Drinking water quality performance

Melbourne Water is responsible for the harvesting, distribution and supply of safe, high quality drinking water that consistently meets stringent requirements. We manage our system to ensure it works well today and into the future. Our water is safe and pleasant to drink and highly regarded by the Melbourne community. Our aim is that the community continues to rate our drinking water as good or very good.

While we are one of the few cities in the world that draws its water from protected forest catchments, we use a series of risk management systems to provide barriers to contamination and to ensure that our distribution and supply is reliable and efficient. We manage the drinking water system using the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) system, originally designed for the food industry, which focuses on quality management from catchment to consumer.

Most of our water comes from some 150,000 hectares of protected catchments in the Yarra Ranges and Kinglake area that are closed to the public. This means that our water requires minimal treatment to assure its quality.

Normally about 10% of Melbourne's water is drawn from Sugarloaf Reservoir, which is mainly filled by pumping from the Yarra River, and about 5% is supplied from Yan Yean, Melbourne's oldest and shallowest water storage. Water from these reservoirs requires full filtration and disinfection. During drought times this can rise to about 25 % of water supplied to Melbourne.

Melbourne Water manages ten major reservoirs* (with a total capacity of 1,773,000 million litres), 64 service reservoirs; 1018 kilometres of distribution water mains, 214 kilometres of aqueducts and tunnels, 19 pumping stations, five filtration plants, 48 disinfection plants and 4 ultra violet plants. (*Tarago Reservoir to come back online in 2009)

The water we supply must be safe, pleasant to drink and meet the requirements of:

Australian Drinking Water Guidelines
Safe Drinking Water Act 2003
Health (Fluoridation) Act 1973
Bulk water supply agreements with the metropolitan retail water companies

This report provides more detailed information on our drinking water quality monitoring program, which is summarised in Melbourne Water's Sustainability Report 2006/07. Click on the links below for information on Melbourne Water's: