Reform progress
Through a series of key water supply, efficiency and pricing innovations, the National Water Initiative sets the framework for urban water reform.
The National Water Initiative (NWI) aims to:
- provide healthy, safe and reliable water supplies
- increase water use efficiency in domestic and commercial settings
- encourage the re-use and recycling of wastewater where cost effective
- facilitate water trading between and within the urban and rural sectors
- encourage innovation in water supply sourcing, treatment, storage and discharge
- achieve improved pricing for metropolitan water.
Actions for urban water reform
Specific NWI actions to meet these aims fall into three categories:
- managing the demand for water, increasing urban water use efficiency
- encouraging the re-use and recycling of wastewater where cost effective
- encouraging innovation in integrated resource planning and pricing to enable water sensitive cities.
Achieving the desired outcomes for urban water reform will depend on implementation of the NWI as a whole, so broader actions which also contribute to sustainable water management and planning in Australian cities include:
- water resource accounting
- statutory water planning
- access entitlements for different classes of water
- water trading
- environmentally and economically viable infrastructure planning
- restoration of over-allocated urban supply sources.
Progress
In its 2009 Biennial Assessment of progress against the NWI, the National Water Commission found that good progress had been made in delivering the limited set of urban water actions committed to under the NWI, new challenges have presented themselves. These challenges were not as evident when the NWI was signed and include:
- changing and less predictable rainfall and runoff patterns
- uncertainty about climate change
- community demands for sustainable water supply options
- increases in water prices to pay for new infrastructure.
These challenges all create further reform pressures to secure urban water supplies and given the scale of these challenges, a lot remains to be done.