Five years after private companies won a long fight to compete with Sydney Water to dispose of household sewage, the first private sewerage system is being installed in a new housing development on Sydney’s fringe.
At Pitt Town, on the banks of the Hawkesbury River, a small company called the Water Factory will recycle sewage from more than 900 homes for reuse in their toilets, washing machines and gardens in the part-built housing development called Vermont.
For the first time bills for sewage removal and for the supply of fresh drinking water will come from Water Factory, not monopolies like Sydney Water or Hawkesbury Council, which services the Pitt Town region.
The managing director of the Water Factory, Terry Leckie, said he is about to pour concrete for two buildings the size of an average house which will house the sewage treatment plant that will eventually service the whole development.
While other housing developments in Sydney, including some at Rouse Hill and Homebush Bay, have recycled water it is provided by Sydney Water not a private company.
Mr Leckie said the 2006 Water Industry Competition Act means private companies can build and operate small sewage plants that can provide recycled water to developments that would not otherwise have access to it because it would cost Sydney Water too much to install pipes.
”Sydney Water would never have put recycled water in here,” he said.
Under the scheme he is installing, two-thirds of all water at Vermont will be recycled, with water being reused 10 or 15 times. He expects to store enough recycled water for 10 days’ use.
But the high cost of recycling sewage means recycled water will cost residents just 10¢ less than the $2.01 charge for a kilolitre of drinking water supplied by Sydney Water but distributed by his company.
Despite those modest savings, Mr Leckie said recycled water was becoming very popular on new developments, and he was working on about 30 projects where developers were looking at installing similar systems.
The biggest was at the Frasers Property development on the old Carlton and United Brewery site at Broadway, where a massive system for 2000 apartments and 100,000 square metres of commercial space is planned.
