Water management options for urban and rural Australia
The changing face of the urban water industry in the context of cities of the future
Tuesday 5 October
Mr Ross Young
Executive Director
Water Services Association of Australia
Ross Young commenced as the Executive Director of the Water Services Association of Australia (WSAA) in 2004. WSAA is the peak body for the urban water industry and its members provide water services to 16 million Australians – around 80% of the population.
Ross has extensive experience in urban water management at a senior level having held a number of key executive positions with Melbourne Water for over a decade. Whilst at WSAA, he has raised the profile of the Australian urban water industry, represents the industry on water policy at the national level and regularly contributes to debates on urban water issues.
Ross is the chair of the Global Water Research Coalition Board and a board member of WaterAid Australia. He has a diploma of horticultural science, a bachelor of applied science, an MBA and a graduate diploma in natural resources law from the University of Melbourne.
I want to set a context for a couple of the key messages I will be delivering tonight and to pose a few questions. I will start off by saying that, with the exception of the National Water Commission in Canberra, until Malcolm Turnbull was appointed Minister for Water and Environment I do not think you could point your finger at the Australian Public Service and identify anyone who really had accountability for urban water policy at the national level. Yet here we are, as the fourth most urbanised country in the world and, if you compare the resources that are looking after the rural water sector, there are probably thousands and thousands of public servants working on that particular issue; they have probably not made a lot of progress over the decades, but that is another story.
Australia really is regarded as a world leader in adaptation to climate change around the world. The Americans and the Europeans are all finding that their climate is changing, with quite significant impacts on the reliability of water supplies. Where are they going to find out how to address it? They are coming to Australia because, when it comes to climate change impacts on urban water systems, Australia really has been the ‘canary in the coalmine’. Bear in mind that the urban water industry is the first industry to be impacted severely by changing rainfall patterns—because it is quite possible in quite dry years to get sufficient rainfall for crops and pasture to grow, but is there any surface run-off into storage dams? Probably not. And, of course, surface run-off is the first casualty of a more fickle and changing climate.
The second point that I would like to make is that our response to the dramatic decline and change in rainfall patterns over the last 15 years has been made possible by the foundations laid in the 1994 COAG reform process. A lot of people have forgotten that before 1994 you paid for your water based on the value of your property; a lot of the cities around Australia were not metered. The reforms that came from that process were quite radical. Every one of the reforms allocated to the urban sector were achieved, with the exception of one, which was the inclusion of externality pricing in water pricing—and, of course, that is something that, as an industry, we are finding we are still perfecting today. I think in the future there will be a lot more interconnectedness between rural water systems; too often they have been considered to be quite separate systems. But those days are over, because having water systems connected is one of the key risk management factors for managing water resources in a very changing and challenging environment.
I will just go back to the 1994 COAG reforms and make the observation that the reforms in the rural sector were quite far reaching also. The difference between the rural and the urban sectors was that the rural sector reforms were never introduced and they were then rolled over when the National Water Initiative was first developed earlier this century. I often think that if there had been the same political will and the same industry will to reform, based on the 1994 COAG reforms, you probably would not have seen the quite devastating measures that are probably going to be needed to fix all of the overallocations and all of the other issues associated with rural water.
I also come from the philosophical point of view that, if you get the price of water right, most of the issues go away. Fundamentally, where you are getting perverse outcomes in both the urban and the rural systems, most of them relate to the fact that the price of water is not right. You get perverse signals and you get entities all the time looking for government handouts, because they are not pricing water correctly—and I will come back to that later.
My final introductory remark, before I go through my slides, is to say that there is something different about water compared to other utility commodities, such as electricity and gas. If a government came in and said that they were going to limit everyone to a certain number of litres of petrol per week, limit their consumption of electricity or limit their consumption of gas, there would be riots on the streets. But when the water utilities introduce water restrictions and restrict people’s right to use water when and where they like, they are applauded for it; and then, when you lift restrictions, people criticise you and they think that having water restrictions is something that is good for your soul. I beg the question: why is that so? I will return to that question at the end because, as I said, water is special and it is very, very different.
[Slide—Water Services Association …]
This is a slide of Melbourne in the summer of 2009, six weeks after the horrendous bushfires. This shows Albert Park Lake just before the Grand Prix. I put it up just to show that there are more values to urban water systems than just the mere need for water for our health and our hygiene. It is all about the liveability of our cities. I can remember coming to Canberra five or six years ago and Canberra looked pretty much like this too. The liveability of our cities, I think, is going to be one of the key factors going forward. Water is a key element in that; particularly with the ‘heat island’ effect, it is going to be imperative that we have water systems that are far more reliable and that we are able to make sure that we can keep our cities attractive and liveable by having the right water environment.
