Media Release

03 Nov 2006

Western Sydney Recycling Project Consultation Begins

The environmental assessment for the massive Western Sydney Recycled Water Initiative will be on display for community comment until Monday 4 December.

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

The recycled water will be used for new homes, industry and irrigation and to replace water released from Warragamba Dam for environmental flows.

The first stage of the initiative will be the implementation of the Replacement Flows Project.

This will see up to 18 billion litres of recycled water replace flows currently released from Warragamba Dam into the Hawkesbury-Nepean River to maintain its health.

The project will involve connecting three sewage treatment plants at Penrith, St Marys and Quakers Hill and transferring wastewater to a new advanced water treatment plant.

The new plant will treat the wastewater to a very high standard and reduce the nutrient levels in the Hawkesbury-Nepean River.

The Environmental Assessment details plans to construct pipelines to connect the three sewage treatment plants, a wastewater pipeline from Seven Hills to Dundas and the construction of the advanced water treatment plant at St Marys.

Team members from Sydney Water’s Replacement Flows Project will be available to discuss the Environmental Assessment at the following locations:

• Westfield Penrith – Saturday, November 4.
  
• Westfield Mount Druitt – Saturday, November 4.
  
• Westfield Parramatta – Saturday, November 11 and Saturday, November 18.
  
• St Marys Village Centre – Saturday, November 11 and Saturday, November 18.
  
• Sculpture By the Sea, Marks Park Bondi – Saturday, November 4 and Sunday, November 5, Saturday, November 11 and Sunday, November 12, and Saturday, November 18 and Sunday, November 19.

The displays will be open from 9am to 5pm to enable the community to learn more about the project and provide feedback.

Copies of the Environmental Assessment will also be available from Monday 6 November at:

• Parramatta, Blacktown, Penrith, Baulkham Hills and Hawkesbury libraries.
  
• The Department of Planning, 23-33 Bridge Street, Sydney.
  
• Sydney Water, 115-123 Bathurst Street, Sydney.
  
• at www.planning.nsw.gov.au and from the Replacement Flows Project pages of the Sydney Water website.

Four consortia have recently been short-listed to tender for the Replacement Flows Project.

The short-listed consortia are:

• Western Flow Connect (Leighton/Veolia Joint Venture)
  
• Future Flows (John Holland/AWS/Degremont Joint Venture)
  
• Deerubbin WaterFutures (United Group/GE Water and Process Techonologies/ McConnell Dowell Joint Venture)
  
• Replacement Flows Infrastructure (Baulderstone Hornibrook/United Utilities Joint Venture)

It is expected the tender documents will be issued in late November with a contract awarded in mid 2007.

Recycled water should be available to replace water from the dam from 2009.

Sydney, the Blue Mountains and the Illawarra already recycles about 15 billion litres of water each year.

Australia’s largest industrial water recycling scheme recently commissioned at Wollongong will soon provide BlueScope Steel with an additional seven billion litres of recycled water each year.

 

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