Media Release

26 Jun 2007

Preferred tenderer for Western Sydney water recycling plant

Deerubbin WaterFutures Consortium has been announced as the preferred tenderer to build the 50 million litre a day water recycling plant for river flows in Western Sydney.

Sydney Water will shortly sign a contract with the Deerubbin WaterFutures Consortium, consisting of United Group, McConnell Dowell and General Electric.

The project is estimated to cost around $250 million.

It is an important milestone in the commitment to increase recycling to 70 billion litres, or 11 per cent of Sydney’s water supply, by 2015.

The project will see wastewater recycled from the St Marys, Penrith and Quakers Hill sewage treatment plants, at a new advanced wastewater treatment plant at the St Marys site.

The majority of the recycled water will be used to replace water released from Warragamba Dam for river and environmental flows. As the full scheme progresses, recycled water will also be available for industry, irrigation and new homes in Western Sydney in major greenfield developments.

This means that 18 billion litres of water each year will remain available for drinking water for Sydney, the Illawarra and the Blue Mountains.

The new plant at St Marys will treat wastewater to a very high standard, to enable it to be used to replace water currently released from Warragamba Dam.

The very high grade water will be produced through reverse osmosis, similar to the process used at Sydney Water’s recycled water plant at Wollongong.

The Wollongong plant provides BlueScope Steel with about 20 million litres of recycled water each day – about 18 per cent of the Illawarra’s water supply.

Construction on the Western Sydney plant will begin at the end of the year.

It is expected recycled water will be used to replace water from Warragamba Dam in 2009.

Sydney already recycles around 22 billion litres of water per year.

Sydney Water is pursuing recycling wherever it is feasible and practical. In February 2007, the Government announced the development of a recycled water grid to pump billions of litres of recycled water to new homes and industries across the Sydney metropolitan area.

The recycled water grid has the potential to increase recycling to 100 billion litres a year (about 16 per cent of total drinking water supply) and address virtually all feasible recycling opportunities for non-drinking purposes.

 

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