Media Release

05 Jul 2006

Recycled Water To Be Piped To New Residential Development

A new residential development in Western Sydney will save two billion litres of drinking water by 2010 as part of the NSW Government’s Metropolitan Water Plan.

The Delfin Lend Lease development at St Marys will eventually provide recycled water to about 5,000 new homes and for irrigation and industrial use.

Ropes Crossing is the first village within the St Marys development to begin construction, and residents will start to receive recycled water once the scheme is operational in 2010.

The homes within the St Marys development will be able to use treated wastewater for flushing toilets, car washing, and watering gardens.

A recycled water treatment plant will be constructed at the St Marys Sewage Treatment Plant (STP), which will treat wastewater to a very high standard to be used for residential non-drinking purposes.

A pipeline will be constructed from the STP to a reservoir at Ropes Crossing.

Recycled water will then be provided to households via a gravity fed system.

Recycled water pipe within new homes has already been laid in the first stage of the development in conjunction with other infrastructure such as drinking water pipes, electricity, and telephone lines.

Sydney Water already recycles 15 billion litres of water each year, and that figure will rise to 70 billion litres by 2015.

The St Marys development is one of several recycling projects Sydney Water is involved with.

The Western Sydney Recycled Water Initiative will eventually provide up to 27 billion litres of recycled water each year by 2015.

Expressions of Interest were called last week for the first stage of this initiative, with recycled water to be used to replace water currently released from Warragamba Dam.

Australia’s largest residential recycled water scheme at Rouse Hill already saves more than 1.7 billion litres of drinking water each year.

Currently, 16,000 homes are connected. Once all 36,000 homes are connected, more than 4.7 billion litres of drinking water will be saved each year.

Recycling And Reuse, under Saving Water has more information on our recycling projects.

 

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