[Slide—WSAA …]
This slide gives a quick overview of what my organisation does. Essentially, a lot of what we do is due to the fact that, under the Constitution, urban water is the responsibility of the states and territories. Without an organisation like ours, we would have been confronting the rail gauge issue all along: you would have a New South Wales tap, a Victorian tap and a South Australian tap. A lot of what we do is about getting consistency so that manufacturers can manufacture pipes and taps and know that they have a national market. We do a lot of research: we don't do it in-house but contract it out. We spend probably $1½ million a year on research projects. We also benchmark the industry to make sure that it is competitive. And, of course, we represent the urban water industry at the national level to make sure that federal parliamentarians recognise that there is an industry there that needs to be listened to when policy issues are being contested.
[Slide—(Map of Australia) …]
This slide shows you where our members are. To be a member of our association, you need to have 50,000 or more property connections. My 35 members provide about 80 million Australians with their water, wastewater services and stormwater services. But there are about 300 water providers in Australia. Most of those are small local governments in New South Wales—I think New South Wales has 107 local councils providing water services—and Queensland, where I think it is a little less than that. The days of local government managing water, I think, are over; but that is really another matter.
[Slide—Context for what is happening in the water industry …]
This slide sets the context for what is happening in the urban water industry. If you understand what the drivers are and things like that, it puts into place a whole range of things that you might find a bit confusing. I have talked already about the climate shift; you will have heard about that before, so I am not going to delve into that. Of course, growing populations were very high profile and much debated during the election campaign, and I will be commenting on that later. Really—and it has been revealed in the green book that was given to both parties—the rapidly growing population is pretty much locked in and there is not much that governments can do about it.
But I also want to talk about the changing demographics. The fastest growing household sector in Australia is the single-person household. When you have single-person households, from both an energy and a water point of view you lose your economies of scale. Some of the studies we have done show that, if I live in a house by myself, of course, I use 100 per cent of the water. However, if my partner moves in with me, she will use only 80 per cent of the water that I use; and, if a third person moves in, they will only use 50 per cent of the water that I use. This is because you are running your washing machine and dishwasher more efficiently because you are filling them up. So this is a rapidly growing area because of the divorce rate, the baby boomers and a whole range of other factors.
But, of course, you know that we need to do something to give our rivers a good drink, and the urban water industry accepts its responsibility to do that; and the state of our rivers is generally something that, as a nation, we cannot be proud of. There is also an expectation out in the community to have very high levels of standard, and today’s generation will not put up with what grandma and grandpa might have put up with 60odd years ago. Currently we are having a really good look at the way that water is managed within a city. We used to have a once-through system where it came from a dam on the top of a hill, went straight through a city, was turned into wastewater, was treated and then went out into the ocean or a river. Those days have come to a brutal end, I can tell you.
We are also trying to move beyond water restrictions. We think that water restrictions should be there for emergency purposes only, such as very extreme dry events. The problem with having permanent water restrictions is that, when you do come across a very significant dry period, you have no other lever to pull. So I am firmly of the belief that we should have rules about using water efficiently but we should not be imposing ongoing water restrictions in the future.
Of course, the great challenge for a lot of us going forward is the whole issue of operating in a carbon-constrained world. But we are lucky in the urban water industry in the sense that we do have the opportunity to generate considerable green energy, and I can give you some examples of that. But my vision is that, probably in 20 years time, a wastewater treatment plant will be far better known for its ability to produce green electrons than for its ability to actually treat wastewater. If you think about our wastewater systems in that context, we will be changing our practices with what we allow into the wastewater system. In particular, we might be paying industries like breweries to put more waste into our system because that carbon can be converted into biogas at the wastewater treatment plants. Who knows? You might even be pulling up there to fill up your car with biogas.
[Slide—Climate change impacts …]
I have put this slide up to say that too often climate change impacts on water are characterised by yields and changing rainfall patterns. But every aspect of urban water management is impacted by climate change. I will give you one example that was never envisaged or thought to be important going back five years. It relates to wastewater flows. During the particularly dry period in Victoria and around New South Wales, wastewater flows dropped dramatically. That was because people were diverting grey water to keep their gardens alive, there was less rainfall infiltration to the wastewater system and there was less groundwater infiltration to the wastewater system. It became so critical in a number of areas that there was a real danger that the seals would stop working. Of course, the uptake of low-volume shower roses and water-efficient appliances means that the volume of water going in there dropped dramatically but the load and the concentration increased. This put considerable pressure on our systems and was something that blindsided all of the experts; noone saw that coming until it was too late. So I just make the point that rainfall is important, but all the other aspects of the urban water system—even pipes can be impacted by rising temperatures and the like—every aspect of our industry is impacted by climate change.
