Metro weekly water update 28 June 2018

Note: 1 billion litres = approx. 400 Olympic swimming pools.  Please note these figures are rounded (except for rainfall) to the nearest whole number.

Water use

Average daily water use over the last week was 601 million litres, which was slightly above the forecast of 599 million litres.  Since 1 July 2017 we have used 284 billion litres of water, which is 7 billion litres below the 291 billion litres we had forecast.

Dam levels

Over the last seven days, Perth’s dam storage levels have increased (by about 3 billion litres) from 145 billion litres to 148 billion litres of usable storage. Perth’s dams store water from three different sources… groundwater and desalinated seawater transferred from treatment plants as well as streamflow (produced by rainfall).

Sprinkler roster compliance

The Winter Sprinkler Switch Off now applies, and our inspectors issued 242 warnings and 28 fines last week.  Since 1 January 2018 we have taken a total of 4793 actions (warnings + fines) compared with 5778 actions for the same period in 2017.

Annual rainfall

Perth has received 323.4mm of rainfall since January this year.  According to updated figures released by the Bureau of Meteorology the cumulative mean rainfall (1994-2017) for the Perth metro for the January to June period is 303.5mm.

Wet or dry?

This June feels like it’s been wet – right?  Well you wouldn’t be entirely wrong in thinking that – as piles of wet clothes lay languishing in our laundries on the weekends and rain coats hang dripping on coat hooks.

But while it feels like it’s been wet – it actually hasn’t been that wet!

As at 27 June, the Perth metro weather station had recorded 126.6mm of rain over 15 rain days, which is just shy of the June average of 126.9mm of rain.

While we have had more rain days this June (June 2017 had four), with clear skies forecast until Saturday, we may not even reach our average rainfall figure for the month.

So let’s not be complacent with our water saving – even though we have the winter sprinkler roster in place at the moment - our water use is still slightly more than we had forecasted for the time of year.

Although it’s tempting on these rainy nights and cold mornings to fill up the bath or have a long hot shower – remember Perth’s water resources aren’t infinite.  Saving water helps the environment and pushes out the timing for a new source of water such as desalination – a big investment that could possibly see water costing more.