NewsAurecon study finds Orange community is open to recycled water being part of its future

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.

“While projects such as increasing the height of the Suma Park dam wall, the Macquarie pipeline, new connections to Wyangala and the proposed new East Orange wetland, already put us in a very secure position to deliver water over the long-term, I’m pleased to hear the community is open to the idea of exploring PRW as another part of the mix.

“Due to the success of our network of wetlands and our nationally-recognised stormwater harvesting scheme, Orange residents are already very comfortable with the idea of drinking water that’s come from streets and car parks. That puts us in a good position to explore how we could move to adding recycled water into the mix.

“For many years Orange has sent it’s treated effluent to the Cadia gold mine, although for the last 18 months they haven’t needed it due to seasonal conditions and instead it has been released to flow to the Macquarie River. 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.”

"Cities and towns should have the confidence to initiate discussions with their communities to inform long-term decision-making."

Darren Romain, Urban Water Resilience Market Lead, Aurecon

The survey, conducted in 2021, asked 393 residents in a telephone poll, about their attitudes to purified recycled water.

Aurecon recently conducted a briefing for councillors about the survey and its findings.

“Cities and towns should have the confidence to initiate discussions with their communities to gauge their understanding and opinions of existing water supply and alternative water supply, in order to inform long-term decision-making on which source supply mix is right from a social, environmental and economic perspective,” Aurecon Urban Water Resilience Market Lead Darren Romain said.

“The community of Orange is thinking strategically and openly about its future water supply to ensure resilience. Conducting this research with the community did not generate a negative response – if anything, quite the opposite – and the survey data provides a useful, balanced perspective of the range of views in the region.”

Purified recycled water (PRW)

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 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.