The region is celebrating everything Shoalhaven Water as National Water Week kicks off for 2019. The week aims to build awareness around the value of access to clean water in our everyday lives.
This year’s theme is It’s time to change the world, a motto which Shoalhaven Water’s Acting Director Robert Horner believes Shoalhaven Water embodies, with their sustainable projects such as the Reclaimed Water Management Scheme (REMS).
“Shoalhaven’s REMS is one of the largest reclaimed water management schemes in Australia, having beneficially re-used approximately 25 billion litres of reclaimed water since its commencement in 2002.” Mr Horner said.
“Our local dairy farming industry has been the greatest beneficiary of the scheme with the majority of the reclaimed water from 4 of our sewage treatment plants being beneficially re-used to irrigate dairy pasture. The reclaimed water is also used to keep our local sporting fields and golf courses healthy.”
“The REMS has been operating successfully for 17 years now, with four sewage treatment plants, in St Georges Basin, Huskisson, Callala and Culburra, providing about 6 million litres of high quality reclaimed water every day to the scheme”. Mr Horner said
While approximately 98% of NSW is currently in drought, Council’s need to consider all opportunities to save this valuable resource. Currently, in the Shoalhaven 1 Million Litres (ML) of potable water is conserved each day by replacing its use with reclaimed water. This equates to around 6 billion litres since the REMS was established.
Reclaimed water availability is set to more than double as the next stage of the REMS project nears completion.
“We are close to completing major upgrades to our Nowra and Bomaderry sewage treatments plants, which will increase the REMS capacity to 13 million litres per day, providing further irrigation opportunities to farms, sporting fields and golf courses. This reclaimed water would otherwise be discharged to our local rivers and to the ocean.” Mr Horner said
“We’re hoping National Water Week will encourage our community to reflect on the importance of water conservation and in turn consider what they can do to conserve water in their daily lives.”
Council is encouraging residents to keep updated on Shoalhaven Water’s sustainable water projects and tips for water conservation on their website; https://shoalwater.nsw.gov.au
