Orange NSW - a leader in stormwater harvesting ...

Excerpt from ABC News:

When it rains it stores for Orange

29 September 2008

The New South Wales regional city of Orange is about to become the first centre in Australia to harvest stormwater.

The city in the central west of the state will trap water from around the city, then treat and supply it to local households.

The council hopes that in an average year stormwater will supply 90 per cent of Orange's water.

Orange residents are on level five water restrictions and the main dam is at 38 per cent capacity.

The plan to harvest stormwater, treat it and supply to households, may make life a little easier for its 40,000 residents.

Those who have lived through the last seven years of drought have welcomed the move.

"I would be happy to drink it. It wouldn't worry me as long as it was cleaned properly. Not a problem," one person said. "I drink out of my rainwater tank and it is not filtered so."

A second resident believes tanks should be installed in as many places as possible.

"It would be the best thing we could ever do because of how much rain goes down the drain and it doesn't get used," they said.

"We could put tanks in the street or anywhere like that. The excess out of the tank will still end up in the creeks or rivers."

On average Orange uses 5,000 megalitres of water a year. Stormwater harvesting will create an extra 4,000 megalitres.

The council looked at a number of options to try to increase the town's water supply and found this the most sustainable and affordable - costing about $10 million to set up.

Gary Styles is the general manager of Orange City Council.

"There is about three or four main sub-catchments in Orange and if you just pick one of them, will go to where that runs down towards the water courses," he said.

"What we'll set up is some gross pollutant traps to try and pull out any litter and sediment-type pollutants.

"The idea is that you let the first intense flush go that tends to have the vast majority of contaminants and then you trap the cleaner water that is beyond that and we transfer it into some storages, allow some detention time and some testing and then we put it into our main dams."

Downstream implications

But not all residents are happy. Harvesting the stormwater will affect 71 landholders downstream.

That stormwater feeds into creeks which farmers and graziers use for irrigation and stock purposes.

Ian Pearce is an apple grower downstream of Orange.

"We are not philosophically opposed to stormwater harvesting - I think it is a great concept," he said.

"What we think might be able to happen and we would like to be able to negotiate with council about, is to use the stormwater harvesting and other measures to keep the levels of their main water supply dams at a much higher level.

"And then in the drier periods of the year, we would like to see a base flow regime provided back to the creek. Just in those dry periods when that environmental flow really is essential to the whole health of this little ecosystem."

The move by Orange City Council has attracted wide interest.

It is now in talks with other regional councils but has not been approached by councils from major capital cities.

See - Orange's stormwater harvesting initiative.