvested from every building in the development, reducing the need for wastewater infrastructure, the environmental impact of wastewater removal and the reliance of the development on mains water. All water services for the development will be provided by Huntlee Water, a subsidiary of Flow Systems. “[IWCM] will reduce drinking water demand by as much as 70%,” says Terry Leckie, Flow Systems Founder and Managing Director. “It also reuses 100% of the wastewater/ sewerage that would otherwise be pumped out to sea. We use filters that are 80 times smaller than pathogens and viruses, shutting out pollution. Ultraviolet, pH and water balancing, along with chlorination, make this water the highest Australian standard.” While the project has not been free of detractors, whose main point of contention is its location rather than its efficiency targets and innovations, collaboration with a supportive council has seen challenges overcome. “[Cessnock Council] is embracing new ways of delivering utility infrastructure that reflects innovation and the transition to 21st-century infrastructure solutions,” Leckie says. “Flow’s experience is that most councils are open to new thinking when it comes to water and energy solutions to make communities more liveable and productive, and to attract people and jobs they need to be enhancing amenity and, in many cases, solving heat island issues and ensuring resilience. Only sustainable water and energy infrastructure can help them achieve this.”

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Floating solar

SUN ON DOES REDUCING A WATER UTILITY’S POWER COSTS, WHILE ALSO REDUCING EVAPORATION AND ALGAL BLOOMS, SOUND TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE? THAT’S WHAT FLOATING SOLAR IS DELIVERING. By Charley Rico

ater utilities are no strangers to renewable energy. Wastewater treatment plants have been harnessing biogas for well over a century and an increasing number of contemporary Australian utilities are making use of building assets by installing solar panels on their roofs. But over the past decade, pioneers have begun installing increasingly large solar arrays on reservoirs and dams, and the technology is heating up. The appeal of ﬂoating solar panels above water are manyfold; the arrays cut evaporation and lower water temperatures, reducing the risk of algal blooms, while the water cools the panels, leading to higher

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energy-generating efﬁciency and longevity. Finally, the set-up allows traditionally wasted surfaces to be put to work, which is particularly attractive in areas where unused land is in short supply.

FLOATOVOLTAIC Ciel et Terre installed the first floating solar array in Lille, France in 2006, and the technology has spread across the world. Space-strapped Japan has been a enthusiastic adopter, particularly in the wake of 2011’s Fukushima disaster. At least 20 systems have been installed so far, with that number set to double by next year. Another project, currently underway at the Yamakura Dam near Tokyo, will be the

world’s largest floating solar array when completed in 2018, producing up to 13.7MW. Australia joined the list of nations with floating solar arrays in use last year, when the South Australia’s Northern Area Council switched on the first stage of what will eventually be a 4MW system, in Jamestown. Consisting of 3500 photovoltaic panels – specially coated to prevent corrosion – floating atop 276 rafts, it was built by Sydney’s Infratech and under some conditions can produce up to 57% more power than land-based solar. Situated on a wastewater treatment facility, the modular system is a circular

WATER array design that can be configured into any shape to follow the topography and is the first phase of a larger system that is planned eventually to cover five basins. Built to last 25 years, it took more than three years to design and implement at a cost of $12 million, said Infratech Director Felicia Whiting. “Its efficiencies are around a centralised tracking system,” she said. “It is a breathable raft system coupled with a water treatment system. We can integrate a range of sensors to help with water quality monitoring across the pond, not just where the raft is.” The company currently has its sights set on Holtville, California where they are working to deliver another system larger than the Jamestown model, with further plans to export to Indonesia and Europe. Whiting said their model operated under a power-purchase agreement arrangement. “We’re selling an environmental solution,” she said. “The host customer is really only buying the power and not a piece of equipment, but this has been one of the difficulties we’ve had.” Whiting said so far

CASE STUDY: JAMESTOWN Northern Area Council was in the planning process for two years to bring Infratech Industries’ floating solar power system to Jamestown, South Australia [pictured above and overleaf]. The $12 million system sits on a wastewater facility and took Infratech more than three years to design and implement. But Northern Area Council Chief Executive Officer Colin Byles said the issue was getting political buy-in. “One of the major challenges we faced was getting elected members to think outside of the square of normal activities,” he said. “Part of that two-year planning process was explaining over and over again what the advantages were, the problems that could be or that weren’t there. “For a rural council to agree to this was a huge thing. They’re very conservative…but when you’re the first and there’s no template to see how it all works, you want to make sure there aren’t any unforeseen costs.” Byles said part of the difficulty had also been demonstrating the benefits to the community, with the project so far struggling to sell its power to large nearby users, despite being able to offer cost saving on power supply of up to 15%. He said as with any new technology, many people were waiting to see the benefits demonstrated before getting involved. “We’re happy to show people how it works – we think it’s a great advantage to the area. We’ve got wind farms, reused water and now floating solar.” Despite initial reluctance, Byles said they had reduced power expenditure by approximately 25%. “It will build up over time and we hope eventually our wastewater plant will cost us nothing to run,” he said.

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Floating solar

WHERE YOU’VE GOT SCARCENESS OF LAND AND ARE TRYING TO CONSERVE WATER – THAT’S WHERE THE OPPORTUNITIES LIE. GEOFF FUSSELL

the power-purchase agreements had garnered greater interest from councils than from utilities, which she surmised was due to some utilities preferring to own their own infrastructure. “With a power-purchase agreement, we can assure we can design and utilise the infrastructure to their requirements. We’re invested in the infrastructure, so if it doesn’t generate power, we don’t get paid.”

DIFFERENT STROKES However, there are other models endeavouring to gain a foothold in Australia, both of which are focused on selling the technology, rather than power-purchase agreements. Suntrix Commercial is the Australian distributor for pioneers Ciel et Terre’s Hydrelio system, which Suntrix Chief Business Ofﬁcer Geoff Fussell describes as analogous to a Lego set. “It’s modular and quickly goes together so you can conﬁgure it into any shape you like,” he said. “You can tailor it to the shape of the waterway and you can expand it as required. If you want to shift

it, you can pull it apart and remove it. It has so much ﬂexibility in the scalability of it – that’s the advantage of the product.” No tools or heavy machinery are required to assemble the Hydrelio system, which is made of 100% recyclable materials. Meanwhile, Hydrosun and its founder Soren Lunoe are instead pushing a low-cost, Australian-made solution. Hydrosun’s system does away with sun-tracking and even metal, relying instead on polypipe. “I’m trying to make it as hard as possible for other people to come up with a cheaper solution by reducing the materials…the polypipe is squeezed and bent into place (and) only one joint is welded,” Lunoe said. “The cost is as low as we can go.” That focus on economy means the Hydrosun system also dispenses with integrated water treatment systems. “The extra gain you get for that extra capital expenditure is really not cash positive,” he said. “All water bodies, whether they’re used for treatment plants or drinking water, already have existing technology that constantly test it – I’m not particularly interested in reinventing the wheel. What

WHAT I SET OUT TO DO WAS COMMERCIALISE FLOATING SOLAR SO THE ACTUAL FLOATATION OCCURS WITH A MINIMUM AMOUNT OF MATERIAL USE. SOREN LUNOE

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I set out to do was to commercialise ﬂoating solar so the actual ﬂoatation occurs with a minimum amount of material use.”

SUNLIGHT AHEAD Suntrix’s Geoff Fussell said floating solar adoption in Australia was lagging behind some parts of the world, but there was much opportunity. “Government support is mainly focused on large scale ground or roof-mounted solar farms,” he said. “[Floating solar] is more expensive and some of the reasons for that is there’s more engineering involved…it requires specialist knowledge. The ground is more economically viable, but where you’ve got scarceness of land and are trying to conserve water – that’s where the opportunities lie.” Infratech’s Felicia Whiting remains hopeful for the future of ﬂoating solar despite no current government policy or drivers to force an uptake. “The government can lead the way like they do in the US and mandate a portion of power from this,” she said. “There are 571 regional councils in Australia and not all of them have their own water plants. Some of them are outsourced, but more than 50% of those councils have to approach the infrastructure on their own, which is where this (technology) would be ideal because the power costs are very high in those areas. It also creates jobs by putting these systems in.”

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Irrigation innovation

HOW TO TACKLE WITH POPULATIONS GROWING AND RESOURCE COMPETITION INCREASING, FINDING WATER FOR FOOD IS BECOMING A PROBLEM OF THE PRESENT. HERE’S HOW SOME SAVVY IRRIGATORS ARE TAKING TO THE CHALLENGE. By Thea Cowie

our last three meals gobbled up almost 500 litres of water. If that’s not enough to stop you mid-chew, consider this: that average figure only takes into account irrigation water used to grow the food, as it excludes rainwater or water used in the manufacturing process. University of Melbourne Research Fellow Rachel Carey has pinned down this per-person, per-day figure as part of the Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab’s Foodprint Melbourne project, which has been exploring long-term food security. Currently, 40% of Australia’s food is grown in the MurrayDarling Basin, Carey said. But with projected droughts, climate change and the need to restore environmental flows, the food bowl is under increasing pressure. “There simply may not be enough water in the system to support that level of production,” Carey said. On the other hand, the nation’s often under-estimated peri-urban food bowls could become increasingly important. “They have great access to alternative sources of water – recycled water from treatment plants, and potentially stormwater – and they’ve historically been, and still are, important areas of fresh food production,” Carey explained. In fact, despite taking up just 3% of mainland states’ agricultural land, the nation’s urban fringes are responsible for almost 25% of the total gross value of agricultural production. However, these highly-productive regions are under increasing pressure from urbanisation and population growth. “Right now, Melbourne’s city food bowl has the capacity to meet around 41% of greater Melbourne’s food needs,” Carey’s research found. “But by 2050, if urban sprawl continues at the current rate, the capacity of the city’s food bowl is likely to drop to around 18% of the city’s food needs.”

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But the very thing that’s threatening food production on the nation’s city fringes – population – could also be the thing to save it. Wherever there is a large population, there will be a large amount of wastewater that can be recycled. “Farmers like recycled water because they know it’s always going to be there – regardless of drought or rainfall, regardless of what’s going on in the climate – recycled water is constantly available,” said Melbourne Water’s Western Treatment Plant Manager Martin Bowles. The water wholesaler provides 4GL/year of Class-A recycled water to Southern Rural Water, which in turn supplies to 300 growers in the Werribee Irrigation District, north-west of Melbourne. But the potential for recycled water is much, much greater. “Only 6% of the available recycled water from the city’s water treatment plants is being used for agriculture currently,” Carey said. In fact, 84% goes straight out to sea, but 10% of that untapped resource would be enough to grow half of Melbourne’s vegetable needs, the Foodprint Melbourne project calculated.

PROBLEMS WITH PROVISION Privately-held water utility service provider TRILITY owns and operates the Eastern Irrigation Scheme near Cranbourne in Melbourne and the Virginia Pipeline Scheme, which services the Northern Adelaide Plains. Regional Operations Manager Simon Smith said there was certainly an appetite for recycled water in food production. “Once people realise that a scheme is starting to happen, they see the opportunity for themselves and they come knocking on the door saying, ‘we want water, I’ve been looking at a block of land, are you able to bring water to that area?’,” Smith said. So why aren’t more utilities and private companies providing recycled water for food production? There are a

GROWING PAINS number of challenges. Firstly, it’s not a necessity. Well, not just now. When Southern Rural Water (SRW) began supplying recycled water to irrigators in 2005, farmers were between a rock and a hard place during the worst drought on record. “It was quite controversial – using recycled water for irrigation,” said Edward Smith, the utility’s West Division Manager of Water Supply. “But there was no river water, no alternative, so pretty much anyone who grew crops in the irrigation district back in 2008 and 2009 was using recycled water only.” Now recycled water supplements river water and serves as an ‘insurance policy’ for fruit and vegetable growers in the area. But the success of recycled water use in urban food bowls is not just reliant on proximity to large water treatment plants. “If that was the case, this job would be a lot easier,” said TRILITY’s Simon Smith. “It’s really important the soil conditions are right for the type of crop that you are trying to grow.” TRILITY works closely with agronomists and growers to monitor soil conditions. “They all have to comply to an overall Environmental Improvement Plan. For example, soil samples are taken every 12 months and they have to demonstrate that there are no negative effects on the environment,” Smith said. But the biggest challenge for recycled irrigation water is cost. “It actually costs more to produce a megalitre of recycled water than what we can sell it to SRW for,” said Melbourne Water’s Bowles. “It’s very energy and chemical intensive.” For Melbourne Water, the cost is absorbed within its broader sewerage product pricing. Another costly challenge is delivering the water. For piped water, it’s the cost of pumping, for water delivered via irrigation channels there’s leakage too. And once the water arrives on-farm, irrigators often ﬁnd themselves digging into their pockets again, said SRW’s Smith. “For us, it’s still a difﬁcult relationship [with farmers] because the quality of the recycled water is problematic for growing – it’s salty, particularly with sodium because of all the industrial discharges in West Melbourne,” he said. Desalinated water offers another alternative for growers, but using conventional processes and energy sources to upgrade seawater looks prohibitively expensive at this stage. One private venture hoping to beat the odds is Sundrop Farms, which is using solar power to desalinate seawater in Port Augusta, South Australia.

