We work with other government and private agencies to help manage water in our community. Council is responsible for managing local drains from roads and properties that feed into regional drains, rivers and creeks. This is known as stormwater.
There are different levels of water quality and different uses require different water quality levels. You can find more information on alternative water sources:
Stormwater management
Every year, large volumes of water enters our waterways and creeks through stormwater drains. As water travels, it picks up pollutants, such as heavy metals, nutrients and TDS (Total Dissolved Solids). Because stormwater is not treated in a sewerage treatment plant, these pollutants can have a negative impact on our waterways.
Key sources of pollution
Some of the key sources that pose the most risks to Casey's waterways include:
- residential, industrial and commercial land use
- sealed and unsealed roads
- land development
- building sites
- rural agricultural activities
Protecting our waterways and creeks
To help protect and manage our waterways, we are:
- Promoting and building water sensitive urban design (WSUD) in new developments and incorporating WSUD in Council projects. WSUD improves the quality of water in receiving stream and helps protect the quality of our bays.
- Ensuring street sweeping practices are in place so litter does not end up in our waterways.
- Installing and monitoring gross pollutant traps (GPT) in areas to stop litter, oil and sediments from reducing the water quality in local bays.
- Monitoring developers, auditing buildings and checking Environmental Management Plans (EMP) of construction sites to guarantee measures are in place to prevent mud, silt and construction materials washing offsite into stormwater drains.
- Installing filtration systems and treating pavement around the municipality to prevent sediments entering waterways from unsealed roads.
- Maintaining nature strips, and implementing vegetation management and weed management programs which can help protect stormwater quality.
Find out more
You can find more about how we're managing stormwater in our Integrated Water Management Plan. Or contact our City Planning Department.
Conserving water
A changing climate and population growth means that we need to manage our resources better. This will ensure we continue to have a sustainable water supply and protect and restore our waterways and bays.
We are always trying to reduce how much high-quality drinking water we use, when alternatives are available. Here are some actions we have taken to conserve water:
- Installing rainwater tanks for gardening and toilet usage in all our recreational facilities and most kindergartens and community centres
- Conducting audits on facilities such as our leisure centres and installing water recycling systems, such as a backwash system, to reduce water consumption
- Upgrading to water efficient appliances in facilities
- Identifying alternative water use for watering recreational facilities such as Casey Fields where we are using 60ML of Class - A reclaimed water supplied by Eastern Irrigation Scheme.
- Installing rainwater tanks in our tennis courts. We are no longer using the en-tou-cas (red porous) courts on new tennis facilities. Existing courts will be replaced with synthetic grass or synthetic clay.
- Promoting the use of drought tolerant warm season grasses in our recreational facilities
- Trialling and investigating opportunities of using turf and synthetic covers in its sporting fields to reduce moisture loss and irrigation requirements
- Harvesting stormwater to irrigate our sporting fields . Currently we have 3 harvesting schemes in place, which saves the community a total of 39 million litres of water each year. We have recently audited all 109 sporting fields within the municipality to identify alternatives to using drinking water for irrigation. This has the potential of saving the community over 200 million litres by replacing drinking water with a suitable alternative for sports irrigation alone.