- Community planning principles
- Engaging communities
- Understanding climate variability and climate change
- Creating a dynamic private water industry
2010 Metropolitan Water Plan
As part of the NSW Government’s adaptive planning approach, the 2006 Metropolitan Water Plan has undergone a major review overseen by the Metropolitan Water Independent Review Panel.
The review has confirmed that the NSW Government has made sound investments in water supply and water efficiency programs over the past four years. It found that only minor adjustments to the directions of the 2006 plan are needed to ensure greater Sydney has enough water to meet its needs to at least 2025, and to help protect river health through variable environmental flows.
It also identified measures that can be readily implemented in the future if we need them – be it in severe drought or to supply our growing city.
The 2010 Metropolitan Water Plan builds on the significant achievements of past plans by continuing to concentrate efforts on four major areas:
Dams – with continued investment in maintaining and upgrading Sydney’s network of dams, which store more than 2,600 billion litres of water, to ensure they can continue to supply the majority of Sydney’s drinking water.
Recycling – with ongoing investment in water recycling and stormwater projects, including major schemes at Hoxton Park, Rouse Hill and Rosehill-Camellia, to boost recycled water volumes to 70 billion litres of water a year by 2015, or 12 per cent of our water needs.
Desalination - operating the award-winning desalination plant at full capacity to supply Sydney Water’s area of operations when total dam storage level is below 70 percent and continue to do so until total storage reaches 80 percent - with 100 percent of its power needs offset by a wind farm near Bungendore.
Water efficiency – with continued investment in water efficiency programs, including rebates and business programs, and trialling new water efficient technologies to save 145 billion litres of water a year by 2015, or 24 per cent of Sydney’s water needs.
Additional important measures in the 2010 plan include:
Environmental flows from Warragamba Dam – further investigation and research to determine the optimal environmental flow regime will be undertaken to enable a decision on the long-term flows from Warragamba Dam to be made in 2014.
Innovation – continued investigation and investment into new techniques and technologies, and developing water sources.
Research – climate change research will move into its second phase, investigating techniques to improve the way we build extended drought periods into climate modelling.
Water for Life – communication, education and capacity building will continue to play an important role in implementing the 2010 Metropolitan Water Plan.
Drought restrictions – new simpler restrictions, based on the Water Wise Rules, will be implemented should Sydney experience another drought.
Rare and extreme drought – a number of measures are available to be implemented in extreme drought to slow the depletion of dams. To find out more about the Government’s drought preparedness strategy, look at Chapter 8 of the 2010 plan.
One of the Independent Review Panel’s primary roles is to oversee community consultation, which was an integral part of the 2006 plan review process. The 2010 Metropolitan Water Plan is underpinned by community planning principles developed during this consultation.
The 2010 Metropolitan Water Plan Summary provides a good overview of our achievements-to-date or you can view the 2010 Metropolitan Water Plan by individual chapters here. The summary of actions under the Metropolitan Water Plan is also available for download as a score card to summarise our progress on plan commitments and projects.
Water security is an issue that affects us all. The NSW Government has updated the Metropolitan Water Plan to secure Sydney's water needs until at least 2025.