FARMERS LIKE RECYCLED WATER BECAUSE THEY KNOW IT’S ALWAYS GOING TO BE THERE – REGARDLESS OF DROUGHT OR RAINFALL. MELBOURNE WATER WESTERN TREATMENT PLANT MANAGER MARTIN BOWLES

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Irrigation innovation

FARMERS JUST PUT IN A COUPLE OF KEY PIECES OF INFORMATION ABOUT THEIR SOIL. THE FEEDBACK IS THAT THEY DIDNâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;T REALISE HOW MUCH THEY WERE OVER-IRRIGATING. OUTPOST CENTRAL DIRECTOR KIERAN COUPE

A TOUCH OF TECH As well as securing additional water sources, irrigators are looking to make the best use of what water they already have. â&#x20AC;&#x153;With around 70% of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fresh water used for irrigation, and 30% of it lost in transit, improving distribution efďŹ ciency recovers substantial amounts of water,â&#x20AC;? said Justin Simon, Marketing Communications Manager of irrigation technology supplier Rubicon Water. Rubicon improves efďŹ ciency â&#x20AC;&#x201C; up to 95% in some cases â&#x20AC;&#x201C; using software, smart automated water control gates, ďŹ&#x201A;ow meters and radio technology to automate existing open-channel systems and gravity pipelines. The Melbourne-based company works with SRW to deliver water to irrigators. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Using our software, a water authority can send a mix of fresh and recycled water through their delivery system â&#x20AC;Ś choosing what percentage of each they want to supply,â&#x20AC;? Simon said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The software also enables the water authority to charge at different rates for each type of water so that they can charge a discounted rate for recycled water to incentivise use.â&#x20AC;? For the farm, software developer Outpost Central has taken monitoring systems used by utilities for decades, re-written the software and produced an affordable soil moisture monitoring product speciďŹ cally for irrigators. Called Wildeye, the system involves burying two sensors in the ground, where they transmit data to a sophisticated software package. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We have incorporated into the software soil and crop data from well-publicised datasets like FAO and the US Department of Agriculture,â&#x20AC;? Outpost Central Director Kieran Coupe said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Farmers just put in a couple of key pieces of information about their soil. The feedback is that they didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t realise how much they were over-irrigating.â&#x20AC;?

MOVING QUICKLY TRILITYâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Smith said the future of water-use efďŹ ciency technology lay in using more sensor information to reďŹ ne the decision-making process. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Examples include plant demand sensors that measure canopy temperature and satellite imaging to determine water use,â&#x20AC;? he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;All of this is building towards a system where the plant chooses when it needs irrigation, not the farmer or the water authority.â&#x20AC;? But while this technology may sound futuristic, for some irrigators the future is already here. â&#x20AC;&#x153;On the Mornington Peninsula, there are farmers who are out of water now who have had to stop production,â&#x20AC;? Carey said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Food security is not necessarily a long-term problem: itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a real issue now.â&#x20AC;?

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GREENING THE DESERT Sundrop Farms has eschewed fresh water, grid energy and arable land to set up a 20-hectare greenhouse facility in Port Augusta, South Australia. It has also begun supplying Coles with tomatoes, promising at least 15,000 tonnes of tomatoes a year for the next decade. Its audacious plans rests upon taking two of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most plentiful and sustainable resources â&#x20AC;&#x201C; sunlight and seawater â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and harvesting them with the help of more than 23,000 mirrors. Once fully operational later this year, it will work like this: thousands of heliostats placed in the desert will focus sunlight on a 127m central receiver tower, or boiler. The concentrated solar power will then be converted to steam and used for multiple purposes, including producing 250ML of fresh irrigation water a year by desalinating seawater from the nearby Spencer Bay. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Sundropâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s business development comes as natural resources are dwindling, the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s population is increasing, and food-insecure areas with the least ability to adapt to climate change are becoming most impacted,â&#x20AC;? said Sundrop Farms CEO Philipp Saumweber. The integrated energy system will also run a steam turbine to produce 1700MWh electricity a year, to power greenhouses, and heat and cool crops, while untreated seawater will be used to clean and sterilise the air within the greenhouses. Modelling shows the system will avoid at least 700ML of freshwater and WRQQHV RI &2 bHPLVVLRQV DQQXDOO\

FROM WASTE TO FARM GATE: WERRIBEE IRRIGATION DISTRICT How does Melbourne Water upgrade treated wastewater? Following secondary treatment, wastewater enters maturation lagoons at the Western Treatment Plant. Solids settle to the bottom and sunlight helps naturally disinfect the water. After 30 to 35 days, the water is considered Class C recycled and undergoes two treatments: ultraviolet light and chlorine disinfection. It is now considered Class A, which the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services has deemed safe for irrigating food crops. How does Southern Rural Water (SRW) deliver recycled water to irrigators? SRW typically provides recycled water on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. It is pumped approximately 4km from the Western Treatment Plant to the head of the Werribee Irrigation District, where SRW mixes it with diverted river water. This â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;shandy mixâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; is delivered to irrigators via existing gravity-fed irrigation channels. Daily orders dictate how much recycled water SRW orders from Melbourne Water, the pumping and flow rate for optimal water quality.

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Infrastructure funding

Water banks TALK OF INNOVATION HAS FLOODED AUSTRALIA’S LANDSCAPE, BUT THERE IS MORE TO INNOVATION THAN NEW GADGETS AND SOFTWARE; IN WATER, ADVANCES IN FINANCING ARE TRANSFORMING THE WAY INFRASTRUCTURE IS FUNDED. By David Barbeler

axpayer funding has been the wellspring from which the vast bulk of Australia’s water infrastructure has sprung. However, as the population grows and major assets age, government budgets are coming under increasing pressure to keep up with investment demands. There is no shortage of private investors eagerly standing by, chequebooks at the ready, to remedy this and tap into a steady, long-term investment. But despite increasing prevalence overseas, there is still much trepidation when it comes to boosting private sector involvement in ﬁnancing water infrastructure.

CURRENT STATE OF PLAY In Australia, there are numerous examples of funding water infrastructure through public-private partnerships (PPP) and investment. However, compared to energy-sector infrastructure, which is considerably privatised, the flow of private money into the Australian water grid has been much slower.

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“One of the main reasons is political resistance,” said Mike Woolston, an economist who leads Frontier Economics’ water practice in Australia. “Water is somehow seen as something that shouldn’t be in the hands of private players, although similar arguments were had about electricity 20-odd years ago.” But it doesn’t have to be that way, according to Charlotte Morgan, a partner of leading global law ﬁrm Linklaters and the main lawyer of the £4.2 billion Thames Tideway Tunnel project. “Our experience in the UK is that there are high levels of acceptance around the privatised water industry, despite initial concerns about bringing in private sector capital,” she said. “There is now recognition that often private sector capital will continue to invest in infrastructure at times when perhaps government capital would be more constrained.” Yet, as the situation currently stands in Australia, much of the private-sector involvement is

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Infrastructure funding

IN TAKING ON A PPP PROJECT, WE TAKE AWAY RISK FROM THE STATE WHEN IT COMES TO CONSTRUCTION OPERATIONS AND UPGRADES. TRILIT Y EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR PATRICK O’LEARY limited to “behind-the-scenes” work with state-owned utilities in various contracting and PPP arrangements, according to Woolston. “This includes things like wastewater treatment plants and the desalination plants that were put in during the Millennium Drought,” he said. “But the private sector has an appetite to play a larger role.” One such player is TRILITY, the water utility involved in more than 40 water infrastructure projects across Australia, including the operation and maintenance of the Adelaide Desalination Plant, as well as the design, build and ﬁnancing of Sydney’s Macarthur Water Treatment Plant. TRILITY Executive Director Patrick O’Leary said the states’ ability to independently fund infrastructure is under pressure. “There are a lot of aging assets, not to mention that Australia is quite unusual in the way that the population has grown – there was a huge growth spurt between 1945 and 1980,” he said. “So a lot of the infrastructure is of a very similar age across a number of cities.” As such, O’Leary said there is no shortage of investors looking to invest in the next wave of water infrastructure assets. “It is a long-term business that isn’t impacted directly by economic factors elsewhere in the economy,” he said. “Therefore, the revenue streams are very predictable for

something like a pension fund.” But O’Leary adds that private investment offers more than just funding. “It’s also about risk apportionment. In taking on a PPP project, we take away risk from the state when it comes to construction operations and upgrades,” he said. Another bonus from private investment is “capital recycling”, Woolston added, as private investment frees up public capital for roads, schools and hospitals.

INNOVATION NATION Flow Systems Managing Director Terry Leckie is a big advocate for the private sector’s role in the water industry. The company he founded is a sustainable multi-utility, providing water and energy solutions to greenfield and urban infill communities, including drinking water, recycled water, wastewater services, solar and micro-grids. It’s backed by Australian, NZ and international investment – including global asset management leader Brookfield Infrastructure. Leckie said it is the private sector’s ability to innovate that will pave the way for businesses like his to play a greater role in the water industry. “We’re fortunate. We’re not an organisation that has a view that has been built over the last 50 years. We look at things completely differently,” he said. For example, Leckie explained, imagine an incumbent utility that has a tried-and-tested pipeline method in place to provide drinking water to its current constituents, and wants to repeat the process for a new community on its outskirts. “They say: ‘Let’s just build a 13km pipeline to this new community’. And we go: ‘Hold on, that is probably going to cost $13 million dollars. We could probably do it for half of that locally and then reduce the cost to your customers’,” he said. “‘What about considering a stormwater option? Why don’t we drill and find groundwater? Why don’t we do a local off-take out of the stream?’ That’s innovation.”

SPARKING INTEREST IN INNOVATIVE FINANCING Electricity networks owner Spark Infrastructure may be in the process of allaying the concerns of investors, but the regulated asset expert has a track record the water infrastructure sector can learn from. The specialist infrastructure fund’s main objective is to invest in regulated electricity and gas distribution assets, as well as regulated water and sewerage assets, that offer predictable earnings, relatively low risk and reliable cash flows. Its current portfolio comprises a 49% interest in three high-quality regulated electricity distribution companies, including SA Power Networks in South Australia, and CitiPower and Powercor in Victoria.

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But the ASX-listed entity has experienced the odd bump in the road over the past year. Shareholders showed their dissatisfaction when 34.43% voted against the board at the annual shareholders meeting in May over concerns Spark paid too much during its participation in the $10.3

billion acquisition of NSW electricity transmission company TransGrid. That said, the company has notched up solid growth over the last five years. Its regulated asset base has grown from $6.73 billion in FY2010 to $9.48 billion in FY2015, while it has also experienced an 84% increase in share price performance since May 2011. “Our in-house team and core group of advisers possess a deep understanding of regulated network assets and how to make them deliver the best possible results for customers, employees and security holders,” Managing Director Rick Francis said at Spark Infrastructure’s Annual General Meeting on May 20.

CURRENTLY THERE ARE FEW STATES THAT HAVE A REGULATORY REGIME THAT WOULD GIVE CONFIDENCE TO LONG-TERM INVESTORS. TRILITY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR PATRICK O’LEARY

GOVERNMENT LOAN FACILITY AIMS FOR INNOVATION The Federal Government’s $2 billion National Water Infrastructure Loan Facility will provide a catalyst for innovative water infrastructure funding by encouraging publicprivate partnerships. The water bank has been available from July 1 2016 to provide direct loans to the states and territories to construct dams, pipelines and job creating water infrastructure projects.

“The Australian government is serious about ensuring nationally significant water infrastructure gets built as quickly as possible, and is not held up because finance is difficult to attract,” Deputy PM and Water Minister Barnaby Joyce said when unveiling the plans during the May 2016 federal budget. “The [facility] will stimulate and accelerate investment in major water infrastructure.”