[Slide—New Water Sources—More Energy Intensive ...]
I should say that there are no climate change sceptics in the urban water industry as we think the signals are so profound. You can argue about whether it is human induced or part of a natural cycle; but, looking at our data, we are convinced that there is a change. I do not know whether you have heard about the quite desperate situation in Perth at the moment. Normally Perth would expect an inflow during their winter months of around 200 gigalitres. This year I think they got 9 gigalitres and they are already getting days with temperatures in the high 20s and low 30s. So their water harvesting season is really over. I think they are right for next year; but it will be in the year after that that they will really be reliant on good rainfall—otherwise they will be in all sorts of trouble.
I put this slide up to show that conventional water systems, such as dams at the back of hills flowing by gravity down into treatment plants and into distribution mechanisms, are really low energy type systems—and gravity is a beautiful thing, let me tell you. You can see from the slide , as you go from conventional to recycled to desalinated water, just how the energy intensity of those processes increases. Of course, one might say that it is ironic that our response to climate change is to install more energy-intensive water supply systems, and that is true, but I will address how we are handling that issue further on.
[Slide—Renewable energy generation …]
This is an example of the biogas installations that are going in in our wastewater treatment plants. As I said, there is a real revolution there, particularly once we get our heads around how we can actually super-charge the wastewater going into these treatment plants with carbon so that we can maximise the use of renewable energy and biogas. At the moment we are fairly sure that all of our wastewater treatment plants can be converted so that at least they are energy neutral and are not a net consumer of energy. But the next frontier is to get them as positive energy producers, and I think that we will get there.
[Slide—Hydroelectric plant being installed …]
This is another example, this time in Sydney. This just shows you that when you have a big dam up on a hill, as with Warragamba, rather than putting in pressure reduction valves, why not put in mini turbines. Also, rather than having a waterfall of wastewater, as exists at a number of our treatment plants, why not put that through a turbine and extract the energy. As I said—unlike a steel mill—as an industry, there is not a lot that you can do to make yourself more energy efficient. So we are very lucky to be able to do that in the water industry.
I should probably make the point at this stage that the community sets the bar very high for the water industry. I think this relates back to water, where I think water is perceived as an environmental resource, whereas gas and electrons are certainly not viewed that way. But, as I have said, I will close on that point a little later on.
[Slide—Recycling in Eynesbury ...]
There has been a revolution going on about plumbing our new cities and our redeveloped areas. It is quite common now to find two, three or four pipe systems in some properties and new developments; this is the way of the future. Ultimately, I think the answer will be being able to put our recycled water back into dams so that we do not have multiple supply systems, because pipes are expensive and also plumbers love cross-connecting pipes. So it is imperative that we actually move from this. I think this type of technology is really like the hybrid or the Prius car, which is the transition from the carbon economy to the hydrogen economy; whereas I think, using water, this is the transition from natural water supplies to managed water supplies—that is, recycled water.
[Slide—Desalination in Australia …]
This chart shows the extent to which desalination plants are either now completed or still under construction. The bottom line is that the capacity of the plants being built now represents about 33 per cent of total capital water consumption, based on the 200708 year. But the inlets and outlets for a number of the treatment plants have been up-sized so that, if you want to plug in some more filters and membranes, you can. If that was to happen, you can see that the volume of water would increase to 750,000 gigalitres, which is nearly 50 per cent of all capital water consumption, based on the year 200708. What you see here is fundamentally climate change adaptation because, whether or not you like desalination, it is a climate-independent source of water; and, in an era of climate change, you cannot afford to have all of your eggs in the surface run-off area, because it is a highly unreliable source. So, like a good share investor, you do not put all your money in the one stock. What the industry is doing at the moment is building a diverse portfolio of water supply options to mitigate risk. Desalination is not the only one; there is significant investment in recycled water and in stormwater and in looking at all of the integrated technologies that you can use for water in urban areas.
[Slide—Since 199900 the volume of recycled water produced …]
This just shows you how the volume of recycled water generated by urban water utilities has increased by 130 per cent since about 2000, and that is increasing every year. To date, none of that water is used for drinking water purposes. Essentially, it is being used for industrial, commercial and urban irrigation and agricultural uses.
