Media Release

28 Mar 2008

Recycled water flowing to agricultural institute

More than 140 million litres of recycled water has been delivered to Elizabeth Macarthur Agricultural Institute to be used for irrigation.

The $4 million project involved constructing an 8.5 kilometre pipeline from West Camden Sewage Treatment Plant to Elizabeth Macarthur Agricultural Institute.

The institute has made a significant investment in the project, building a dam and installing a pump and irrigation system to distribute the water around the property.

Around one million litres of recycled water can be pumped each day to the institute when required. The scheme can potentially provide up to five million litres of water each day for irrigation once fully operational.

The environmental benefits of this new recycling scheme are two-fold - it reduces the volume of wastewater and nutrients discharged into the Hawkesbury-Nepean River and it reduces the amount of water taken from the river for irrigation.

Greater Sydney currently recycles 22 billion litres of water a year and that figure will rise to 70 billion, or 11 per cent of Sydney’s water needs, by 2015.

Sydney Water favours recycling schemes that are good for the environment, can improve local amenities and save precious drinking water, and this project is a good example of that.

The recycled water project is part of a $50 million upgrade underway at the West Camden Sewage Treatment Plant.

The upgrade will contribute to improve water quality in the Hawkesbury-Nepean River, while meeting the needs of the rapidly growing Camden population.

It is expected there will be about 80,000 people living in the area by 2021 and this project will more than double the plant’s treatment capacity, from about 11 million litres of wastewater each day to 23 million litres.

The upgrade is expected to be complete in early 2009.

The effluent quality from Sydney Water’s sewage treatment plants discharging to the river has significantly improved over the past 10 years.

In addition to the West Camden project, Sydney Water is upgrading other plants near the Hawkesbury-Nepean.

These include the Rouse Hill Sewage Treatment Plant and its recycled water facility, and the transfer of wastewater flows from Blackheath and Mount Victoria sewage treatment plants to Winmalee Sewage Treatment Plant.

Sydney Water recently signed a contract for the first stage of the $250 million Western Sydney Recycled Water Initiative, which will substitute 18 billion litres of drinking water a year from Warragamba Dam with recycled water for river flows.

 

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