Kevin Young, Managing Director of Sydney Water, provides his insights on the utility’s sustainability achievements and its plans for the future.
S
ydney Water has supported the healthy growth of greater Sydney and its communities for 126 years with water and wastewater services.
We supply 1.4 billion litres of drinking
water to our 4.6 million customers across Sydney, the Illawarra and the Blue Mountains every day. We also remove and treat a similar amount of wastewater every day. The reality is that water is important to Sydney’s history and, of course, our future. In fact, Sydney would not be located where it is today if in 1788 Governor Phillip had not realised the importance of the location of the Tank Stream for the survival of the first colony. As we look to the future, the debate about our city’s growth has tended to focus on housing and transport, but water and wastewater management is quintessential in any discussions on growth, sustainability and liveability. We should, as a community, be talking more about how we are going to plan for drinking water distribution and wastewater removal as the city grows and renews - perhaps the fact our water infrastructure is underground is one of the reasons its importance is sometimes forgotten. And this is no trivial matter. Over the next 20 years there will be an extra 1.3
Water is the key
to future Sydney growth and sustainability Kevin Young, Managing Director, Sydney Water
million people living in Sydney in 500,000 new homes with an extra 635,000 new jobs. To cater for this growth, good planning for Sydney’s water supply will be essential. Sydney Water has, often incorrectly, been viewed as a collective of plumbers to simply provide water services, but we have proved to be much more than that - we have been Master Planners to provide the cornerstone which has allowed Sydney to grow in a sustainable way to be where it is today.
10 Sustainability Matters - Apr/May 2015
www.SustainabilityMatters.net.au