Metropolitan region weekly water update data as at 9 November 2017

Note: 1 billion litres = 1 Subiaco Oval filled to the goalposts

It’s hotting up and this has resulted in an increase in water use and the number of sprinkler fines and warnings issued this week.  On a hot summers day we use about double the amount of water we use on a winters day.  Most of this extra water goes on our gardens.

When it comes to being waterwise there’s still room for improvement as we have the highest per property water use compared to 15 similar sized utilities across Australia.

It doesn’t take a lot – fixing a leaking tap can save up to 10,000 litres per year!

Water use

Our average daily water use last week was 910 million litres, which was above the forecast of 833 million litres per day.  Our financial year to date water use is 83.4 billion litres, which is slightly below the 83.8 billion litres we forecast.

Dam levels

Over the last seven days, Perth’s dam storage levels decreased 0.3 percentage points from 45.3% to 45.0%.  Perth’s dams are used to store groundwater and desalinated seawater that is transferred from our treatment plants as well as streamflow (comes from rainfall).

Sprinkler roster compliance

The two-day-per week sprinkler roster now applies, and this week our inspectors issued 83 warnings and 116 fines in the metro region.  This is compared to 43 warnings and 83 fines the previous week.   Year-to-date we have taken a total of 8148 actions (warnings + fines) compared to 9227 actions for the same period in 2016.   

Rainfall

The average monthly rainfall for November is 22.3mm.  So far this month, Perth has received 2.2mm of rainfall.  Since 1 January 2017, Perth has received 810.8mm of rainfall, which is less than the average of 833.5mm (January to November period).