Australian Water Association CEO Jonathan McKeown said the beneﬁts that would ﬂow from the measures would deliver advantages not just to the water sector but the Australian economy as a whole. “The Australian Water Association welcomes the water infrastructure funding, particularly as it encourages more public and private sector partnerships.”

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Infrastructure funding

A MODEL CHOICE The two main models of private investment for large scale infrastructure projects around the world right now are PPP models and Regulated Asset Base (RAB) models. Linklater’s Morgan explains that RAB models are usually used for systems or networks, whereas the PPP model is often more suitable for single assets. “The PPP model tends to be based on a 30-year concession model and it tends to be private project finance,” she said. “RAB models, on the other hand, tend to be more associated with developing longer term networks. “[RABs] are subject to a review by the regulator every five years and they are seen as more flexible for adding in additional parts to the network, which is why they are traditionally used in a network scenario.” That said, the Thames Tideway Tunnel project is a prime example of the RAB model being used for a large infrastructure asset. Morgan said that the low volatility attached to the RAB model tends to deliver slightly cheaper capital costs in terms of debt and equity. “On the flip side, the PPP model is incredibly effective at bringing in new constructed assets on a single asset basis, but once it has moved from its construction phase to its operational phase it is harder to change or amend,” she said.

MOST WATER UTILITIES… USUALLY USE THE MARKETPLACE FOR SERVICES, WHETHER THAT BE OPERATING WATER TREATMENT PLANTS OR IN SOME CASES EVEN CONTRACTING OUT THEIR OPERATIONS. NSW DPI WATER DEPUT Y DIRECTOR GENERAL GAVIN HANLON However, Prominent Australian economist and Lateral Economics CEO Nicholas Gruen said, for the health of the public purse, PPP projects need to be allocated on a strict merit basis. He said the taxpayer misses out on important infrastructure investment opportunities – across many sectors – when governments sloganeer about their ability to clear balance sheets of debt. “For example, if the Bracks Government (in Victoria) had invested in East Link and had built it itself, it would have higher

THAMES TIDEWAY TUNNEL It’s the project that has the infrastructure world talking. The £4.2 billion Thames Tideway Tunnel is considered a leading example of how to structure a regulated asset base (RAB) model – a concept that aims to give pricing certainty to private sector utility operators and their customers. “We have seen a huge amount of interest from across the world. There is an increasing interest in using this model to deliver new projects, as opposed to just managing existing networks,” said the project’s head lawyer Charlotte Morgan. Unlike Australia, the UK’s water infrastructure industry is privatised. Morgan, a partner of leading global law firm Linklaters, acted as an advisor to Thames Water to create a structure which was attractive to private sector investors. Instead of structuring the project within Thames Water, Morgan helped create a new separate utility company. “This company has its own regulated asset base and it is entitled to charge Thames Water for the purpose of designing, building, financing, and maintaining the new super sewer as part of the wider Thames network, while Thames Water remains the operator,” she said. “In order to create this new model, which had not been done before, we took the existing regulatory regime that is in place for all water utilities and we adapted it so that it would be appropriate for a new utility who was coming in to design, build and finance the sewer as a single purpose vehicle.” Creating a separate utility encouraged competition among incoming investors, Morgan said. “Then we effectively sold the company and the designs to the incoming investors, who were required to bring their own financing and equity into the model to create the financing platform to take forward the project.”

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The 25km tunnel project will capture mixed stormwater and sewage, which would otherwise overflow into the River Thames, and is due for completion in 2023. And while the RAB model has been used for lots of different types of networks in the UK – including rail and electricity – Morgan said this was the first time the model had been adapted to deliver such a large greenfield project. “We worked very closely with the regulator and that was very conducive to bringing forward a sensible package to put to investors,” she said. The success of the project has piqued the interest of the Australian water industry. In fact, Morgan has visited Australia twice in the last nine months to discuss the RAB model with industry leaders. “The latest sale in NSW [poles and wires] has shown that there is a huge appetite for investment in long-term infrastructure assets. Charlotte Morgan presented at the Australian Water Association’s Water Leaders Forum at Ozwater’16 in May.

debt,” he said. “But it would also be making a lot of money out of that debt and over any substantial period of time, [the government is] better off and the community is better off.” Gruen said fears of losing a AAA credit rating should not be the only reason governments resist taking on more debt. “We could get rid of all debt and then we would have a terriﬁc credit rating – we would just be a poorer country,” he said. “It’s a bit like saying, ‘honey, we are debt free, I sold the house, let’s go and party’. It doesn’t make sense. But that is the way we are running a lot of capital allocation decisions in government.” Gruen adds there are few private ﬁrms with AAA ratings, for example. “They would rather borrow more because they can see far more opportunities to borrow and invest the money to advantage than are available to them with a AAA rating,” he said. “So they go for a very conservative AA or A rating, and they are able to borrow a lot more and therefore make themselves a lot richer without increasing risk very much. I’m not for or against governments having any given credit rating but we should choose where we want to be on the merits, not on what makes a good sound bite.

INVESTMENT CHALLENGES A chief difficulty with PPPs, as TRILITY’s Patrick O’Leary points out, is effectively fixing prices decades in advance. “The base

costs at the time we put our bid in – we have to be comfortable we can live with that over 35 years,” he said. “Where PPPs go wrong is when people start to seek to change them – to change the scope, to change the nature of what’s being produced. That’s where conﬂict arises.” Then there’s the challenge of negotiating who is best placed to take on certain risks within a project. “Changes in law are not risks that the private sector feels able to take. So there’s always provisions for adjusting the tariff in the event of a change of law,” O’Leary said. “But the complete construction risks, the risk on the asset over 35 years, and the risk on providing the correct quality of output – these are risks that the private sector is very comfortable to take on.” Another challenge facing the industry is the lack of clarity around regulation and how returns are derived in Australia from state to state. “The best form of regulation is probably market competition, but that isn’t generally available in the water sector,” O’Leary said. “So the second best option is to have very clear regulation in terms of the services to be provided and the returns that the investor can expect to receive. But currently there are few states that have a regulatory regime that would give conﬁdence to long-term investors.” Flow Systems’ Terry Leckie adds that a smooth path forward will rely on all parties understanding that increased private

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Infrastructure funding

[RABS] ARE SUBJECT TO A REVIEW BY THE REGULATOR EVERY FIVE YEARS AND THEY ARE SEEN AS MORE FLEXIBLE FOR ADDING IN ADDITIONAL PARTS TO THE NETWORK, WHICH IS WHY THEY ARE TRADITIONALLY USED IN A NETWORK SCENARIO. LINKLATERS PARTNER CHARLOTTE MORGAN sector participation is win-win. “It is a combined opportunity. It is not about public or private – the question is: how do we get the value out of both?” he said. “The systems that we have built over the last 150 years have served us well. They solved a whole lot of issues at the time. “But what we have now is a changing demand from our customers and our communities and we need to create an overlay – not replace it.

BRINGING IT IN HOUSE Effectively creating that overlay will require water utilities to substantiallly increase their comfort with and use of sophisticated ﬁnancial instruments, said Seqwater CEO Peter Dennis. “At this point, most utilities rely on advice from Treasury on how debt should be managed, as opposed to having any internal capability at all,” he said. “Our operating costs

are $225 million a year. We pay $550 million in interest. Yet how many people do we have managing that interest? Not many, with the skills and capability to explore and investigate different borrowing opportunities or smart financial engineering options.” However, Dennis said that was starting to change. “We’re probably one of the most debt-incumbent utilities in the country, so it’s a key piece of work for us. We have a finance manager who looks after the day-to-day financial side of things and we’ve just put our new strategic finance person at the same level. We’ve created that new position to look at the longer-term picture for the balance sheet and financial sustainability.” Dennis said if water utlities were going to maximise the opportunities available to them with private sector financing, then they need to update their conception of what is possible. “We need to challenge our paradigm in terms of how we manage our debt and balance sheet,” he said. “We need to be a lot more innovative, from a financial and balance sheet management perspective, in how we manage our utility debt. “Quite simply, water utilities have a lot of very long-term assets but we tend to adopt, compared to those asset lives, very short times to pay back debt. These assets have very stable income and very low risks. “It’s a very safe investment compared to a lot of other investments, so we need to get a lot better at how we package that up and make it more attractive to the market. If we can better communicate that to the market, then we’ll open a lot of new opportunities for the water sector, and that’s good for everyone. It’s not about privitisation, it’s about being open to smarter and potentially more efficient funding models that can ultimately benefit our customers.”

HOW INNOVATIVE FUNDING MODELS ARE DROUGHT-PROOFING AUSTRALIA As the Millennium Drought ravaged Australia, the need for drought-proof water utilities came to the fore. Desalination plants across the country started popping up, and state governments sought assistance from private enterprise to deliver and operate the projects – to varying degrees. With the Adelaide Desalination Plant, for example, private water utility company TRILITY became a Joint Venture (JV) partner in AdelaideAqua, the entity under agreement with SA Water to operate and maintain the plant until 2033. For the Gold Coast Desalination Plant, the design, build and operation of the project was undertaken by the Gold Coast Desalination Alliance, composed of Veolia

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Water, John Holland, SKM and Cardno. The alliance is now responsible for the operation and maintenance of the plant. However, the NSW Government went one step further with the Sydney Desalination Plant. The self-funded desalination project was originally owned by Sydney Water Corporation (SWC). Construction of the desalination plant took three years and it was then run for two years to prove capacity and reliability. The NSW Government then sold a 50-year lease on the plant in June 2012, backed by a 50-year water supply contract with SWC. The bid was won by a consortium of Hastings Funds Management and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan at a cost of $2.3 billion.

Control Components

National Water Account

MAPPING THE FLOWS THE BUREAU OF METEOROLOGY’S NATIONAL WATER ACCOUNT HAS HIGHLIGHTED THE MIXED FORTUNES EL NIÑO BROUGHT AUSTRALIA IN 2014–2015, WITH VARIATION BETWEEN THE NATION’S MAJOR URBAN REGIONS TAKING EFFECT ON WATER SUPPLY STRATEGIES. ADELAIDE REGION Rainfall:

445 mm

Desalinated water as a portion of urban water supply – down

Down 30% on the long-term average

Urban water supply from Murray River – up

2 0 14 –2015:

2 0 13 –2014:

14%

38% 22%

of total

2 0 12 –2013:

of total

MELBOURNE REGION Storage

Rainfall:

696 mm less than

18% last year % of the long-term 81 average

61% % less than

last year

857,408

ML total

Sources: Bureau of Meteorology National Water Account 2014-2015. 56

www.awa.asn.au

PERTH REGION Storage

31% 614 mm 655,300 Rainfall:

FULL ML

% less than

last year

average

URBAN W AT E R S U P P LY SOURCES

% of long-term

SOUTH EAST QUEENSLAND Rainfall

Groundwater 42% Desalinated 41% Surface water 16%

Dam storage

% 1066 95 mm 2,593,703 % 57 336, 17% 6% 482 FULL

more than last year

I N

TOTA L

MORE THAN LAST YEAR

ML of water used

more than last year

SYDNEY REGION Rainfall:

Storage:

% 1052 93 mm 2,862,622 63% 604,113 646 904 6% FULL

2013A V E R A G E : 2014: 2012mm 2013:

889

on last year mm

TOTAL

CAPACIT Y

ML WAT E R U S E D less than last year

To access data from other urban regions, including Hobart, Darwin and Canberra, please visit www.bom.gov.au/water/nwa/2015/ www.awa.asn.au

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of a wastewater treatment plant. Instead of repairing or replacing a blower with the same make and model, operators would EHQHÂżW IURP WKH +67 WXUERFRPSUHVVRU WKDW can reduce the energy costs for aeration by XS WR DQG ZKDW LV PRUH RIIHUV D SD\ back within two years. In addition to lower power consumption, the replacement of an existing machine by D 6XO]HU +67 WXUERFRPSUHVVRU SURYLGHV KLJKHU UHOLDELOLW\ VLJQLÂżFDQWO\ ORZHU maintenance costs and quieter operation. 6LQFH WKH +67 FRPSUHVVRUV ZRUN ZLWKRXW oil for lubrication, and without any other polluting liquids, they also contribute to a cleaner working environment. A further advantage of turbo technology is the high HIÂżFLHQF\ RI DOPRVW WKH HQWLUH FRQWURO UDQJH For more information on the new fast-track HST turbocompressor deliveries, please visit sulzer.com/ +RXUV WR %HWWHU (IÂżFLHQF\

Sulzer, headquartered in Winterthur, Switzerland, since 1834, specializes in pumping solutions, rotating equipment maintenance and services as well as separation, reaction, and mixing technology. Sulzer designs, develops and supplies pumping solutions and related equipment worldwide. Intensive UHVHDUFK DQG GHYHORSPHQW LQ Ă&#x20AC;XLG dynamics, process-oriented products, and special materials as well as reliable service solutions help the company maintain its leading position in its key markets: oil and gas, power, and water (including pulp and paper). Sulzer serves clients worldwide through a network of over 150 production and service sites and has a strong footprint in emerging markets. In 2015, the company achieved sales of roughly CHF 3 billion with around 14 000 employees. www.sulzer.com

INQUIRIES: Clive Patten, Global Head of Sales Municipal Water, Sulzer Pumps Wastewater UK Ltd. Tel: +44 1293 558 141 | Email: clive.patten@sulzer.com

T H E AU ST R A L I A N WAT E R A S S O C I AT I O N M AG A Z I N E

T E C H N I C A L PA P E R S SUMMARIES OF THE LATEST TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES AND INSIGHTS FOR WATER PROFESSIONALS.

