Metro weekly water update - 27 Jul7 2018

Metro weekly water update - 27 July 2018

Note: 1 billion litres = approx. 400 Olympic swimming pools.  Please note these figures are rounded (except for rainfall) to the nearest whole number.

Water use

Average daily water use over the last week was 572 million litres, which was slightly above the forecast of 560 million litres.  Since 1 July 2018 we have used 15 billion litres of water, which is about half a billion litres more than what we had forecast.

Dam levels

Over the last seven days, Perth’s dam storage levels have increased (by 11 billion litres) from 272 billion litres to 283 billion litres of usable storage. Perth’s dams store water from three different sources… groundwater and desalinated seawater transferred from treatment plants as well as streamflow (produced by rainfall).

Streamflow

Over the last seven days Perth’s dams (15 dams in total) have received about 7.5 billion litres of streamflow.  Since May, they have received about 25 billion litres of streamflow.

The Winter Sprinkler Switch-off now applies, and our inspectors issued 110 warnings and 16 fines this week.  Since 1 January 2018, we have taken a total of 5996 actions (warnings + fines) compared with 6418 actions for the same period in 2017.

Annual rainfall

Perth has received 469.2 mm of rainfall since January this year.  According to updated figures released by the Bureau of Meteorology the cumulative mean rainfall (1994-2017) for the Perth metro for the January to July period is 450.1mm.

General water news

It is encouraging to see fines and warnings for sprinkler infringements are down in 2018 compared to the same time last year.

When a member of the public reports a sprinkler breach, the Water Corporation will issue a warning.  An Infringement Notice ($100 fine) is issued when the sprinklers are in use and sighted by an Inspector. 

One of the challenges the Water Corporation faces is that it must comply with the Privacy Act 1988, so when someone reports a sprinkler issue we cannot go back to that person who reported it about what action was taken.

This can sometimes lead to frustration and the perception that the issue is not being addressed – this is definitely not the case!

Members of the community play an important role in saving water and we encourage you to report any sprinkler breaches you see, because it is a really effective way of changing the community’s watering habits and saving water.

You can report a breach by phoning 13 10 39 or online at:

https://www.watercorporation.com.au/save-water/report-a-sprinkler-breach