Metro region weekly water update 24 August 2017

• August water use is 13.5 billion litres versus a target of 13.7 billion litres.  

   

• Dam storage levels are 41%.

   

• Flow into dams – 60 billion litres of streamflow since 1 May 2017. 

   

• August rainfall – 145.6mm to date.  Average rainfall for the month of August is 133.1mm.

   

More wet weather helps to keep water use in check

The Integrated Water Supply Scheme delivers water to Perth, parts of the south west, Agricultural and Goldfields regions.  More than two million people are connected to the Scheme who together used an average of 549 million litres of water per day last week.  This is well below what we would forecast for this time of year (588 million litres per day) thanks lower temperatures and wet weather.    

Financial year to date water use (30.72 billion litres) is still slightly more than the 30.57 billion litres we had forecasted.  This means there’s no room to be complacent, and our Spring advertising campaign will begin next weekend with a focus on why it’s important to save water.  

The Winter Sprinkler Switch Off is in place between 1 June and 31 August. In total this week our inspectors issued 94 warnings and 33 infringements in the metro region.  This is compared to 73 warnings and 17 infringements last week. 

There has again been some reasonable rainfall earlier this week, which brings the annual total since 1 January to 683.2mm. While it may feel like it’s been a wetter than normal year, this is only just over the average (678mm) for the same period.

Perth’s dam storage levels increased from 39.6% to 41.2% (1.6 percentage points) over the last seven days.  Our dams received about 11.5 billion litres of inflow from streams this week, which brings the total to 60.82 billion litres since 1 May 2017.  The post-1975 average for streamflow for the period 1 May to 31 August is 65 billion litres.   

Coming next week… introducing our new “Dam Cam”… watch this space!