60 63 64 65 66 69

INDUSTRIAL REMEDIATION Reducing air and water pollution from Melbourne’s Brooklyn Industrial Precinct. STORMWATER MANAGEMENT Sustainable design for the health of Sydney’s Parramatta River. WATER WARS Examining the role of water in interstate conﬂicts. DOWNSTREAM IMPACTS How water quality affects property values. CATCHMENT MANAGEMENT Findings from the Source Catchments as Water Quality Treatment Assets Project. HEAVY METAL Passive multi-barriers to control stormwater runoff pollution.

70 72 73 74 76 78

URBAN DESIGN Beating sanitary sewer overﬂows with rainwater tanks. ANAEROBIC DIGESTION Utilising recuperative thickening to reduce digester process inhibition risks. CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT Educating customers to create positive change in behaviour. CUSTOMER INNOVATION Lessons from a major customer experience redesign. IRRIGATION In-situ desalination for climate-resilient irrigation. WASTEWATER MANAGEMENT Managing wet-weather overﬂows to achieve more cost-effective outcomes.

For extended papers on the latest research in the Australian water sector, visit the Water e-Journal at bit.ly/water-ejournal www.awa.asn.au

executive summary industrial remediation

Living Brooklyn: industrial remediation through water AN INTEGRATED WATER CYCLE MANAGEMENT (IWCM) STRATEGY TO REDUCE POLLUTION FROM THE BROOKLYN INDUSTRIAL PRECINCT. S Roberts, T Dixon, A Gray, R Jones, D Browne

he Brooklyn Industrial Precinct (BIP) is a major industrial and business hub located in Melbourne’s inner west. The BIP and adjacent areas downwind suffer the highest levels of air pollution in greater Melbourne (measured as levels of the particle PM10), which has created long-standing tension between business, government and community stakeholders. To improve business, environmental and health outcomes in the precinct, Brimbank City Council embarked on the

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‘Brooklyn Evolution Strategy’. This led to the preparation of ‘Living Brooklyn’, an Integrated Water Cycle Management (IWCM) strategy utilising water as the catalyst to bring stakeholders together and remediate pollution from the precinct. The strategy led to the development of a suite of water-related projects that deliver multiple beneﬁts, including improved water reuse, stormwater treatment and air quality. The strategy also pursued enhanced liveability and business prosperity through

place-making projects that create a sense of pride in the precinct, and establish greener and cooler environments. Ongoing and careful management of stakeholder engagement across the private and public realm was essential. This paper outlines the process of collaboration and technical investigation undertaken to arrive at the preferred approach to support BIP’s transition to greater prosperity. The Living Brooklyn project consisted of the following three phases. • Relationship Building and Data Collection: Project stakeholders were engaged early and formed into four teams to facilitate collaboration. Baseline IWCM, economic, dust and health assessments were prepared to understand the challenges and opportunities in BIP. • Consensus Building: Agency and visioning workshops, one-on-one meetings, technical discussions, positioning sessions and community engagement framed and informed the project, while establishing technical rigour to identify and assess IWCM projects suitable for the precinct. • IWCM Strategy Development: The most viable projects were prioritised to develop the IWCM strategy. Delivery of priority projects and further capacity building was set in motion with the

Ongoing and careful management of stakeholder engagement across the private and public realm was essential. creation of an implementation plan endorsed by key stakeholders. To date, strategy outcomes include the resurfacing of Jones and Bunting Roads and action by a number of businesses to improve site water and dust management practices. Work is also progressing on planning scheme amendments and the creation of a Gateway Site that may include a stormwater treatment wetland. Water is the driving force that has brought together this complex and diverse stakeholder group to work in

improving water management, health and productivity in BIP. IWCM is of particular value as it manages impacts caused by pollution, out-of-date industrial practices, health hazards and business inefﬁciencies to deliver greater social equity, health, green space, biodiversity and good urban design. Simon Roberts is an Integrated Water Management Specialist with e2designlab and sits on the Australian Water Association’s Young Water Professionals (Vic) Committee. Adrian Gray is Manager

of Urban Design at Brimbank City Council and current Chair of Greening The West. Roger Jones is a Professorial Research Fellow at the Victoria Institute of Strategic Economic Studies (VISES) at Victoria University. Tashia Dixon has over 15 years’ experience in social planning, urban design and sustainability management. Dr Dale Browne is a Senior Environmental Engineer at e2designlab.

To read the full article, visit the Water e-Journal at bit.ly/water_ejournal

Current

THE AUSTRALIAN WATER ASSOCIATION MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2015

AUSTRALIAN WATER ASSOCIATION PLATFORMS

Volume 42 No 6

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executive summary river health

The Parramatta River Waterway Improvement Plan IMPLEMENTING WSUD STORMWATER MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS TO IMPROVE THE HEALTH OF THE PARRAMATTA RIVER. T Nadesan

he purpose of the Parramatta River Waterway Improvement Plan is to implement a series of integrated stormwater management projects that will help improve the ecological and social value of the Parramatta River. Sydney Water manages stormwater infrastructure in the Parramatta River catchment and has an inﬂuence on the river’s health and tributaries, along with councils and land management authorities. The Parramatta River Catchment Group consists of councils, community groups and State Government agencies, including Sydney Water, working to improve the waterway. In the 2016–2020 Sydney Water Capital Program, stormwater quality improvement has been proposed in accordance with the Parramatta River Coastal Zone Management Strategy. Sydney Water’s corporate values: ‘to care for one another, the environment and the community; to create new and better ways of doing things; and, having the customer at the heart’ have been another key driver for the Waterway Improvement Plan. Others include the Sydney Water Act, and Operating License and Environment Plan, which require Sydney Water to sustainably operate, maintain and manage its stormwater infrastructure. In addition, the PRCG currently has an initiative called ‘Our Living River’ to plan for the regular use of natural swimming locations throughout the river in the future. The Waterway Improvement Plan will involve the collaboration of Sydney Water with stakeholders to agree on project locations and, where partnerships need to be entered into, to gain the best value outcomes for the community. Sydney Water and consultant group Alluvium have developed 10 project options for the

Parramatta River Waterway Improvement Plan. Projects will involve the use of Water-Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) to achieve the best possible water quality and liveability improvement for Parramatta River. The process involved: • Reviewing background information, including geospatial data; • Meeting with council staff from declared catchment areas to identify project opportunities and possible ongoing maintenance options in the future; • Undertaking desktop analysis of the potential options, proposing and mapping out the locations and project sizes. These locations and projects were then reviewed by Sydney Water; • Developing to initial concept stage 10 project options and undertaking a cost, risk and benefit review. With continued collaboration, the Parramatta River Waterway Improvement Plan could create industry capacity, promote works elsewhere and provide a foundation of knowledge and data that will support the integration of stormwater and wastewater management. Thuwaarahan Waren Nadesan is currently in his second year of Sydney Water’s graduate program. To read the full article, visit the Water e-Journal at bit.ly/water_ejournal

Sydney Water’s corporate values: ‘to care for one another, the environment and the community, create new and better ways of doing things and have the customer at the heart’ have been a key driver. www.awa.asn.au

executive summary water security

Water scarcity and LQWHUVWDWH FRQĲ LFW A SOCIAL CAPITAL APPROACH TO THE BATTLE BETWEEN NEO-MALTHUSIANISM AND RESOURCE OPTIMISM. A Kosovac

ater scarcity is an increasingly important issue in a world of changing climate and neo-Malthusians argue that it will lead to increased conflict between states. Resource optimists, who view water as far too important to fight over, refute the neo-Malthusian viewpoint and argue that people will always find alternative solutions before conflict occurs. Much of the research in the ﬁeld shows that interstate war over water resources alone is extremely unlikely and that there has, in fact, been no known war between two states over water alone. However, this does not preclude water resource issues from exacerbating other existing tensions between states. The fascinating aspect of this research shows that water resources can aggravate existing issues or, conversely, can act as a tool to encourage cooperation between states. In order to explore why this is the case, this theory utilises social capital as the explanatory tool when determining whether water issues will act as an aggravating or cooperating factor in existing tension. Social capital theory is a way of describing decision-making using concepts such as

social networks, norms of reciprocity and, also, trustworthiness. Social capital is a public good and, as such, does not just assist those who have directly invested in the concept – it beneﬁts the wider community as a whole. By investing trust in social relationships we inherently place value in their wellbeing and escape pure self-interest. This eases cooperation and collaboration, reducing tensions that could lead to conﬂict.

Rather than water resources being used as fodder REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE in existing tensions If there is ample social capital between the between the states, states, the exacerbating factor of water issues is significantly decreased. This is it was instead used true in the case of Israel and Jordan. During a period of declining water as a tool of resources, the high level of social capital between states enabled the establishment cooperation. 64

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of a clear dispute management process, which helped avert violent confrontation. Examples of strong social capital came through in the negotiations between the states, the agreements set up in the 1990s, and general reciprocal behaviour that served to foster a cooperative relationship. Rather than water being used as fodder in existing tensions between the states (of which there are many), it was instead used as a tool of cooperation. In an in-depth analysis of the formal and informal relationship between Israeli and Jordanian policymakers, it is clear there was ample social capital in place. This was shown through open and transparent information sharing, establishment of norms and collective decision-making through a joint water institution. Not only was this a factor between the policymakers, but also on the ground with projects such as ‘Good Water Neighbours’. The research of social capital has been utilised by Elinor Ostrom on collective action schemes on water in Asia, while Serageldin and Grootaert showed that social capital was what curbed violence over joint forest management in the state of Gujarat in India. This research differs from the aforementioned, as it deals with relations between states, rather than between communities. As such, it presents a good example of how developing elements of soft skills as well as establishing trust-building frameworks can serve to foster an environment of cooperation, rather than conﬂict. Anna Kosovac is a Civil Engineer at Yarra Valley Water in Melbourne.

