How Does Recycling Fit in Sydney’s Water Cycle ?
Abstract
This paper, based on publicly available reports and information, presents a summary of Sydney’s water cycle with a discussion of the current and future pressures facing the city’s water supply. An overview is given of the various opportunities for recycling and the associated issues.
One particular factor that is often overlooked is that studies undertaken by the Hawkesbury-Nepean River Management Forum (HNRMF) favour recycling treated effluent in Western Sydney rather than discharging it to the Hawkesbury-Nepean River and its tributaries. HNRMF demonstrated that minimising the discharge of tertiary treated effluent, through recycling, provides significant environmental benefits to the health of the Hawkesbury-Nepean River as it minimises the concentration of nutrients in the river. This improvement in river health can provide potable water savings as less dam water needs to be released to the river to achieve the same river water quality. However these benefits of recycling only become apparent when the entire water cycle is taken into consideration.
Authors
Philip Von Huben & Dennis Cho