Metropolitan region weekly water update data as at 18 January 2018

Note: 1 billion litres = approx. 400 Olympic swimming pools

Water use

Our average daily water use last week was 868 million litres, which was below the forecast of 1.08 billion litres.  Our financial year to date water use is 150 billion litres, which is below the 153 billion litres we forecast.

Dam levels

Over the last seven days, Perth’s dam storage levels increased 0.5% to 43.1%.  Perth’s dams store water from three different sources, which are… groundwater and desalinated seawater transferred from treatment plants as well as streamflow (produced by rainfall).

Sprinkler roster compliance

The two-day-per week sprinkler roster now applies, and last week our inspectors issued 150 warnings and 106 fines.  So far in 2018 we have taken a total of 470 actions (warnings + fines) compared to 696 actions for the same period in 2017.

Rainfall

The average monthly rainfall for January is 9.7mm.  So far this month, Perth has received 106.2mm of rainfall.  In 2017 Perth received 854mm of rainfall, which is slightly more than the average of 844.5mm.

General water news

Ex-Tropical Cyclone Joyce brought welcome summer rain this week and Perth’s dams have so far collected about 3.3 billion litres of water. This is roughly enough to supply Perth for three days during the height of summer.

We saw Perth respond well to the wet weather with water use yesterday (Wednesday) similar to what we expect on a cold winter day (675 million litres).  This shows how people turned off their sprinklers or stopped hand watering their gardens.    Compare this to the previous Wednesday when the temperature was 29 degrees and water use was 1.06 billion litres that day.  Typically 40% of a household’s water use goes on gardens.

While this change in behaviour is encouraging please remember water use is still high in Perth when compared to other capital cities around Australia.  With the impact of climate change here more severe we need to keep up our good water saving work!