To read the full article, visit the Water e-Journal at bit.ly/water_ejournal

executive summary hedonic modelling

Economic impact of water quality on property value A STUDY EXAMINING THE EFFECTS OF WATER QUALITY ON HOUSE PRICES IN FLORIDA’S ST JOHNS RIVER SYSTEM. V Seidel, C Diamond, P Yacobellis, A Barker, C Cortez

he St Johns River is located on the east coast of north Florida in the US. It is approximately 500km long and 5km wide, flowing through 12 counties. About 3.5 million people live within its catchment. The Lower St Johns Basin – the study area – comprises Duval, Clay, Putnam and St Johns Counties. Following a workshop convened by the University of North Florida to examine the economic value of the St Johns River to the State of Florida, The Balmoral Group was engaged to conduct research that addressed the impacts of the river and its floodplain on property values. Public values for aesthetics, access and open space enjoyment of the river are reflected in property values and taxes, and economic value can be estimated through hedonic pricing models. Published research affirms that changes in water quality contribute to property values in Florida at varying distances from the water resource, based on attributes of ‘edge’ (representing waterfront premiums) and ‘proximity’ (representing distances to the waterfront or access point). The economic impact brought about by lower water quality, such as reduced clarity and toxic algal blooms, can be recognised through reduced property values and, in turn, reduced tax revenue. Forty years of literature have found that lower water quality reduces nearby property values,

and recent work has measured the effects of regulation of nutrient loadings on economic values in Florida. In work published in Land Economics using hedonic pricing models, Walsh found that the value of improved water quality from reduced nutrient loads depends on property location and proximity to waterfront. Walsh suggested that the economic beneﬁts to non-waterfront homes near a waterbody with high water quality may even exceed those realised by waterfront homes with diminished water quality. This study examined the proximity effects of water quality on house prices in the St Johns River system. A hedonic model was used to estimate the economic value of the river based

The modelling found that riverfront properties in the four counties studied had a combined price premium of $944 million due solely to river frontage.

on more than 23,000 property sales fronting or near the river over the period 2003 to 2013. The modelling found that riverfront properties in the four counties studied had a combined price premium of $944 million due solely to river frontage. Tributary frontage properties had a $117 million price premium over properties that lacked water frontage, but were otherwise similar in property characteristics. The value attributable to the river extends to the surrounding neighbourhoods, with an additional $837 million of value for 23,494 properties with proximity to the river. The increased property values would equate to a theoretical increase in property tax revenues of $45.3 million over 20 years. This study clearly demonstrates that a case for investment in water quality improvements can be made, not only from a public amenity perspective, but also from a monetary perspective. Valerie Seidel is President and Principal Economist, Craig Diamond is a Senior Economist, Paul Yacobellis is a Research Economist and GIS Specialist, Alicia Barker is a Research Analyst and GIS Specialist, and Cortney Cortez is a Research Assistant, all with The Balmoral Group.

To read the full article, visit the Water e-Journal at bit.ly/water_ejournal

www.awa.asn.au

executive summary water quality

Catchment management investment standards AN OVERVIEW OF FINDINGS FROM THE ‘SOURCE CATCHMENTS AS WATER QUALITY TREATMENT ASSETS’ PROJECT. C Wearing, J Cheesman, S Skull, G Ramachandran, K Henderson

ater utilities undertake catchment management for a variety of reasons. Catchment management programs may be a regulatory requirement to complement conventional water treatment, or they may be voluntary. Some utilities consider them an investment that can provide non-traditional and often additional non-monetised environmental and social benefits. Regardless of the driver, water utilities need to understand how catchment management programs can be incorporated into an infrastructure investment decision-making process. In an economically-regulated environment, where consumer affordability is paramount and the regulator puts the burden of proof on the water provider to

illustrate mitigation of water quality risk, there are two critical challenges: • How can a sound business case be made for investment in catchment management as a water quality ‘treatment’ option, using best-practice approaches in triple bottom line cost benefit evaluation? • How can it be demonstrated, in the geographic context of the catchment under consideration, that mitigation measures can be successfully implemented and water quality improvement is achieved? With these challenges in mind, WSAA and WRF have undertaken the Source Catchments As Water Quality Treatment Assets project on behalf of their members. The project developed a Catchment Management Investment Standard (the

Standard) to assist water utilities to build stronger business cases for catchment management as an alternative to more traditional, capital intensive investments. The Standard provides users with a summary of key steps and practices needed for an evidence-based investment in source catchment management activities. The Standard is supported by a number of tools, including a beneﬁtcost assessment tool. Its development was informed by a Rapid Stocktake. This encompassed a high-level assessment of key lessons from catchment management initiatives and programs in the United States and Australia.

EXAMPLE OF CUSTOMER, PLANNING, TACTICAL AND OPERATIONAL LEVELS OF SERVICE FOR WATER SUPPLY. CUSTOMER

TACTICAL

OPERATIONAL

Reliability of safe water supply not to exceed an outage of more than six hours.

For a water aqueduct • Minimum hydraulic capacity 4ML/day for 99.8% of the time. • Maximum duration of low flow not to exceed six hours. • Safe to operate and maintain. • Durability to be able to perform their required functions for at least their nominated design life. • Will not endanger the public or cause unnecessary disruption. • Minimise contamination risk. • Meet the water leakage loss target.

Secured from unauthorised access and tampering • Maintained to remove debris and flow conveyance. • Performance condition greater than three requires intervention. • Safety assessed using HAZID process. • Outage for maintenance not to exceed six hours. • Leakage reported and rectified where practical.

PLANNING Water supply needs for current and 10-year future capacity of the township: this would be measured through performance metrics. For example, a minimum of 4ML/day based on projected usage for a peak summer day.

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The Standard has 11 steps: • Identify significant assets and set minimum and target levels of service (develop a Strategic Asset Management Plan); • Clearly articulate the need (problem definition); • Identify the funder(s) and stakeholder(s), develop a constituency and build partnerships; • Agree on the level of evidence the investor wants to approve the investment; • Assemble the evidence base (define and identify high-value assets); • Show community support and willingness to pay; • Prepare an investment Logic Map; • Identify strategic responses; • Do a first-pass filtering of the long list of strategic responses and get investor sign-off on the short list; • Prepare the compelling investment case;

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• Monitor, evaluate, adapt. It is hoped the Standard will provide invaluable help to water utilities in Australia and the United States to make the case for catchment management for drinking water supply. We look forward to its widespread use and, of course, to its progressive improvement over time. Cameron Wearing is Principal Policy Officer Sustainability and Advocacy with Seqwater, while Dr Jeremy Cheesman is a Director at Marsden Jacob Associates and Steven Skull is Regional Manager of Alluvium Brisbane. Gayathri Ramachandran is the Research and Innovation Coordinator at the Water Services Association of Australia and Katie Henderson is a Research Manager at the Water Research Foundation. To read the full article, visit the Water e-Journal at bit.ly/water_ejournal

executive summary

stormwater treatment

Removal of heavy metals from VWRUPZDWHU UXQRĳ EVALUATION OF A PASSIVE MULTI-BARRIER TREATMENT SYSTEM AT GLENCORE’S BULK STORAGE FACILITY. K Athanasiadis, P McFadyen, M Brennan

series of white papers and articles have focused on the challenge of evaluating stormwater runoff quality, and the ability of commercially-available devices to successfully control runoff and its pollutants. This paper summarises the results from a field trial of GHD’s StormDMT device treating the stormwater runoff generated at a bulk storage facility in the Port of Townsville. Stormwater runoff is one of the major environmental risks to receiving waterways, which degrade as urban population densities increase. The signifi cant impact of discharging untreated stormwater runoff is driving stricter environmental regulations globally. Stormwater is becoming a valued part of diverse water supply portfolios, in line with Water-Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) principles. Typical WSUD structures used in stormwater management are swales, bio-retention systems and constructed wetlands. These systems can achieve signifi cant reductions to Total Suspended Solids (TSS 70–80%), Total Nitrogen (TN 40–50%) and Total Phosphorous (TP 50%). This reduction is mainly due to the removal of the particulate-bound contaminants. These systems require signifi cant land surface area: 1–2% of the catchment area for a bio-retention basin and 5–6% for a constructed wetland. To fill this gap, a range of stormwater quality

improvement devices are available from various vendors. The aim of this ﬁ eld trial was to assess the performance of the StormDMT technology – a passive multi-barrier stormwater treatment system – against critical stormwater runoff parameters such as storm event pollutograph and pollutant phase distribution. Flow-based stormwater quality data was obtained from six storm events during 2012–13. The StormDMT

Stormwater runoff is one of the major environmental risks to receiving waterways that increasingly degrade as urban population densities increase.

multi-barrier filter has demonstrated an event mean removal effi ciency of approximately 87% for total copper, 80% for total lead and 76% for total zinc. Considering the site-relevant stormwater runoff pollutant rates, the StormDMT filtration unit demonstrated a minimum maintenance life of one year. Dr Konstantinos Athanasiadis is Principal Process Engineer – Industrial Water & Coal Seam Gas in GHD Brisbane, where Paul McFadyen is Principal Process Engineer. Martin Brennan is a Senior Environmental Engineer at GHD in Townsville.

To read the full article, visit the Water e-Journal at bit.ly/water_ejournal

www.awa.asn.au

executive summary

water-sensitive urban design

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A STUDY TO QUANTIFY THE IMPACTS OF IMPLEMENTING RAINWATER TANKS IN TERMS OF MINIMISING SANITARY SEWER OVERFLOWS.

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rban drainage systems are frequently unable to cope with increasingly intense storm events, mainly due to non-stationary climate and rapid urbanisation. As drainage systems become less efficient, the incidence of urban flooding and sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs) increases. This, in turn, has various detrimental impacts, including on human health and the environment. SSOs are caused by rainfall-derived infiltration and inflow (RDII), which is the increased portion of flows that enter the ageing sewer network in terms of inflow as well as infiltration. Inflow is the stormwater that enters the sewer pipes through direct connections. Sources of inflow include illegal connections of roof downpipes to the sewer pipes and broken manhole covers, etc. On the other hand, infiltration denotes stormwater runoff, which enters the sewer pipes after percolating through the soil. Sources of infiltration include cracked sewer pipes and defective joints. Sanitary sewers are designed to accommodate a certain

www.awa.asn.au

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amount of RDII flows. However, during intense rainfall events this amount of inflow and infiltration is exceeded and may lead to SSOs. Recently, there has been an increase in the implementation of water-sensitive urban design (WSUD) strategies to manage the urban water cycle in a more sustainable way. These strategies include rainwater tanks, rain gardens, bio-retention cells, porous pavements, green roofs and vegetative swales. If adopted, either alone or in combination,

they can reduce urban ﬂooding and SSOs by controlling the excess stormwater runoff that enters the drainage system. This study aims to quantify the impacts of implementing a commonly used WSUD approach, rainwater tanks, in terms of minimising SSOs. Rainwater tanks can capture roof runoff, which may reduce excess stormwater runoff entering the sanitary sewer network in terms of RDII. This study did not consider the rainwater tank as an alternative source of water supply for non-potable uses in households.

Rainwater tanks can capture roof runoff, which may reduce excess stormwater runoff entering the sanitary sewer network.

CATCH AND SAVE For a case study residential catchment in Melbourne, Victoria, a detailed hydraulic modelling of implementing rainwater tanks using PCSWMM (a commercial version of US EPA’s Stormwater Management Model, SWMM) has been presented and results compared with the base case (without implementing rainwater tanks). Various rainwater tank parameters were analysed in the modelling for assessing the reduction in SSO volumes. These parameters

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included: tank size, drain time, drain delay and number of households with rainwater tanks. The study considered four different tank sizes: 500L, 1000L, 1200L and 1500L; four different drain times (time

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required to empty the tank): 12, 24, 36 and 48 hours; four different drain delays (time elapsed before opening the underdrain outlet pipe): zero, 12, 24 and 36 hours, and two different values of the number of households with rainwater

tanks: 100% and 50% of the households. It was observed from the analysis that the rainwater tanks could lead to a reduction in SSO volume by a maximum of 33% when compared to the base case. A much larger reduction in SSO volumes could be expected when other WSUD strategies would be implemented in conjunction with rainwater tanks. Tasnim Nasrin is a PhD student and Dr Nitin Muttil is a Senior Lecturer in the Water Resources Group at the College of Engineering and Science, Victoria University. Ashok K Sharma is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Sustainability and Innovation, Victoria University.

To read the full article, visit the Water e-Journal at bit.ly/water_ejournal

technical paper Water Security ISSN 2206-1991 Volume 1 No 3 2016 http://dx.doi.org/10.21139/wej.2016.024

NEO-MALTHUSIANISM VS. RESOURCE OPTIMISM â&#x20AC;&#x201C; A SOCIAL CAPITAL APPROACH

This paper aims to demonstrate that the truth sits somewhere in between: although conďŹ&#x201A;ict over water alone is highly unlikely, shared water resources may exacerbate an existing conďŹ&#x201A;ict in water-scarce regions. If there is ample social capital between the states, this exacerbating factor signiďŹ cantly decreases â&#x20AC;&#x201C; in fact, the higher the social capital between the states, the less likely it is that water will aggravate existing tensions. This is true in the case of Israel and Jordan. During a period of declining water resources, when water had the potential to exacerbate existing issues, the high level of social capital between the two countries enabled the establishment of a clear dispute management process that has reduced the risk of violent confrontation.

