Waterproofing Eastern Adelaide Project

The Hon. J.E. HANSON (15:50): My question is to the Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation. Will the minister please inform the chamber about the progress of the Waterproofing Eastern Adelaide Project?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (15:50): I thank the honourable member for his most important question and for his delightful enunciation. Stormwater recycling is one of a number of actions this government has been involved in which intends to diversify our water supplies and to ensure a sustainable future for our state. Stormwater recycling is part of the bigger picture solution that, along with desalination, wastewater recycling and improved management practices, will ensure our water supplies are secure, safe and reliable for the future.

Last week, I visited the worksite for an innovative water reuse scheme in Adelaide's east, capturing stormwater for reuse in the local community. The Waterproofing Eastern Adelaide Project is now a joint project of the City of Burnside, City of Norwood, Payneham and St Peters and the Corporation of the Town of Walkerville, working under the umbrella of the Eastern Region Alliance. I think the City of Port Adelaide Enfield might even be involved in this one as well. The scheme has been supported by funding from the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges Natural Resources Management Board and the Australian government's National Urban Water and Desalination Plan.

The councils that I mentioned previously are working with a leading team of hydrogeologists, civil engineers, urban designers and other experts to identify, harvest, store, filter and reuse stormwater in the eastern suburbs. Hopefully this project will not only reduce operational spending on local reserve irrigation as well as green council areas, but also enhance the quality of water that is discharged into the gulf.

Historically, stormwater has been seen—in the past, anyway—as a drainage issue, an engineering issue, drains being the critical piece of infrastructure to minimise inundation of urban areas to control flooding. The goal then was to move water through our urban landscape as quickly as possible and then out to sea. Of course we can understand what the objectives were, and the need for moving water quickly is pretty clear. We need to ensure that roads and transport are safe, we need to minimise the damage of flooding to infrastructure, and we need to keep communities and private property safe.

However, this approach has serious environmental impacts. It also does not take advantage of the water that falls in urban areas. Sophisticated stormwater management is critical for a modern urban environment—I think we would all agree on that these days—and using stormwater for activities such as agricultural irrigation, park irrigation, sports ground irrigation, as well as third-pipe supply to industrial, commercial and residential customers for use, for example, as toilet flushing, all reduces pressure on our precious drinking water supply from the River Murray and reservoirs, and also, in some locations, our groundwater systems. It also helps improve waterway and coastal water quality by removing pollutants as well as solid materials from stormwater, improves local amenity by irrigating public green spaces, during the summer period in particular, and helps flood mitigation by capturing and redirecting the water.

Managing stormwater is even more important when you consider the impact of the variable climate we may be facing due to global warming. With extreme weather scenarios often predicted to be more frequent and more severe when they do happen, we need to become better managers of floods and droughts whilst ensuring our natural water systems receive the flows they need to remain healthy as well. When rain does fall in abundance we need to be quick at capturing and storing that stormwater for later reuse. This involves clever urban water design such as we see through the Waterproofing Eastern Adelaide Project and similar projects throughout Adelaide.

Of course it also—and this is another level of difficulty—requires collaboration across levels of government. The state, local and federal governments have a need to work together with our local communities and with industry to ensure we are properly managing water in our urban environment. The Waterproofing Eastern Adelaide Project is well underway now and includes the establishment of wetlands and bio filters to help clean the water and infrastructure to inject the water to the local aquifer and then recover it when it is more needed. It also includes about 40 kilometres of distribution pipeline to carry the water from where it is stored to where it is needed. Under the scheme that we are currently talking about today, the two stormwater capture sites at Felixstow are expected to yield, I am advised, almost 500 megalitres of water per year, roughly equivalent to 200 Olympic-size swimming pools.

This, I am advised also, exceeds current demand, which is about 450 megalitres per year for irrigating parks and reserves associated with the project, but I am pretty sure that once this is established there will be a call on the project to supply water to other users and once they have got this bedded down for their own particular council use, they will be able to flow it out to other areas of demand. I am very pleased to note that the commonwealth government and the state government have worked collectively together with the three local councils I mentioned before to fund this important initiative and to provide the east of Adelaide with this fantastic collaborative scheme that demonstrates that innovative approaches can be taken by working together to make the most of the water that we have available.

Thanks to this project, and other projects like it, I am advised that we will be now capable of harvesting around 22 gigalitres of stormwater for re-use in Adelaide. This puts us on track to achieve the SA government's long-term target of 60 gigalitres, as outlined in the South Australian government's water security target strategy, Water for Good. There are several other collaborative projects which are contributing to this target, including the Adelaide Airport Stormwater Scheme, the Adelaide Botanic Gardens First Creek Wetland Project, the Barker Inlet Stormwater Reuse Scheme, plus a range of other council-led projects, which I may have spoken on in this place previously. This is separate, of course, to the $140 million that has been contributed to the Brown Hill Keswick Creek Stormwater Management Plan for South Australia.

Internationally, South Australia's stormwater harvesting and managed aquifer recharge expertise is well recognised, so much so that we are working on potential economic opportunities to export our knowledge on this urban water management plan to places like Shandong province in China and Rajasthan in India. This government will continue to work with our local councils and the federal government to improve the way we manage our water assets now and into the future.