Page 2585 - Week 08 - Thursday, 14 August 2014
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MR CORBELL: I thank Dr Bourke for the supplementary. Along with releasing the new water strategy, striking the balance, I also released the outcomes of the review into our water-sensitive urban design guidelines. Water-sensitive urban design guidelines have been in place now for approximately a decade. The original objective was to ensure that we achieved a 40 per cent reduction in water usage in new and refurbished developments. The previous guidelines certainly delivered that outcome.
What we have looked at now in engagement with industry and the broader community is how can we further improve our guidelines to provide greater flexibility for industry in terms of the best fit-for-purpose responses they deliver at an estate level and at an individual development level and how we can continue to drive down the level of potable water use in new developments.
The key principles of the water-sensitive urban design review include looking at the use of water-efficient appliances, minimising waste water generation and treatment of waste water, how that can be done in smarter and more effective ways, fit-for-purpose ways, and in particular how, where appropriate, we can lift it beyond an individual development level and how it can potentially occur at an estate-wide level and other levels of development across the city so that we get cost-effective ways to achieve water-sensitive urban design into the future.
MADAM SPEAKER: Supplementary question, Ms Porter.
MS PORTER: Minister, how will the improved water-sensitive urban design principles be applied and what will they achieve?
MR CORBELL: Water-sensitive urban design, of course, is about reducing the need for water use in new dwellings and that, of course, leads to direct savings for householders. If you have water-efficient appliances and water-efficient measures in estates, it improves the overall use of the resource and it reduces the overall level of demand.
It also, of course, reduces impacts on our catchments because another very important aspect of water-sensitive urban design is in relation to the management of stormwater. Stormwater run-off is critical in terms of addressing the broader issue of catchment health. All of us in this place know the community’s concerns about the health of some of our subcatchments.
Measures that continue to improve the way we manage stormwater run-off, how we detain, for example, stormwater before it enters our catchments so that any pollution—and one of the primary causes of water quality problems in our subcatchments is the run-off from the urban area—how we detain that run-off and clean it before it enters into the broader catchment. These are the types of steps that need to continue to be pursued.
In the last decade the number of on-site stormwater detention facilities has grown by around 300 to 400 separate installations. That really highlights the emphasis that the government and the community as a whole have put on to improving stormwater
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