[Slide—Household consumption patterns reflect the lasting impacts of water ...]
One of the great social changes—in fact, I would put it up there with attitudes to drink driving and sun smart campaigns—is the extent to which urban Australia has embraced water efficiency and water conservation; it is nothing short of amazing just how our water habits have changed. This is reflected in the extent to which per capita consumption has continually decreased for a long time now. Even last year, when restrictions came off in Sydney—and Perth to a certain extent—there was only a slight increase in water consumption. You know that there has been a whole range of programs, but I think one of the key factors at work here is that climate change has really terrified people that we could run out of water, and I think there is nothing like having your back to the wall to galvanise public support for a campaign like that.
[Slide—Total reported capital expenditure increased from ... ]
This slide shows you the massive capital expenditure. Over the last five years and stretching out for about another two years—so over a sevenyear period—there will have been about $15 billion invested in new urban water systems across Australia; even putting that up against the mining companies, that is a significant investment in the Australian economy. Once again, it is all about the response to climate change. You can see that the vast majority of the expenditure is going into the utilities with greater than 100,000 property connections.
[Slide—Significant increases in capital expenditure ($ per property) ...]
This shows you the wastewater and water expenditure. You can see that over this period of time the investment has been dominated by water; but, in the past, the investment has been dominated by wastewater. If you look at the water bill that comes from ACTEW, you will find that the wastewater component is far more expensive than the water component, yet we never hear anyone talking about the elasticities of demand with wastewater, or greater efficiency, or reducing wastewater costs; people are only concerned about water costs. Once again, it is one of these areas that makes water different.
[Slide—Release of Occasional Paper No. 25 …]
Recently we released a paper that came out three days before the federal election, because there was a lot of doom and gloom that with the projected population figures in urban Australia we would all be drinking mud—and, of course, nothing could be further from the truth.
[Slide—Projected population increases (Series B) for Australia’s major …]
This slide is made up of three ABS slides and it shows what the projected population for series B is up to 2026, and then to 2056. You can see some fairly healthy increases there, particularly if you look at Melbourne. In sheer numbers, 81 per cent is quite a big increase; when you put it over the size of Melbourne already, that results in a lot more people.
[Slide—Key drivers of future water demand ...]
We identified certain things as the key drivers of future water demand, and this is part of the report where you become a hostage to fortune. Essentially, these are the elements that actually determine what the per capita consumption will be going forward.
[Slide—Projected residential water consumption kL per capita …]
Based on our best estimates, we projected what per capita consumption would be in each of the Australian capital cities, going out to 2026, where you see it actually rising in a number of areas compared to what it was in 2009. Of course, going out to 2056, we are predicting that, through the greater use of technology and better housing design and better city design, per capita water consumption will decrease.
[Slide—Not surprisingly all three population scenarios result in significant …]
Multiplying out the numbers, this shows you just how much more water is needed. If we take series B, which we believe is the most plausible, we are looking at about 1200 gigalitres of additional water to supply a population of 35 million. To put that into some context, Sydney’s annual water consumption is about 400 gigalitres. So about 2½ times Sydney’s annual water consumption will be required by 2056; that is not an easy get, but it is not daunting by any means. We think that, as an industry, if we plan appropriately and we utilise all of the resources we have then we can meet those demands. You would already know that even though we are the fourth most urbanised country in the world, urban Australia only uses and consumes about 12 per cent of all of the water. So we are still a minor player when it comes to the volume of water consumed, but a very important one, given the number of people who live here.
[Slide—Series B Projected total urban water consumption ...]
But this really is the scary bit. This is breaking it down between the individual cities. When you look at south-east Queensland, you can see why they have invested so much because they are going to require more than double their water supply by 2056, if they are going to keep growing like that into the future.