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Previous research in the ďŹ eld presents a neo-Malthusian, alarmist argument, which assumes war is likely over scarce water resources. With the beneďŹ t of recent literature, this paper provides full consideration of the countering resource optimist argument, ensuring that the conclusions are signiďŹ cant, based on current environmental trends and academic debate.

focusing on elements of trust and reciprocity, and how water resources have ceased to act as an aggravating 15 inďŹ&#x201A;uence in existing conďŹ&#x201A;ict. The study is used to determine whether social capital could be a factor in lowering the likelihood of water shortages exacerbating existing disputes. 10

Overflow

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NEO-MALTHUSIANISM VS. RESOURCE OPTIMISM IN WATER 5 SCARCITY-RELATED CONFLICT Annual

ABSTRACT

Desig

A Kosovac

Water scarcity is an increasingly important and widespread issue in a world of changing climate. NeoMalthusians argue that it will lead to increased conďŹ&#x201A;ict between states. Resource optimists, who view water as far too important to ďŹ ght over, have refuted this viewpoint and argue that people will always ďŹ nd alternative solutions before conďŹ&#x201A;ict occurs.

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techn ical pa per Water -Sensi tive Urb an

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hour rainwater e of runo 0.85, er flo As seen a drain delay inuously a rainlted, ďŹ&#x201A;ow s, the in the 6 the ff capt drain thro in Water scarcity is an existential management. This theory is tested sub w in The neo-Malthusian approach sewe tank of wat max seen from me sew this time ured by 0 ugh 573M s can r over imum er ďŹ&#x201A;ows er pip 6/12 the und L, with be maximum of 48 hour ďŹ gure, the the thisrge whichthe realist /201 threat to state survival, one which d oriďŹ tan on a shared water basin case study k is. It can is closely over aligned tanks Eq. (1) ďŹ gur Avera 0 s resu is assu estimated as governbe erdrain e during of redu ce equ theinternational (Walsh e that lted in when med to previous theatio ge Dry 23:36 environmental scientists contend will a drainthe volum between Israel and Jordan, in the interpretation of inte compare ction in sewe rainwatered by the drain e grea ďŹ&#x201A;ow etteral., nse area. n, as 11/1 the Weath r over d to the stodelay rain ofcoe maximum 201500L relations RES (Waltz, 1979). 2/20 worsen signiďŹ cantly. As water scarcity1 context of social capital factors, 12 fďŹ c than shown red wat fall. For the 4). , with base case ďŹ&#x201A;ow 10 3:36 er Flo ient ULT s,,resu redu er, hour in 500L, (whenn is the D isltedC repres . 1,500L w com dractionHd in is the in the ents sewe DISCU S AND rainwater 1,000L, 1,20 15/1 the over heig overďŹ&#x201A;ow pare dintoexp 1. in SSO Since 2/20 0L and tÄ&#x201A;Ć&#x161;Ä&#x17E;Ć&#x152; Ć?Ć&#x161;Ć&#x152;Ä&#x17E;Ć?Ć? Ĺ?Ć? Ä&#x161;Ä&#x17E;ÄŽĹśÄ&#x17E;Ä&#x161; Ä?Ç&#x2021; Ć&#x161;Ĺ&#x161;Ä&#x17E; hĹśĹ?Ć&#x161;Ä&#x17E;Ä&#x161; EÄ&#x201A;Ć&#x;Ĺ˝ĹśĆ? Ä&#x201A;Ć? ĹŻÄ&#x17E;Ć?Ć? Ć&#x161;Ĺ&#x161;Ä&#x201A;Ĺś ĎÍ&#x2022;ĎłĎŹĎŹ Ä?ĆľÄ?Ĺ?Ä? ĹľÄ&#x17E;Ć&#x161;Ć&#x152;Ä&#x17E;Ć? Ĺ˝Ä¨ Ç Ä&#x201A;Ć&#x161;Ä&#x17E;Ć&#x152; Ć&#x2030;Ä&#x17E;Ć&#x152; Ä?Ä&#x201A;Ć&#x2030;Ĺ?Ć&#x161;Ä&#x201A; Ä&#x201A;ĹśĹśĆľÄ&#x201A;ĹŻĹŻÇ&#x2021;Í&#x2DC; tÄ&#x201A;Ć&#x161;Ä&#x17E;Ć&#x152; Ć?Ä?Ä&#x201A;Ć&#x152;Ä?Ĺ?Ć&#x161;Ç&#x2021;Í&#x2022; Ç Ĺ&#x161;Ä&#x17E;Ć&#x152;Ä&#x17E; Ä&#x17E;Ä?Ĺ˝ĹśĹ˝ĹľĹ?Ä? Ä&#x161;Ä&#x17E;Ç&#x20AC;Ä&#x17E;ĹŻĹ˝Ć&#x2030;ĹľÄ&#x17E;ĹśĆ&#x161; Ĺ?Ć? Ĺ&#x161;Ä&#x201A;ĹľĆ&#x2030;Ä&#x17E;Ć&#x152;Ä&#x17E;Ä&#x161;Í&#x2022; Ĺ?Ć? Rainf the baserdra tanks, 10 7:36

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executive summary anaerobic digestion

Improved trade waste co-digestion DIGESTION WITH RECUPERATIVE THICKENING IS EFFECTIVE TO REDUCE DIGESTER PROCESS INHIBITION RISKS AND IMPROVE FOG LOADING RATE IN MUNICIPAL DIGESTERS. J Thiele, P Burt, M Monaghan

he combined anaerobic digestion (co-digestion) of municipal wastewater treatment plant biosolids and trade waste (food residuals, selected industrial processing waste and grease trap waste) to biogas and dewatered sludge allows the provision of up to 100% of the heat and power requirements at municipal treatment plants. Co-digestion of trade waste materials with high fat, oil and grease (FOG) content often results in lower waste procurement/transport costs, a higher methane yield, improved biogas quality and improved commercial viability of the co-digestion plant. However, addition of FOG trade waste increases risks for digester souring, digester foaming and fat deposition in tanks and pipework. Digester operation guidelines for FOG co-digestion therefore recommend low FOG loading rates (< 0.5 kg FOG/m3digester/day). Recently, we showed that integration of recuperative thickening (RT) doubled the biosolids treatment capacities in municipal sludge digesters. RT during FOG waste co-digestion removes digester process inhibition risks, increases the digester process stability and maximises gas production. With the use of RT in municipal sludge digesters, FOG digestion capacities improved from 0.5kg FOG/m3digester/ day to > 1.5kg FOG/m3digester/day and biogas productivities increased from 0.7m3biogas/m3digester/day to > 2.3m3biogas/m3digester/day. Between 80% and 95% of the added FOG trade waste solids converted to biogas. The gas production increase responded to the FOG waste addition within four to six

www.awa.asn.au

Typical payback periods for the added trade waste reception and recuperative thickening plant in this improved trade waste digestion process was less than four years. hours. The volatile fatty acid (VFA) levels in the FOG digesters with recuperative thickening remained low (20–30mg VFA/L), conﬁrming the robustness of the improved FOG digester process. This process was operated at the treatment plant digesters in Palmerston North, New Zealand, for over three years without digester process issues, foaming issues or mechanical problems. The co-digestion biogas was used for electricity production in co-generation. Typically, more than 100% of the treatment plant power requirements were provided by the co-generation. Operation data showed that the trade waste reception of the test plant worked consistently well when receiving dairy factory waste with high FOG content (70% FOG in dry matter). The operating experience from the sludge digesters at the Palmerston North treatment plant has shown that digester upgrades with recuperative thickening improve the technical, economic and

environmental sustainability of trade waste co-digestion programs in municipal digesters. The RT-based digester process increases FOG loading and average daily biogas output from municipal digesters by a large margin (> 200 % increase). Sludge digester productivity and gate fee income for treated trade waste were typically threefold improved. Typical payback periods for the added trade waste reception and recuperative thickening plant in this improved digestion process was less than four years. Jurgen Thiele is the Business Unit Leader for Waste Value Recovery at Calibre Consulting, Mike Monaghan is Treatment Plants Manager and Phil Burt is the Waste Water Asset Engineer, both with Palmerston North City Council. This paper was presented at Ozwater’16. To read the full article, visit the Water e-Journal at bit.ly/water_ejournal

executive summary customer engagement

Keeping wipes out of the pipes SYDNEY WATER’S PROGRAM TO INFLUENCE CUSTOMER BEHAVIOUR.

500 tonnes of wet wipes are removed from our sewers each year.

That’s the weight of 60 T-Rex. Keep wipes out of the pipes

K Smith, C Kawtal Learn more at sydneywatertalk.com.au/wet-wipes SW68 08/15

uestion: Four blue whales, 60 Tyrannosaurus Rex, 20 buses, a fully-loaded Sydney train, a jumbo jet… What do all these things have in common? Answer: They are all about 500 tonnes in weight – which equates to the weight of wet wipes products Sydney Water pulls from its network every year at a cost of millions of dollars and increased environmental risks from overfl ows. Sydney Water’s grappling of the wet wipes issue began with an increasing trend in faults at sewage pumping stations across its 12,000 square kilometre operational area. It was found that these faults were largely attributable to the increasing disposal of non-biodegradable wet wipes via the wastewater system. Further investigations revealed it was an escalating issue for utilities globally. Sydney Water customers own another 20,000 kilometres of wastewater pipes located on their private land and we knew, anecdotally, that more customers were experiencing blockages involving wet wipes that were requiring plumbers to fix. A new problem needed an innovative solution. But why was it happening? In a fi rst for the Australian water industry, Sydney Water conducted extensive customer research to better understand customers’ use of household wipes. It found: • Approximately one-in-three wipes users fl ush wipes at least weekly; • Hand and body wipes are the key category of wipes that are fl ushed; • Packaging claims are infl uential; • If users perceive products as

biodegradable, they are twice as likely to ﬂ ush; • Product appearance/texture is a factor in forming perceptions (more so for younger males); • Key demographic is men aged 15–44. The ‘Keep Wipes Out Of The Pipes’ program was launched in May 2015 to help Sydney Water engage in an active, two-way dialogue around customer behaviour and education. A key element of the communications program was simplicity in message and call to action in a novel way. Part of the approach was to target the issue at the source, and Water Services Association of Australia, Sydney Water and many other water utilities have engaged with the wet wipes industry on the development of an ISO standard for an agreed criteria and tests for ‘ﬂ ushability’. The education program

A key outcome of the program is a reduction of nearly 50% of Sydney Water customers thinking it is OK to flush wipes, indicating early progress in sustained behaviour change.

has been successful in raising awareness of the issue with our customers. Key outcomes were: • A reduction of nearly 50% of Sydney Water customers thinking it is OK to fl ush wipes, indicating early progress in sustained behaviour change; • A current cumulative media reach of over 12 million people. This includes Sydney Water and its spokespeople regularly being cited in the media, lifting individual SME profi les; • Sydney Water’s social media reach is over one million people, at a high engagement rate, which has driven customer advocacy on the issue; • Consistent delivery of key messages to sustain media coverage. Sydney Water has also reviewed how it cleans its sewage pumping stations, resulting in an auto-fl ushing cycle. The direct benefi ts of having an automated system was a signifi cant reduction in cleaning costs, safety risks removed, correction of other sewage pumping station faults during implementation, reduction in odour complaints and no major capital outlay for equipment or construction. Keiran Smith is Manager, Media and External Communications at Sydney Water and leads the ‘Keep Wipes Out of the Pipes’ education program. Charlie Kawtal commenced working with Sydney Water in 1994 and is currently responsible for the wastewater networks in Sydney’s west. This paper was presented at Ozwater’16. To read the full article, visit the Water e-Journal at bit.ly/water_ejournal

www.awa.asn.au

executive summary customer innovation

Sydney Water’s customer experience design program TRANSFORMING A MAJOR UTILITY INTO A CUSTOMER-CENTRIC ORGANISATION. WH

ST O

ER ED

HO W

ER LI V

AT I

GA OR

www.awa.asn.au

EEL

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o inform and support Sydney Water’s transformation to a customer-centric organisation, a Customer Experience (Cx) Design program of work was initiated. The first phase of this program was recently completed and the key results are presented. The key objective of the program was to provide the organisation with a truly ‘outside-in’ view of the business and identify what customer needs and ‘moments of truth’ were. A human-centred design/design thinking approach was employed through an iterative process of empathy, deﬁnition, ideation, testing and prototyping. An extensive customer research program was initiated to gain empathy with the customer. This included methods such as online surveys, interviews with customers and staff, listening to customer phone calls at the contact centre, as well as observational studies in the customers’ environment. The ‘deﬁne’ stage synthesised the rich information gathered from the customer research to identify the problem or opportunity by sharing customers’ real concerns, issues, needs and emotional drivers. The artefacts produced included a Customer Journey Map, Customer Experience Pyramid and Customer Service Principles. Through the Customer Journey Map, we were able to visualise the end-to-end view of a customer’s journey to help better understand and empathise with their current experience and expectations, and identify key touch-points and pain-points across their daily interaction with our business. A Customer Experience Pyramid

M Storey, A Nair, J Isben, R Davies, D Kernahan

E LI

VER

identified the three key elements of delivering a great customer experience, starting with meeting a customer’s basic needs, being easy to deal with, and making customers’ lives better. Eight customer service principles were also identified across four key themes: what customers need; what the services must offer; how the organisation must deliver it; and how customers want to feel. The ‘ideation’ phase included co-creation workshops with staff and customer groups to come up with ideas that would address unmet customer needs or fix pain-points.

