Water Supply at Hope Island Resort
In the past four years, the price of 1 kilolitre of water has more than doubled, from $1.05 in 2007 to $2.69 today. The price for next year is forecast to be as high as $3.61 per kilolitre – an increase of 34%.
Against that backdrop, a considerable amount of work has been done to improve the efficiency of water delivery to residences; to reduce the amount of water loss; and to improve the management of water distribution, metering and billing within HIR. Next year, more work will be done to manage ageing water infrastructure and to improve the efficiency of pumping stations. The work has been led by Philip Rintoule, CMS Facilities Manager for the Resort, supported by a Water Sub-Committee chaired by Barry Ramsey.
Water supply for HIR is managed by Allconnex, who meter the delivery to seven main meters into the Resort and bill the PBC for water delivered to those entry points. From there, CMS arranges to have individual meters read and the consumption charged to owners.
Under this system, any water loss between the Allconnex entry-point meter and the individual owners’ meters is a cost borne by the PBC or the PTBC. Similarly, any unmetered consumption anywhere within HIR becomes a cost to the PBC or PTBC. For those reasons, 34 additional meters have been installed and all services to vacant blocks are now sealed to prevent unauthorised usage. As the Resort infrastructure has aged, breaks in the delivery pipelines have become more frequent and we have a program in place to carry out leak detection surveys to monitor potentially vulnerable areas and take remedial action. In a number of precincts, we are investigating the installation of additional meters, so that we can locate leaks more easily and avoid having to inspect entire precincts when a leak is suspected.
Residents can help by reporting any suspected water leaks in parks or common areas to CMS or to Security.
We will continue to take steps to reduce water loss within the Resort and keep any increase in water costs to a level consistent with actual consumption by owners.