[Slide—Productivity Commission Inquiry into Australia’s Urban Water Sector …]
There is a lot of talk about reform. The Productivity Commission is in the process of having an inquiry into urban water and there are three key areas that it is going to look at. The first it will look at is whether there are contestable and meaningful water markets that could be established in urban areas, as there are in the rural sector. We are very open to any reform agenda, but I make the point that I do not think that individual households will ever be in a water market, because how you would allocate the water in the first place is quite problematic: if you did it just on a house basis, you would disadvantage large families; and, if you did it on a per capita basis, the costs of keeping track of who was living in what house would be absolutely daunting. But let’s have a look at it. I also make the observation that nowhere in the world can you find an actively working water market. That does not mean that they cannot exist, but it does mean that we need to do a lot of work before we look at that. The Productivity Commission is also looking at giving customers more choice; I think this is good. A lot of people want water to be sold just like you buy your health insurance or your mobile plan. I do not think there are that many choices, but if people value their garden a lot they might be able to pay at a premium to buy out of restrictions and use some water to keep their beloved garden going. The other issue is scarcity pricing. A lot of economists think that as the dams go down, the price of water should go up. Fundamentally, I think this is flawed because, unlike bananas after a cyclone goes through, once dams drop they stay low for a very long period. But, once again, do not rule anything out; let’s have a look at it. And, of course, there is the implementation of third-party access schemes, where people can access water and wastewater from the utility.
[Slide—National Water Commission …]
[Slide—COAG Urban Water Policy Reform Actions ...]
Infrastructure—I might just skip over a few of these things because of time constraints—but these are some of the urban water policy actions that are currently under consideration in Canberra, which are all about improving the industry. There is a recognition that the industry is not broken, but of course we can always do better.
[Slide—Intelligent Networks and Smart Water Metering Trials …]
This is a quickly evolving area. It is about intelligent networks and smart water metering trials. Personally, I think this is the equivalent of the barbed-wire out on the prairie, in terms of assigning property rights, but we need to do a lot of homework before we start implementing smart meters and ‘time of use’ metering. Currently our networks are dumb networks, so we have to turn them into smart networks. You can just see, down the right-hand side of the slide, where trials with the energy companies are going on around Australia, working with the water companies to work out how we might get a business model to get smart meters and intelligent networks up.
[Slide—Cost of Carbon Abatement (CCA) Tool …]
We have developed tools to enable us to manage our carbon abatement and also to work out where the low hanging fruit is so that we have a methodical way of investing—where we can get the biggest bang for our buck—when it comes to minimising our greenhouse gas impacts.
[Slide—Capital Cities’ Water Prices as at 1 July 2010 …]
This slide shows capital cities’ water prices. I started off by saying that if you get the price of water right, a lot of the issues go away. Generally speaking, across the major capital cities, water is priced to recover all of the costs of collecting, distributing and discharging that water and that wastewater. This is why most of the capital cities pay quite significant dividends—about $1 billion a year—to state governments. I think it is a good discipline on the industry to be paying dividends. It does show that, if you get your price right, all of the capital investment that I have been talking about has generally been going on the water utilities’ balance sheets; that is because they have very healthy cash flows because they actually price the water right. Once you get a move away from the capital cities—particularly in New South Wales and Queensland, where it is run by local government—you will find that water prices are a lot cheaper, and of course consumption rates are a lot higher. So never underestimate the power of a price signal and also never underestimate the virtues of getting your water pricing right.
[Slide—Conclusion …]
So, in conclusion, I will just reinforce a couple of the key points. Climate change and population growth are really the key drivers of the industry. They are what have caused the revolution in our industry over the last 15 years: the clouds disappeared, the rainfall patterns changed and all of a sudden our dams went down and stayed down. You can argue about the money, the options and things like that, but let me tell you: desalination, despite its cost, is still far cheaper than having towns run out of water.
We now have a new era of reform upon us, just like that of 1994. My view is that if we approach and are as proactive with that reform as we were in 1994, and also through the National Water Commission, we will be a much bigger and much stronger industry. If we ignore it or try to put our heads in the sand and say, ‘Well, if we forget about it for long enough, it will all go away,’ we will end up like the dinosaurs, and there is an element of that in what is happening in the agricultural sector. I think the speed at which we have approached building these new water sources has been quite incredible; I have mentioned the investment of $15 billion. Critics would say that we left it too late and that we were asleep at the wheel. The irony here, of course, is that these are the same people who were accusing us of gold plating, making assets too big and spending too much on assets over the previous decade. Well, thank goodness we were over-investing because it meant that we did have a little bit up our sleeve, and that we really waited until the signals were so profound before pushing the augmentation or the ‘spend the money’ button.
As I have said, Australia is recognised as a world leader in a whole range of areas, such as leakage management, sustainability and, of course, adaptation to climate change. We have a significant skills shortage in our industry due to demographic factors and also because the technologies are more sophisticated and we need people who are more highly trained than they were a decade or so ago.
Finally, water is a quintessential economic, social and environmental resource. Water is a topic that evokes passion in so many people; it is a contested area. Australians are obsessed with climate and everyone has a view on water, and that is why water has such a high profile these days.
