June Policy Update

Cost of compliance project

Since the last update, the consultants have delivered a draft of the final report, and the report has been circulated to those water corporations who provided data for the project for their comment/review.  The draft report has also been provided to DELWP and Better Regulation Victoria for their comment.  Feedback is due by COB 3 June 2022.

In addition to the above, the consultants will be presenting the findings of the project at the next Managing Directors forum, which is being held on 2 June 2022.

Practical guidance documents to support the implementation of EPA revised guideline for water recycling

Since the last update, the industry workshop on drafting a User Site Management Plan (USMP) guidance document was held on 18 May 2022.  This was well-attended workshop, and there was a lot very useful feedback provided, which will be of use in the preparation of both the USMP and the Health and Environment Management Plan (HEMP) guidance documents.

The workshop on drafting an auditing guidance document will be held on 15 June 2022.

 Carbon Offsets project

The Project Steering Group held a hybrid meeting (both online and in-person at Charlton) on Thursday 5 May 2022 to continue discussions on the supply and demand assessment undertake by each water corporation, which looked at the carbon offsets that water corporations currently have access to, or are utilising (supply), versus the carbon offsets that are required to meet each corporation’s net zero target (demand).

Charlton was chosen as the meeting location, as it allowed PSG members to undertake a tour of some of Wannon Water’s nearby carbon offset projects.

Off the back of this workshop, further work was undertaken to refine the supply and demand assessments, and a short consultancy is being undertaken to round out this approved phase of the project. This consultancy is looking at confirming whether there are sufficient carbon offsets in Victoria to address any identified gap between supply and demand.

The results of this phase of the project are scheduled to be presented to managing directors on Wednesday 29 June 2022.

Melbourne Water’s framework for managing contaminants of emerging concern

On Friday 20 May 2022, VicWater hosted a presentation by Melbourne Water, and their consultants, on the framework that they have developed to manage contaminants of emerging concern.  It is greatly appreciated that Melbourne Water provided this overview of their framework for the industry’s benefit.