What is Government Doing?
What is the Victorian Government doing to secure water supplies?
The Victorian Government and water authorities are delivering long-term solutions to meet Victoria’s water needs in drought and a climate change future. The Water Plan outlines a range of projects, including:
- Australia’s largest desalination plant, being built near Wonthaggi. This rainfall independent source of water will start supplying up to 150 billion litres a year in 2011 -- a third of Melbourne's annual requirements.
- Saving water by modernising leaky old irrigation infrastructure in northern Victoria’s food bowl region. The Northern Victoria Irrigation Renewal Project will recover 425 billion litres of water now being lost through evaporation, seepage and system inefficiencies.
- Updating the Victorian water grid by building new pipelines to move water to where it is needed most. Projects include the Goldfields Superpipe supplying Bendigo and Ballarat, and the Wimmera Mallee, Hamilton-Grampians, Sugarloaf and Geelong-Melbourne pipelines.
- Increasing water recycling to conserve Melbourne’s drinking water.
- An ongoing emphasis on household and industry conservation.
- Rebates for water efficient devices in the home.