But, to get back to where we started from, I posed the question: why is water different? Why don’t we march down the streets about our petrol or gas—these other important commodities that are essential for our life? I think there are two reasons to explain this. One is that water is seen to be an environmental resource and a natural resource, whereas gas and electricity are seen to be manufactured products—if you are running short of electricity you build a new power station—whereas, with water, people say, ‘Well, we can’t go and build another dam or another lot of groundwater, because of the enormous impact it would have on the environment.’ I think that is the reason why our industry has been working on conservation and demand management for well over a quarter of a century; in the energy industry, they are just dipping their toe in the water. Recently I asked a senior person from the energy sector, ‘Where is the low hanging fruit in energy savings in the energy sector in households?’ His response was, ‘Everything is low hanging fruit in the energy sector, because we really haven’t touched it.’
Just getting back to why water is different, the first thing is, as I said, I think it is considered to be a natural and environmental resource, whereas gas and electricity are considered to be industrial products. But the second reason is that water has a spiritual value, which gas molecules or electrons will never have. If you think about it, our vocabulary is rich in water metaphors. Right throughout science and particularly throughout the stock market, our vocabulary is riddled with water metaphors. I think it is because you can live a long time without food and without electricity, but water is the essence of life and is the most critical resource. That is why people have fundamentally different views to it compared to all the other resources that we consume. That is what makes working in the water industry truly one of the most fascinating and rewarding of jobs.
Discussion
Question: There has been quite a bit of talk in recent times about the idea of water-sensitive cities, and I just want to get your thoughts on where that might be progressing. Also, just a side question, where do you see the influence of urban stormwater and stormwater recycling going?
Ross Young: I was in Montreal at the World Water Congress just two weeks ago. Australia had a session there as part of the ‘Cities of the Future’ stream, and there is no doubt that we are leading the way in integrated urban water management; that means looking at all of the streams of water that are available in our cities, seeing what we can do to retain as much water as possible in the cities, particularly stormwater. I can tell you that nothing frustrates people more than seeing stormwater after a storm, particularly after a dry period, rushing down the stormwater systems and out into the rivers or the oceans. Now, the great challenge for stormwater is actually storing the stuff. It is also fair to say that, in new developments and major redevelopments, it is quite easy to plumb in much more sophisticated stormwater systems and other water systems, and that is what is happening. However, in established areas, because of that storage area issue, it is quite problematic. That does not mean that we cannot do a lot, but the essence of it gets down to planning. That is why the Cities of the Future Program that we are progressing is really about getting the water industry in at the ground level, when the key planning decisions are being made for our cities. Whether we like it or not, our cities’ planning is generally dominated by transport—where the freeway is or the train line or whatever—and water is pretty much an afterthought; we are just told to supply the water. That has to change.
In 20 years time, I think you will see fundamentally a different way of managing water. I think the days of the big systems are over and we are going to have more localised systems—because, the more localised the systems are, the better the chances that you can maximise the recycling of water. I think you will find far more innovative use of green spaces in our cities—Canberra would be a great case in point—where stormwater can be stored and can be used not only for irrigation but also to cool our cities down, because our cities are getting warmer and warmer. So there is a whole range of things going on there. Will we be decommissioning our big pipes and our big treatment plants in the short-term? Absolutely not. But into the future, who knows?
The big question in our industry today is: what will be the size of our systems, going forward? Like a lot of challenging things, the devil is in the detail. You need to do a thorough analysis. You cannot afford to throw out any option, you need to analyse them all, but you must look at every aspect of them. One example is that in houses with rainwater tanks—and I’m pro-rainwater tanks—if you have pressurised pumps, they come on and off every time you turn a tap or flush a toilet. Studies in Queensland and Melbourne have shown that the energy intensity of rainwater can be almost equal to desalinated water because of those pumps. I am amazed at how often, when I talk about this, people say, ‘Oh well, maybe that explains my big electricity bill.’ When you talk about ‘electricity’ today, you are talking about greenhouse gas emissions. So the devil is in the detail, rule out nothing; but there is absolutely no doubt that a revolution is going on in terms of the way we integrate our water within our cities to retain the water there in order to provide better quality and liveable cities.
Question: I enjoyed your talk very much. At the top of your 'Conclusions' slide you have ‘climate change and population growth’. The two of those, for me, spell ‘settlement’. That is, who is managing our settlement patterns, whether that be regional growth with the CSIRO figures about the enormous amount of hotting up of the south and certainly the amount of increased rainfall in the north? If I had a young family today, looking to my future perhaps over the next 20 to 30 years, could I not be thinking about moving north, if water is a real issue for me? Couldn’t we see settlement patterns based on people’s concerns about what you say is, quite rightfully, the essence of life: water?
