Building on the success of Orange's pioneering stormwater harvesting scheme, a new survey has found the Orange community is open to purified recycled water (PRW) being part of the city's water supply in the future.
The survey, commissioned and independently conducted by international design, engineering and advisory business Aurecon, found the Orange community has a high level of trust in Orange City Council to deliver a high-quality water supply.
The survey found:
• High level of community satisfaction with the water services provided by Council, and that while most people prefer to drink water from their tap, most people don't particularly care where that water comes from.
• There is a community perception of a risk to water supply security, due to previous droughts and population growth, and
• While PRW is not currently the community's preferred option, people are still supportive of PRW or at least having a serious discussion on it.
Orange Deputy Mayor Gerald Power has welcomed the findings of the survey.
"Orange is a growing city and this survey comes as a good reminder for the Council to continue to work on our long-term water security," Cr Power said.
Projects such as increasing the height of the Suma Park Dam wall, the Macquarie River to Orange Pipeline, new connections to Cowra and Wyangala Dam and the nationally recognised stormwater harvesting scheme have significantly improved water security.
"Due to the success of our network of wetlands and our stormwater harvesting scheme, Orange residents are already very comfortable with the idea of drinking water that's treated after running off streets and car parks. That puts us in a good position to explore how we could move to adding purified recycled water into the mix," Cr Power said.
The Aurecon survey was conducted in 2021, asking 393 residents in a telephone poll about their attitudes to purified recycled water. Since that time Aurecon has been compiling the results and finalising the report.
Aurecon recently conducted a briefing for councillors about the survey and its findings.
For many years Orange has sent its treated effluent to Cadia Valley Operations, although for the last 15 months the mine hasn't needed it due to seasonal conditions. Instead it has been released to Blackmans Swamp Creek and onto Summer Hill Creek and the Macquarie River.
"Now with weather warming up again, Cadia have requested treated effluent to be directed to them again. It's expected it will start to flow in the coming weeks," Cr Power said.
"If conditions changed in future, it would be good to be able to explore how that source of recycled water could be purified to a higher level to benefit both the mine and also to supplement our growing city's water supply," Cr Power said.
FURTHER INFORMATION:
Purified recycled water (PRW) is a system where wastewater effluent is purified using advanced treatment processes and added to a water supply, and then further treated to be used for drinking water. A range of approaches to producing PRW are used internationally in cities such as London and Singapore. In Australia, a number of major cities practice unintentional PRW such as Canberra and Adelaide, which pump water from rivers where treated effluent has been released into the river upstream.
In Orange, future PRW options could include new advanced water treatment processes to purify wastewater effluent before adding it to Suma Park Dam. All water from Suma Park Dam would then be treated to drinking water standards for community use.
