What is an Urban Water Strategy?
All Victorian water businesses are required to engage with their customers and local communities to develop their Urban Water Strategies (UWS). These strategies outline how we will manage demand for, and ensure sufficient supplies of, drinking water across our service region. They are the key planning tool in delivering safe and sustainable water supplies for our cities and towns.
Purpose
Urban Water Strategies identify the best mix of actions to provide water services in our towns and cities now and into the future.
To do this UWSs:
- have a long-term outlook of 50 years
- consider the whole water cycle
- support the development of resilient and liveable communities
- balance social, environmental and economic costs and benefits
- consider the consequences and uncertainty associated with population changes, climate change and variability and other risks.
North East Water reviews its Urban Water Strategy every five years and aims to support the development of resilient and liveable communities while balancing social, environmental and economic costs and benefits across the water cycle.
Engagement
Customer and stakeholder engagement is a central task of the Urban Water Strategy, with requirements and expectations set out in the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) guidelines issued to North East Water.
As a minimum, the following must be consulted on:
- appropriate levels of service and willingness to pay
- potential need to take action to keep supply and demand in balance
- possible initiatives to address any imbalance between supply and demand
- values and uses of water
- cost-benefit and trade-offs of taking action
- which of these initiatives should be chosen for action, and when
- drought preparedness and response
Our customer and community survey, town market pop-up stalls and online workshop feedback has helped North East Water better understand the level of water security the community wants, the community’s preference for different water supply options, willingness to pay for additional water supply, and where to make trade-offs.
The ideas, knowledge, and information that have been shared with us will inform the scenarios that will be further modelled under the current refresh of the Urban Water Strategy and will help guide the actions that we will be committing to from 2027 onwards. We have captured all of the questions raised by customers and key stakeholders during this engagement period and provided responses here.
We will conduct further in-depth community engagement on any significant infrastructure projects that emerge from this process. Over the next six months we will be doing further modelling and analysis on the options to meet any future water shortfall, so that our current and future customers continue to receive a reliable water service.
Engagement will occur at different points throughout the UWS process as outlined in the project timeline. Our next round of engagement will commence in mid 2026.