Ross Young: A study was done by the government, I think last year, about the opportunities for agriculture up in the north. But I think there is one thing to be said: because our climate is relatively harsh, I think people tend to congregate in cities and they tend to be coastal because the climate is that little bit more moderate. It is quite interesting: if you look at the United States and European countries—and as I have said a couple of times, we are the fourth most urbanised country in the world—you tend to get a lot of medium-sized cities in those particular countries; whereas, in Australia, you get these great mega cities and then, all of a sudden, putting aside a few like the Toowoombas, Bendigos, Ballarats, you go right down to quite small settlements, generally speaking.
But I think one thing is not going to change: the majority of population growth will occur in our cities, whether we like it or not. This change has been going on forever, right from the gold rush on, where there has been a move to aggregate even the regionally based cities so they have become major centres. The reality is that people will not live in these small towns unless they have proper facilities, such as movie theatres, proper health care, somewhere for the kids and so on. But I would be doubtful whether we are going to get a broad movement north, particularly in cities, relating to the climate. However, that might change if the drying of the south continues to the extent that farming becomes quite unviable in those areas. So who knows? But moving north is no panacea, I can tell you, with very heavy monsoonal rains and quite dramatic swings in the climate.
Question: Why is it that there is what appears to be such widespread objection to the building of further dams; and can we afford the luxury of not building further dams?
Ross Young: I have said that no option should be ruled out. People say, ‘What are you pro: desalination or recycled water?’ I say, ‘I am pro-everything’—but you need to analyse what is the optimum solution for each area. There is what I argue a very good dam site based on farmland, which has already been purchased, up behind Hunter Water; it is called the Tillegra Dam. If that dam were constructed, it would supply two generations with water; it would fix up their water issues there for a good 80 to 100 years. If you go back to my slide on energy, dam water is incredibly light-footed in terms of greenhouse gases.
But the weakness of dams, putting aside that there can be environmental issues, is that they rely on rainfall, and we all know how fickle rainfall is. The days of dams being the only solution are over. But I’m not against dams being built, provided that there is a thorough environmental and social assessment done and also an assessment of the alternative, when it comes to energy. If it stacks up and there is general support from the community, why not? Mind you, a lot of people would just say that the days of dam sites are over. That is probably true also, but I do not think we should have a blanket ban on any water supply option.
Question: As you would be aware, in Canberra we use 60 gigalitres a year gross and we recycle 30 gigalitres because they go into the Molonglo and back into the Murrumbidgee. You mentioned that in Sydney they use 400 gigalitres a year. How much of that flows into the ocean, not to be recycled? Not only that, but what is the situation with all the other cities around Australia and what action are they taking to avoid or, rather, to stop what is just a complete and utter waste of water?
Ross Young: Do not quote me, but I think only about 12 per cent of the total wastewater in Sydney is recycled, I think it is somewhere between 8 or 12 per cent, depending on the year itself. People say, ‘Why don’t we manage our water supply systems like Paris does?’ where it has gone through four or five sets of kidneys, or London, where people claim it has been through 11 sets of kidneys—which is a load of hogwash but, anyway, it is a good story. There is a fundamental difference, and that is that we are a coastal-hugging nation. We love living in cities and most of our major cities, with the exception of Canberra, sit on the coast.
The wastewater systems were designed to utilise gravity, so they are all down in the lowest part of the catchment. You have these enormous collection systems, largely based on gravity, that convey all the water down to the wastewater treatment plant, where it is treated and then discharged into the ocean. To get that water from the lowest point and pump it back up to where you can put it in a dam or some other storage facility means that there are incredible costs in building the pipelines, the pumps and the like; but the energy involved in pumping all that water uphill to get it back to where you can store it is very, very expensive and very greenhouse gas intensive. But, if you are in London, Paris or Canberra, all you have to do is put it in downstream into your river: the river is a natural buffer, the recycled water loses its character and gravity conveys it down to the next city, where they pump it out and do the same. You cannot do that with coastal cities. That is why it is far easier to do recycling in inland cities, where you can use a river, compared to coastal cities.
