Metropolitan region weekly water update data as at 17 August 2017

• August water use is 9.7 billion litres versus a target of 9.7 billion litres.  Let’s keep up the good work!

   

• Dam storage levels are 39.2%.

   

• Flow into dams – 49.23 billion litres of streamflow since 1 May 2017. 

   

• August rainfall – 131.20mm to date.  Average rainfall for the month of August is 133.1mm.

   

Water use back on track this week thanks to wet weather

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 559 million litres of water per day last week.  This is below what we would forecast for this time of year (569 million litres per day).    

While the wet weather has helped to soften catchments, and get the streams flowing into Perth’s dams, it has also helped to reduce water use this week.  This is good news because weekly water use has been more than we forecasted over the last few weeks. 

Financial year to date water use (26.87 billion litres) is still slightly more than the 26.53 billion litres we had forecasted.  This means there’s no room to be complacent, and our marketing and water efficiency teams are busy finalising education programs that will be rolled out from spring onwards.  

The Winter Sprinkler Switch Off is in place between 1 June and 31 August. In total this week our inspectors issued 73 warnings and 17 infringements in the metro region.  This is compared to 112 warnings and 32 infringements last week. 

The Winter Sprinkler Switch Off was introduced permanently in 2009.  Our latest customer research has shown that 83 per cent of those surveyed totally support it.  But as the warnings and infringements figures suggest - there is still some room for improvement when it comes to compliance.  For more information go to https://www.watercorporation.com.au/save-water/watering-days/winter-sprinkler-ban

There has been some reasonable rainfall this week, which brings the annual total since 1 January to 668.8mm. While it may feel like it’s been a wetter than normal year, this is still slightly below the average (678mm) for the same period.

Perth’s dam storage levels increased from 35.3% to 39.2% (3.9 percentage points) over the last seven days.  Our dams received about 23 billion litres of inflow from streams this week, which brings the total to 49.23 billion litres since 1 May 2017.  The post-1975 average for streamflow for the period 1 May to 31 August is 65 billion litres.