In Melbourne, water is essential to our way of life. But over the next 20 to 50 years, we face a complex and uncertain set of challenges and opportunities for delivering safe, reliable and affordable drinking water.
That’s why we’ve developed our Drinking Water Quality Strategy. This describes how Melbourne Water will continue working collaboratively with retail and regional water corporations, regulators and stakeholders to deliver safe, reliable and affordable drinking water over the next 20 to 50 years.
Strategy approach
This strategy builds on the previous 2017 Drinking Water Quality Strategy, which shaped and enabled significant improvements in drinking water quality risk management over the last five years. It outlines an approach that maintains and builds on the achievements and legacy assets of the past, while planning approaches and solutions suitable for the future.
In line with this approach, effective catchment protection remains a cornerstone of our approach to managing drinking water quality risks for our existing water supply catchments. However, going forward our reliance on sophisticated engineered treatment barriers will grow over time as we necessarily source increasingly large volumes of manufactured water as climate change, a growing population, and other factors drive an evolution in our supply sources.
Strategic goals
To ensure we are prepared for the challenges and opportunities of the future, the Drinking Water Quality Strategy describes four strategic goals:
- Continuity of supply: We continuously improve our systems, processes, people and infrastructure to enable us to do the basics of drinking water quality risk management brilliantly
- Source management: We take a robust multiple barrier approach to managing drinking water quality risks, ensuring that drinking water from all existing and potential future sources are equally safe
- Trust, innovation and leadership: Our customers, stakeholders, and regulators value and trust our leadership and innovation in managing our drinking water supplies
- Resilience of safe supply: Potential threats are anticipated, and appropriate measures are in place to enable supply to continue during and after extreme events with minimised impacts on customers
Specific actions to be delivered over the next five years to drive progress towards the four strategic goals are articulated in the strategy.
Download the strategy
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