Question Time

SA Water

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Leader of the Opposition) (14:20): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Water about SA Water policies.

Leave granted.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: I have been contacted by a member of the public whose household is supplied via a private water line. For members' understanding, he hooks to an SA Water supply and a meter and then the line runs for about a kilometre to his house. Recently, this person had a very nasty shock when they received two water bills totalling some $12,000, when usually for those two quarters it would have been somewhere around $1,000. He was advised by SA Water in writing, as I think we all have when your water bill is unusually large. There is often a letter to say, 'This is unusually large. Please check that something is not leaking or something has gone wrong.' He did check and could not find any leak.

He was later informed that a neighbour had been speaking to SA Water and they said they had found the leak in his particular line, but did not advise him that they had discovered that leak. My questions are:

1. Once SA Water becomes aware there is a leak in a private line and the location of that leak, what is the policy to advise the landowner of that particular leak?

2. Does SA Water have a minimum and maximum pressure policy of provision of water to households or properties?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (14:22): I thank the honourable member for his very important questions. I certainly invite him, as I do regularly with other members if they have issues with a constituent, to please contact my office and we will try to sort it out for them.

Without the information about this particular situation, I cannot really advance much specific information, but what I can say in terms of indirect water supply, as former minister Brokenshire would know, is that it is put in place when properties do not abut mains lines and where the cost of extending the mains would be prohibitively expensive for landowners, and so they often elect to take water from a line or a mains some distance away as a private extension which they are responsible for. As it moves away from the mains, they are responsible for it.

There are some difficulties in place sometimes when some of these extensions, these private lines, sometimes cross neighbouring properties. They usually do that hopefully by agreement. It has not always been the case in the past, but hopefully it is these days that neighbours seek the agreement of their neighbours to put water infrastructure across their land.

We can understand at times when there may be a leak in that private infrastructure and it is not on their land and they forget, or for some other reason do not check that infrastructure for the leak, that they can be in a situation as described by the honourable Leader of the Opposition. Nonetheless, SA Water always works very closely with customers, but at this point in time, without that further specific information about the situation, I cannot offer a lot more information.

In terms of pressure, pressure is normally supplied by gravity. I think I have said before that pressure is applied by those header tanks that are often located in the higher parts of suburbs or, certainly in the eastern suburbs, up towards the foothills, and they apply regularly one gravity of pressure to the pipes. We could certainly put in some governing mechanisms to reduce the pressure, but that would mean, of course, that people would not get very much water out of their pipes. It would take them half an hour to fill the kettle and that is usually not what people want.

The Hon. R.L. Brokenshire interjecting:

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: The Hon. Mr Brokenshire is commenting about his regular morning hygiene and I would encourage him to think about reducing the shower times from one hour to five minutes or six minutes. Not long, but if you are efficient, Hon. Mr Brokenshire, I am sure you can get the job done. I invite the Hon. Mr Ridgway to supply me with the details of his constituent and I will see what information I can find out for him.