Class A recycled water will not be available for our Werribee Irrigation District customers to use until Monday, 7 October due to extended maintenance requirements at Melbourne Water’s Western Treatment Plant.
The Class A recycled water supplied by Melbourne Water is delivered to participating growers by Southern Rural Water through its existing irrigation channels and pipelines.
Melbourne Water has set up an incident team to resolve this urgent matter as a priority so they can get recycled water back online as soon as possible.
Why has there been an outage of recycled water?
Chlorine treatment infrastructure at the Western Treatment Plant needs to be repaired to enable the recycled water treatment system to work as it was designed to.
Chlorine and ultraviolet light treatments are critical to removing pathogens and achieving the high-water quality standards needed for Class A recycled water.
Strict regulations and controls mean that recycled water cannot currently be supplied.
How will I be compensated for this outage?
Our focus is to work with Melbourne Water to bring recycled water supply back online. Once the outage is resolved, SRW and Melbourne Water will discuss the customer impacts that have occurred due to the outage and how this may impact contractual obligations.
When will I have access to recycled water?
Melbourne Water has established an incident team to action a complex scope of works to resolve the problem that will allow Class A recycled water to be supplied.
Melbourne Water estimates customers will have access to recycled water in early October and Southern Rural Water will notify customers when this supply has been reinstated.
How will this impact my river water entitlement?
We will be working to maximise the amount of recycled water we supply to customers in the district in the coming months once this source of water is back online.