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These workshops provided staff with an opportunity to immerse themselves in customer research and see why customers felt the way they did. Ideas validated with the customer were integrated into the ideal customer journey or ‘Ideal Flow’. The Ideal Flow proposes an ideal state across the six customer journey phases identiﬁed in the Customer Journey Map. Prototyping and testing were undertaken with conceptual models to validate whether the proposed solution met customer expectations. Feedback gained from the customers helped in reworking ideas where appropriate.

Through the Customer Journey Map, we were able to better understand and empathise with their current experience and expectations, and identify key touch-points and pain-points across their daily interaction with our business. This gave us the conﬁdence that ideas being proposed were addressing customer needs. The Customer Experience Design program of work has, for the ﬁ rst time, provided an outside-in and enterprise-wide view of the customer journey when dealing with Sydney Water. It provides rich customer insight, which is both a critical input into a program for transforming the customer experience, and foundational for building the culture and capability necessary to create a

sustained change in the business. The fi rst phase of the Customer Experience Design project has laid the foundations for a fi ve-year transformation program. Deep-dive analysis of the six customer journey touch-points identifi ed in this phase has commenced and will continue to provide the business a steady fl ow of customer improvement opportunities.

Strategy team, Ani Nair is a Senior Customer Value Advisor, and Josh Isben is a Senior Transformation Initiative Leader, all at Sydney Water. Damian Kernahan is the owner and founder of consultancy Proto Partners, where Richard Davies is a business strategist. This paper was presented at Ozwater’16

Dr Michael Storey manages research direction and value in the Corporate

To read the full article, visit the Water e-Journal at bit.ly/water_ejournal

executive summary irrigation

In-situ desalination for climate-resilient irrigation PERFORMANCE OF TWO COMMERCIAL MEMBRANES TO CONFIGURE A SUBSURFACE IRRIGATION SYSTEM FOR GERMINATING BEAN SEEDS. V Lima, P Le-Clech, G Leslie, B Sutton

he use of water with a high presence of total dissolved solids (TDS) can cause deleterious effects on both plant growth and soil quality. In order to mitigate these impacts, the removal of salts from water prior to irrigation is required, which can be achieved through conventional desalination processes. However, due to their complexity and high costs, their full-scale application for irrigation is often limited. An alternative strategy to desalination, using membranes for irrigation applications necessitates a system of reduced mechanical complexity and energy consumption, but that is able to supply water that matches crop demand during various stages of growth. The concept of a new subsurface irrigation method where irrigation pipes are fashioned from polymeric membrane material has been demonstrated. The system allows brackish water to be treated and delivered directly to the soil-plant interface due to a negative potential generated by both soil-matric potential and plant demand, thus reducing damage of soil structure and yield decrease. Additionally, delivery of the water through a sub-surface irrigation system would retain water in the soil and eliminate evaporative losses.

TO THE TEST This study aims to access the performance of two commercially available membranes, reverse osmosis (RO) and forward osmosis (FO), operated under the proposed membrane-based subsurface irrigation system.

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The system was used for the germination of bean seeds in a silty clay loam soil on a range of saline solutions. The best membrane performance was evaluated in terms of ﬁnal germination, seedling growth parameters and electrical conductivity of soil. Plants grown under the proposed irrigation system presented germination similar to hand-watered plants, while salt accumulation in the soil was minimised. A better performance was observed for the RO membrane, as the ﬂux remained higher than the estimated plant demand over the examined salinity range. Hence, the proposed irrigation method based on membrane technology has demonstrated the ability to respond to crop water demand during germination and mitigate soil salinisation for feedwater salinity ranging between 0.21 and 3.1 dS/m (Sydney tap water and 2500 mg/L, respectively). Valeria Almeida Lima is a PhD student at the University of New South Wales, School of Chemical Engineering, UNESCO Centre for Membrane Science and Technology. Pierre Le-Clech is an Associate Professor and Greg Leslie is the Director at the UNESCO Centre for Membrane Science and Technology, while Bruce Sutton is Honorary Professor, Faculty of Agriculture and Environment at The University of Sydney and Visiting Professorial Fellow at UNSW, Sydney.

To read the full article, visit the Water e-Journal at bit.ly/water_ejournal

An alternative strategy to desalination, using membranes for irrigation applications, necessitates a system of reduced mechanical complexity and energy consumption that is also able to supply water that matches crop demand during various stages of growth.

executive summary wastewater management

A risk-based approach for management and regulation of wet-weather overﬂows MANAGING AND PRIORITISING WET-WEATHER OVERFLOWS TO DELIVER BETTER, MORE COST-EFFECTIVE OUTCOMES C Port, F Garofalow, M Cassidy, N Abulafia, T Chen, C Cantrell

verflow points in Sydney’s wastewater system allow excess wastewater to flow to stormwater drains or waterways in heavy rain to avoid flooding of homes and businesses. Sydney Water is regulated for wet-weather overflows by Environment Protection Licences (EPLs) from the NSW Environment Protection Authority (NSW EPA). Sydney Water has been working to reduce the frequency of wet-weather overflows, mainly by building large storage tanks, tunnels or bigger pipes and pumps, as well as reducing the amount of stormwater entering the sewer system. Overflow frequency is traditionally used as the measure of system performance for wet-weather overflows. It does not take into account the volume or location of the overflow, the sensitivity of the environment or community needs, and expectations for the waterway and its surrounds. It also does not consider the risk imposed by other pollution sources, such as urban stormwater runoff. The

high cost of meeting containment standards is also a problem shared by water utilities worldwide. The significant additional infrastructure required for Sydney’s four major coastal wastewater systems to meet overflow frequency targets is estimated to cost at least $5.5 billion (in 2012 dollars). Sydney Water has actively engaged with the NSW EPA over the past two years to develop a risk-based approach to manage wet-weather overflows and a regulatory measure to include in environment protection licences to deliver better, cost-effective outcomes. The risk assessment process is focused on three waterway values, representing the risks from wet-weather overflows to the environment and community, based on established waterway objectives and guidelines, and community input. The three values are: • Waterway ecosystem health: The potential for wet-weather overflows to impact aquatic ecosystems and riparian vegetation health. • Public health: The potential for wet-weather overflows to impact the

A risk profile can be developed to form a baseline and gauge progress and improvement over time. 78

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public health of waterway users (for example, swimming and boating). • Aesthetics: The potential for wet-weather overflows to impact the community’s enjoyment of the environment, in and around waterways (such as in parks), through visual pollution and/or odours. The risk-based approach provides a robust way of prioritising investment to improve wet-weather overflows, where the environmental and social benefits have traditionally been difficult to measure. A risk profile can be developed to form a baseline and gauge progress and improvement over time. It can also be used as the basis of a means of licensing and regulation. This approach provides a superior way to manage and regulate wet-weather overflows because it: • Identifies and targets improvement to areas of greatest risk and where greatest benefit can be gained; • Aligns regulatory performance with environmental and community outcomes; • Is adaptive to ensure outcomes are aligned with community uses and aspirations for waterways and the environment; • Allows solutions to match problems, for cost-effective delivery of outcomes; • Allows for proactive, constructive, consistent management and incorporates best practice approaches. Under this approach, Sydney

Note: each overďŹ&#x201A;ow point is rated for waterway ecosystem health, public health and aesthetics. The highest risk of the three is the overall category

Catherine Port is a Chemical Engineer who is currently Manager of Product and Asset Management at Sydney Water. Frank Garofalow has recently taken up the role of Director Water Regulation for the Department of Primary Industries â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Water within the NSW Government. Michele Cassidy is an Environmental Scientist and Senior Environmental Regulatory Specialist to the Wet Weather Overflow Strategy and Regulation Project. Natasha Abulafia is an experienced water industry professional specialising in environmental management, quality systems and project management with over 20 yearsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; experience working with Sydney Water. Tiffany Chen is a Graduate Chemical Engineer working in Service Delivery, Wastewater Networks at Sydney Water. Clint Cantrell serves as MWHâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Global Practice Leader for wastewater and stormwater who assisted in the development of Sydney Waterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s risk-based approach for the management and regulation of wet-weather overflows and development of the proposal to NSW EPA.

Water can achieve environmental and community outcomes more cost-effectively than under the traditional frequency-based approach. Being an adaptive management process, Sydney Water can progressively reduce risks from wet-weather overďŹ&#x201A;ows to ensure overďŹ&#x201A;ows do not inhibit waterways from achieving the shared outcomes that councils, government and other stakeholders are working towards.

THIS PAPER WON THE BEST PAPER AWARD AT OZWATERâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;16 IN MELBOURNE 10â&#x20AC;&#x201C;12 MAY.

To read the full article, visit the Water e-Journal at bit.ly/water_ejournal

CORRECTION In the May 2016 edition of Current, a table accompanying the technical paper summary entitled â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;NSW and Colombia: a water management comparisonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; erroneously referred to Colombia as Columbia. The error occurred in the production process.

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A S S O C I AT I O N E V E N T S SHARING EXPERTISE ACROSS THE WATER INDUSTRY

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EVENTS PLANNER Plan your professional development with the Association’s event calendar. STATE OF PLAY Get the rundown on what’s to be expected from the combined QWater Conference. RUBBING SHOULDERS This year’s Ozwater networking events exceeded all expectations, with crowds of delegates ﬁlling venues.

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UNDERCOVER YWPS Victoria’s Young Water Professionals celebrate their achievements in Bond-themed style. LEADERS UNITE Industry leaders from across the sector gathered for the Victorian President’s Dinner. PROGRESS PARTNERS The Queensland Mentoring Program got off to a great start, with couples paired for progress.

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EVENT CALENDAR

FROM NETWORKING TO PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT, THE AUSTRALIAN WATER ASSOCIATION’S CALENDAR IS OVERFLOWING WITH EVENTS FOR EVERY TYPE OF WATER PROFESSIONAL.

TAS

AUGU ST

QLD: TECHNICAL MEETING Biosolids Process Engineering Coordinator Kelly Hopewell will address issues relating to biosolids handling and electricity.

VIC: 54TH ANNUAL DINNER, MELBOURNE This year plays host to Minister for Water Lisa Neville.

