Water Recycling in Broken Hill – Ensuring Regulatory Compliance

Water Recycling in Broken Hill – Ensuring Regulatory Compliance

Overview

Essential Water is required to maintain and implement a Recycled Water Management System (RWMS) as part of their compliance requirements for approval under the Water Management Act 2000 for their water recycling schemes at Broken Hill. Their RWMS must align to the Framework for Management of Recycled Water or ‘The Framework’ outlined in the Australian Guidelines for Water Recycling (AGWR, 2006). The Framework consists of 12 elements, 36 components and 84 actions, including the requirement for recycled water suppliers to undertake a risk assessment from catchment to consumer and develop critical control points (CCPs), ensuring that only fit-for-purpose recycled water is supplied to customers.

Services Offered

  • Facilitation of risk workshops, including health and environmental risk and HACCP to provide contextual risk profiles for each scheme and end user
  • Workshop briefing papers
  • Development of new and review of existing CCPs
  • Recycled Water Management Plans for White Leeds Wetlands, Wills St and South Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs)
  • Desktop compliance audit for implementation and adequacy of the RWMP, followed by a recommendations report
  • Process Flow Diagrams for two wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs)
  • Development of checklists for liaison with DoI Water (formerly DPI Water)
  • Development of an annual return template for DoI Water compliance
  • Liaison with regulators to achieve approval
  • Customer Inspection Log

Need

In order to obtain appropriate regulatory approvals under section 292 of the Water Management Act 2000, Essential Water and CWT needed to achieve compliance with the AGWR for recycled water schemes from their Wills St and South WWTPs.

Solution

CWT provided a range of services including a compliance review, liaison with regulators, recycled water customer audits, risk assessment and critical control point workshop facilitation, preparation of RWMPs and associated documentation and liaison with the client and regulator to seek approval for the recycled water schemes.

Benefit

Together, Essential Water and CWT achieved compliance with the AGWR and required approvals to supply recycled water to eight customers ahead of the targeted deadline. An updated risk profile for the recycling schemes identified additional improvements actions required to manage the risk.