One of the key drivers, as I have said, with smaller systems is to get a lot more distributed treatment plants around these big cities so that you can recycle water on a local basis and not have these massive volumes of water ending up at the bottom of the system and then having to push them up. Just remember that a dollar’s worth of water weighs a tonne. Water is very heavy. That is why long distance pipelines are just a ludicrous idea when it comes to water. You only need to pump water a little bit uphill for over 200 kilometres to make desalination water look attractive from an energy perspective. That is one of the things that people forget about. If you put an 8- or 9-litre bucket of water in each hand and lift them, you will find that water is very heavy stuff.
Question: What do they do with desalinated water? How do they store that?
Ross Young: Desalinated water can go directly into the potable distribution system.
Question: But it’s pumping it backwards.
Ross Young: Yes, it is pumping it backwards; but the recycled water that is generated down at the wastewater treatment plant would have to be pumped all the way back up to Warragamba Dam or whatever because, at this stage, there is a reluctance to have what we call ‘direct potable recycling’; that is, you need to put it through an environmental buffer. Places like Adelaide and Perth are lucky because your buffer can be what you are standing on—the aquifer. If you put it down there, it loses its character; it goes through a buffering situation and then people are happy for it to go back into the drinking-water system. But there are no direct recycling water systems that I am aware of anywhere in the world, apart from somewhere in Africa—and I can’t think of where it is. All of the other systems go back into some form of other environmental buffer, like a river, a large lake, a dam or the like. Sydney, I think, are pumping their desalinated water less than 10 kilometres to get it back into the drinking-water supply; whereas with Warragamba, I think there is about a 200-metre lift and an 80-kilometre pumping. So there are orders of magnitude differences in the cost of the infrastructure and energy consumption. So we pay a higher price, in relation to recycled water, for hugging the coastline.
Question: Has anybody given any planning consideration to counter the future prospect of urban water theft? Already we are hearing stories of people’s taps in their front yards being used while they are away from home.
Ross Young: I would just make the point that despite the fact that the price of water is in the process of doubling, your water bill is still a relatively small percentage of the total outgoings of running a household. So I do not see water ever being priced at a level where it is going to pay criminals or people to fill up buckets from the neighbours’ taps when they’re down at the shopping centre—because fundamentally people are probably too lazy. Also, I got my water bill in Melbourne just the other night and they said that, with the proposed increases in water bills in Melbourne, I would end up paying an additional 15c for water every week. Well, who could be bothered?
Question: Perhaps I could add just one point. People have water tanks these days and they can fill them up overnight.
Ross Young: That is true. I have heard a lot of talk about that, and then they think they can use the tank during daylight to water their gardens because they are independent; that is true. But this is where I think the majority of people do the right thing, although there is always that element that spoils it for everyone. But I would go back to the point I made. I think the galvanising of the community was because of this fear that we were going to run out of water. People from other countries cannot believe our focus on water. It is on the front page of the newspaper; if it is not on the front page, it is on page 2 or 3. There are billboards up showing what the daily consumption is and the dam levels. Water utilities did a survey a couple of years ago that said that something like 80 per cent of people could nominate the dam level within a 1 or 2 per cent accuracy. International visitors would say, ‘People overseas are just not that interested in water.’ I think this gets back to the fact that climate change has really been the lightning rod for galvanising our community to take an interest in their water supply and to be so passionate about it.
Question: I really enjoyed hearing how water systems will be part of the future of our energy production; that was really interesting. My question is linked to your statements about how the sewerage system does not necessarily have enough water to run treated sewage out to sea, with the reduction in water due to restrictions. I was under the impression that, around the time of the federation of New South Wales, when they produced that major centralised system for Sydney, they actually had to outlaw rainwater tanks to make sure that they had sufficient water to run down that system, to make sure that the engineering of it worked. So I just wonder whether you see there being future conflicts between all these diversified systems; and, if that is the case, how is the association planning to put all those difficulties into the policy area?
Ross Young: I would be surprised if they were going to ban or outlaw rainwater tanks because rainwater collected off roofs goes into the stormwater system, so it is a completely different system; whereas, if you go to Europe and even North America, you will find a lot of systems are combined; they are both water and stormwater. Luckily, with the exception of a small area in Sydney around Bondi, in Australia we generally have separate stormwater and wastewater systems. But the point is, as I think you put it, about optimising each flow of water in an urban area to keep it in urban areas as long as we can, to recycle it as often as we can and to minimise our footprint on the outer-lying regions and things like that, where the water to this day is generally collected and used. I am a great believer in technology. If you go back 20 or 30 years and see what they were doing with water then and compare that with what they are doing with it today, they are worlds apart. I am hoping that in the next 10 to 20 years there will be equal breakthroughs that will mean we can do amazing things with water that we can only dream about today.