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SA: YWP BREAKFAST SA: STATE CONFERENCE WEBINAR: MEMBERSHIP MATTERS PART 1 Crafting an Effective LinkedIn Profile

ACT

Water 2020

Where the Waters Meet

Water Leaders Dinner

Water in the Bush

This years’ South Australian conference, Water 2020, will be focusing on a range of initiatives influencing the industry in coming years, including improved customer focus and operational efficiencies. The conference will also include discussion of South Australia’s recently introduced third-party access to existing infrastructure. When: August 12 Where: Glenelg

TasWater Works Delivery General Manager Dharma Dharmabalan will be speaking on the future of water at the Tasmanian annual conference. “For the health of the community, we need to think as a whole,” he said. “At the end of the day, everybody is trying to keep the community in good shape. We need to bring services together.” When: August 18 Where: Hobart

The Water Leaders Dinner is an opportunity for ACT water professionals to create momentum for changes needed in the water industry locally, nationally and abroad.The keynote speech, which has previously been delivered by leading scientists and engineers, will build on topics discussed at the Water Matters conference held earlier this year. When: September 8 Where: Canberra

“The territory is a big place with a small population. We don’t often get the opportunity to come together,” said Department of Land Resource Management Executive Director Water Directorate Darryl Day. “Water development in the north will be a big focus at the conference, as well as traditional knowledge and regional development.” When: September 8-9 Where: Darwin

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Association events

N OV EM B ER 9 –11: V I E T WAT ER In an ongoing effort to connect the Australian and Vietnam water sectors, the Australian Water Association will be attending Vietwater 2016 in Ho Chi Minh City, with Australian water professionals encouraged to attend. “We have built very strong and extensive relationships across the Vietnam water sector and the program that we are developing for the Australian delegates is much greater than the trade exhibition and booth display,” AWA International Manager Paul Smith said. “There will be a whole program wrapped around the VietWater trade exhibition, which is really designed to connect the

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TAS: WHERE THE WATERS MEET ACT: TECHNICAL EVENT: WHAT’S THE PFOS? WEBINAR: MATES IN CONSTRUCTION Supporting Mental Health in the Water Industry

S EP T EM B ER

WEBINAR: BEST OF OZWATER’16 Aromar Revi, Global Urbanisation: Opportunities & Challenges

08 14

ACT: WATER LEADERS DINNER NT: WATER IN THE BUSH WEBINAR: BEST OF OZWATER’16 Amir Peleg, High Tech to Water Tech

VIC

Australian delegates with the demand for Australian capabilities in Vietnam.” The Association has been working closely with the Government of Vietnam to ensure that Australian expertise can be effectively utilised to support the objectives for water of the Vietnam Government. To learn more about this exciting opportunity, please contact Paul Smith at psmith@awa.asn.au Where: Saigon Exhibition and Convention Centre, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

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NSW: TECHNICAL EVENT Asset Management QLD: ANNUAL DINNER AND WATER AWARDS WA: WATER POLICY SEMINAR

NSW: WOMEN OF WATER

O CTO B ER

08 21

QLD: YWP AMAZING RACE

WA: WATER AWARDS

NSW

QLD

Awards Dinner

Annual Dinner

Asset Management

Gala Dinner and Awards

Former AWA WA President Peter McCafferty encourages members to help celebrate “all things water in Western Australia”. “The purpose of the awards dinner is to celebrate high-achievers in the industry,” he said. “It is about showcasing all the great work that occurs. This is our formal way of recognising all of our achievements.” When: October 21 Where: Perth

With the Victorian Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water Lisa Neville having confirmed her attendance, the Annual Dinner will continue its long tradition of gathering together members and guests to hear from the Minister of the day. The highlight of the Victorian water calendar, the dinner offers attendees a great chance to network. When: August 4 Where: Melbourne

Infrastructure challenges mean that asset management practices continue to grow in importance. This seminar will showcase three keynotes speakers and explore technological advancements, water management processes and examine in greater detail the misconceptions that can sometimes surround water treatment. When: September 15 Where: Sydney

The 2016 Queensland Gala Dinner brings together water professionals to celebrate the state’s achievements in water. “The awards are not just about recognising the good work that people are doing but also learning from it,” said Queensland Branch Committee Member Justin Simonis. “It also gives people the opportunity to network.” When: September 16 Where: Brisbane

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Advertorial

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ater suppliers, including local councils, water authorities and private organisations are increasingly obligated by Australian regulation to ensure their water resources are managed efﬁciently and effectively without compromising quality. With the implementation of the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines, the importance of delivering high-quality, safe drinking water to communities should be at the forefront of water suppliers’ agenda. Failure to supply consumers with adequate quality or safe drinking water can result in public health issues, which have many ramiﬁcations including illness, penalties, embarrassment and increased regulation.

MAINTAINING QUALITY FROM THE RESERVOIR TO THE DRINKING GLASS While drinking water standards can be measured and monitored at Water Treatment Plants (WTP), once treated water leaves the plant and enters the reticulation system, and little can be done to ensure quality is maintained right up to the consumer’s tap. Monitoring of chlorine levels provides an important metric to determine the suitability of the water in relation to public health. However, chlorine is consumed through oxidation and the protection it provides to the community by disinfection is reduced, throughout the

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The ResMix System provides energy and cost efﬁcient solutions for managers of water storage facilities, ranging in size from 0.5ML to greater than 150,000ML, and helps ensure water resources can be maintained at a high standard. With a solutions-focused approach, WEARS Australia works to ensure we provide the best solution for each client’s speciﬁc requirement.

For more information regarding the ResMix system contact WEARS Australia on 07 5423 2770 or email wears@wears.com.au.

QWater in NSW 2016

Breaking down the border QUEENSLAND’S WATER CONFERENCE IS BACK ON NOVEMBER 24-25. BUT THIS TIME NEW SOUTH WALES IS INVOLVED, WITH THE EVENT TO TAKE SHAPE IN TWEED HEADS.

Water, the Australian Water Association’s annual Queensland water conference, is well known for bringing together water professionals – of all stripes and colours – from across Australia’s sunshine state. But despite this long-lived tradition, which has spanned across decades, this year’s QWater will be taking a different tact. For the ﬁrst time in the history of the event, NSW is invited – a move prompted by the conferences theme: ‘Cities and regions learning from each other’. “We have held the conference in NSW before, but that has been a Queensland conference held in NSW. This is a different arrangement, in which we have invited the NSW branch to get involved and join in,” QWater Committee Chairman Steve Tansley said. “The NSW political and water authority landscape is different from Queensland, so it will be interesting to see the different perspectives that delegates from different areas bring in to the conference.” Putting the differences of regions, perspectives and football teams

aside, QWater still plans on delivering delegates the same opportunities it does every year, including professional development, networking and industry exposure. “QWater gives presenters the opportunity to showcase their expertise at an event that’s less formal than Ozwater, but still offers great exposure. It can be a stepping-stone to bigger audiences,” Tansley said. “The other benefit is that QWater is a bit of a family event, with considerable amount of networking going on. It’s more low-key, laid back and attracts a diverse range of professionals.” This years’ event is also expected to be the biggest, with the addition of NSW delegates. And while the program is still being finalised, Tansley said water professionals can expect a high calibre of keynote presentations. “We are confirming keynote speakers from the political sphere, heads of water businesses, and directors of government bodies,” Tansley said. As well as the presentations, QWater will include a ‘mini-expo’, including booths from a range of industry companies. “We have an area set aside

for trade delegates so that they can have booths there. It is miniature expo, with generally about 20 booths from suppliers and consultants,” Tansley said. “We’ll be holding trade drinks, giving delegates the opportunity to take a look at the trade displays, which is of beneﬁt to the delegates and suppliers alike.” The QWater conference dinner round off the two-day experience, with information about the evening released closer to the event. Learn more about the QWater, including exhibitor opportunities and registration, here: bit.ly/qwater2016

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WELCOME NET WORKING E VENING

efore the official conference took shape, delegates gathered at Aerial on Dukes Walk by the Yarra River on Monday May 9 to catch up with colleagues.

HAPPY HOUR AT THE CLUB HOUSE

he Ozwater ’16 Trade Exhibition Hall played host to Happy Hour on Tuesday May 10, giving delegates the opportunity to catch their breath after the first day of keynotes, workshops and presentations.

GAL A DINNER

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2016 PRESIDENT’S DINNER | HILTON MELBOURNE

WATER’S CHIEFS UNITE

he evening before Ozwater’16 launched in Melbourne, leaders gathered to celebrate the achievements of the sector. The event also took a moment to congratulate the winner of the Exceptional Service Award, Chris Davis, for his longstanding contribution to water, and Dr Helen Stratton for Honorary Life Membership.

WATER LE ADERS FORUM | MELBOURNE

eads of water attended an in-depth forum on the Thames Tideway Tunnel Project. Linklaters London Partner Charlotte Morgan presented on the project, which is considered a great example of innovative partnership between government and private sector.

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VIC YWP DINNER | ORMOND HALL, ST KILDA ROAD

YWPS GO UNDERCOVER

oung Water Professionals from across Victoria suited up for Bond-themed dinner to celebrate their successes in glamorous style.

WATER MAT TERS | CSIRO DISCOVERY CENTRE, ACT

ater professionals of all backgrounds and inclinations – including ministers, planners, scientists, policy makers, consultants and innovators – gathered to share their vision for water’s future.

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Out and About

QLD YWP MENTORING PROGRAM LAUNCH | JACOBS, BRISBANE

PARTNERING UP FOR PROGRESS

A Â

fresh batch of mentors and mentees lined up for partnering at the Queensland Mentoring Program launch, with Young Water Professionals keen to garner insight from industry vets.

NT BRE AKFAST | GR AND BALLROOM, HILTON DARWIN

WATER MINISTER UNPLUGGED

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The Last drop

CHRIS DAVIS

AS THE RECENT RECIPIENT OF THE EXCEPTIONAL SERVICE AWARD, CHRIS DAVIS TAKES A MOMENT TO REFLECT ON HIS DECADES-LONG CAREER, INCLUDING MANY OF THE MOMENTS THAT MADE HIS TIME IN WATER MEMORABLE. As told to Thea Cowie

MY CAREER IN WATER BEGAN WITH A 5am ‘shit walk’ through the sewers of Johannesburg, South Africa. I had graduated from university as a civil engineer and was working for the city council when a very eccentric engineer in our section recruited us for the excursion he’d so aptly named. The idea was that we were going to investigate the city’s major outfalls to see what their conditions were. It was a very hands-on introduction into what goes on in the water systems in a city. But I wasn’t put off – it was a major turning point for me. My university had been very traditional and our only real water content was limited to hydraulics, dams and pipelines – I didn’t really learn anything about water quality. Working on structural engineering projects after I graduated seemed to be pretty much cut and dried, whereas there was so much to learn about water quality and there were always new things on the horizon. Back in those days there were all sorts of funny little things that happened in the water industry. For instance, there was no pill so condoms were the standard birth control device and they used to come down the sewers. Some of the sewage treatment plant operators used to ﬁsh them out, wash them and reuse them! The real prize, though, was money caught up on the screens. It was a very colourful area to be working in.

CHANGING PLACE After about ten years of working in various aspects of the city’s sewerage system, I ended up in charge of all the wastewater treatment plants. The city then sent me to do my masters degree in Texas, which isn’t the most liberal state, but for someone from South Africa it was a real revelation to see the world away from apartheid.

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large one of a thousand or so delegates. It was just great to aIt was just great to feel part of that industry because what water people do can have feel part of that such an impact on community health. industry because DOWN what water people do WINDING By 2005 I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and I expected that I would have a can have such fairly rapid downward trajectory to being completely disabled. I gave two years’ an impact on notice of my intention to step down, but community health. my anticipated decline turned out to be After that year, I never really wanted to settle down in South Africa again. The traditional thing was to do what they called an LSD trip – look, see and decide. But my wife, two children and I just jumped straight in, came to Sydney in 1982 and we’ve been here ever since.

TAKING CHARGE First I worked for GHD, then Aquatec Maxcon. During that 10-year period, I joined what was then the Australian Water and Wastewater Association and became active in the New South Wales branch, served as NSW president and then got more and more involved in AWWA nationally. In 1992, I stepped up to serve as national Executive Director. For me, the highlight of my 15 years of leadership was to see the voluntary association maturing. When we started out initially, the states had a lot of autonomy and they defended their independence quite strongly. We had to do a lot of work to bring them all together in an effective national structure. A key step was creating a new constitution so national Board members were appointed by the national Strategic Advisory Council. It meant they didn’t feel beholden to one branch. I’m also proud of the way we built the conference from a fairly small affair to quite

very slow – my quality of life is still okay. Having stepped down in 2007 in order to retire, I ended up doing part-time roles with the National Water Commission and UTS for a while. I’ve had various panel and chair roles and I’m now Chair of the Independent Water Advisory Panel for the Sydney and Hunter Metro Water plans. After all these years I think getting involved with AWA was very important for me because it introduced me to a whole cross-section of people, what they did, and what was developing in the industry. I think any young person coming into the industry should sign up and volunteer for leadership roles because there’s so much to learn; it gives you a strong network for the rest of your career and it’s a very good training ground for management positions. I also feel that people in the water industry, in general terms, are very sharing and caring – it’s got a good convivial atmosphere about it, so it’s always a warm place to be.

Chris Davis is Chair of the Independent Water Advisory Panel for the Sydney and Hunter Metro Water plans, and former CEO of the Australian Water Association.

WATER LIFE

GROWTH

Have you got plans for National Water Week? National Water Week is run every year by the Australian Water Association to remind Australians that water must be used wisely to ensure there is enough in the future. Is your company organising an open day for your local community? Or perhaps running an art competition for school students, or an afternoon tea for colleagues? Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re keen to hear how your organisation is helping to ensure Australia has a sustainable water future! Get in touch with us: news@awa.asn.au #NWW2016