Strategic planning
TASWATER’S goal since its inception in 2013 has been to build a brighter future for Tasmanians by investing in and managing essential infrastructure.
A reform of the Tasmanian water industry started in 2009 when water and sewerage functions were separated from councils and split into three dedicated regional water corporations.
The regional corporations were amalgamated in 2013 and the statewide entity, TasWater, was born.
TasWater Program Manager Eamon Sullivan said since then the organisation has faced and continues to face many challenges, including the scale of the operation.
He said Tasmania’s geography and population dispersion means higher costs and many more assets per customer than our interstate peers.
Mr Sullivan said much of the infrastructure inherited by TasWater in 2013 varied in condition and compliance levels.
At the end of the 2016/17 financial year, 28 towns in Tasmania could not drink water from the tap, 10 dams did not meet the tolerable risk level specified by the dam safety regulator, and about 14 per cent of effluent from our sewage treatment plants did not meet the standards set by Environment Protection Agency.
In response, TasWater is delivering a Regional Water Supply Improvement Program to remove all boil-water alerts by August this year, has a program to upgrade dams around the state, and has initiated a Sewerage System Optimisation Program to improve treatment plant compliance.
These projects form part of TasWater’s Long Term Strategic Plan (LTSP) that was developed last year. This provides a framework for engaging with customers, stakeholders and regulators and navigating a path between prices and service standards to reach full compliance.
“We have a lot of challenges in terms of drinking water quality, environmental challenges and dam safety, but the limiting constraint is affordability,” Eamonn said.
“Twenty-five per cent of our customers receive concessions … and we know that price rises for them can be difficult.”
The organisation has revised its strategic framework to have a customer focus and a set of customer promises, outcomes and associated measures of success.
“We didn’t want to be deciding priorities on our own and we wanted to get input from customers and ask which outcomes are the most important,” Eamonn said.
Drinking-water quality was deemed the highest priority, and improving environmental compliance and dam safety was equal second.
The resulting LTSP specifies the projects and customer outcomes they will achieve over a 20-year period including a commitment to remove all towns from boil-water alerts by August, improve wastewater quality to 90 per cent by 2020-21 and make all dams safe in accordance with Australian standards by 2022-23.
Over this period, the LTSP has been designed to keep price rises to a minimum. The recent
Memorandum of Understanding between State Government, TasWater Owners Representative Group and TasWater reinforces this focus, and will help to reduce price rises even further.
The plan is now being delivered and progress will be monitored and refined as TasWater collects better data.
The company is also aware of its role in helping support Tasmanians more broadly. Tasmania has growing opportunities in sectors such as tourism, agriculture and aquaculture.
The prudent, efficient and targeted investment outlined in the LTSP helps Tasmania harness these opportunities by protecting worldclass landscapes, ensuring reliable drinking water, and enabling growth in industries where Tasmania has a comparative advantage.