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About water supply
There are 18 water corporations that provide a range of services to Victorian towns and systems.
The water supply accounts on this site track water from the time it moves from a waterway, an aquifer or other source to the time it is delivered to a customer or another destination.
Water supply systems (previously known in the Accounts as distribution systems) typically describe irrigation systems or towns and urban areas. Some infrastructure services both.
Providing water accounts for water supply systems enables water corporations and the community to understand where delivery efficiency improvements to reduce losses can be made.
This page provides a statewide summary of water corporation deliveries to urban and rural water supply systems.
We also provide summary accounts for each water corporation; search for them via the water supply reports. From the water corporation pages, the accounts for the individual water supply systems can be reached. Alternatively, use the Search function in the menu bar at the top of the page to go directly to your town or irrigation system of interest.
More information:
- Descriptions of water corporations and other important organisations involved in managing water are detailed in Who manages our water?
- Water management is detailed in How is water
- Detail on how we report on and account for water system supply is found in How do we account for water?
2022-23 overview
Urban deliveries
A similar volume of water was supplied to urban residential and non-residential systems (628,069 ML compared to 639,132 ML in the previous year).
Rural use
A similar volume of water was supplied to rural systems (1,027,183 ML compared to 1,137,985 ML in the previous year).
Wastewater
Of the 573,967 ML of wastewater produced, 72,791 ML (or 13%) was recycled in 2022-23.
Response to water availability
The amount of water available for consumptive and environmental uses will vary from year to year. The entitlement and planning frameworks include mechanisms to conserve and share water between users in response to seasonal variability and water shortages. We have provided more information on these mechanisms in How is water managed?
This section documents any urban restrictions that the water corporations put in place to help manage supply in 2022-23.
Urban restrictions
- In 2022-23, there were no urban restrictions on towns. Permanent water-saving rules were in place across Victoria for the whole year (Figure 1).
- This was the same as the previous year.
- The last time urban restrictions were in place was in 2019-20, when 20 towns were on stage 1 restrictions (in June 2020).
- More than 450 towns were subject to restrictions at the peak of the Millennium Drought in 2007.
- For more information on urban restrictions stages, go to Responding to water availability.
Other mechanisms in place in 2022-23 included:
- seasonal allocations (see Statewide surface water) - these were higher than the previous year
- restrictions on licensed diversions from groundwater (see Statewide groundwater) - there were fewer in 2022-23 compared to the previous year
- restrictions on licensed diversions from unregulated streams (see Statewide surface water) - there were fewer in 2022-23 compared to the previous year.
Other possible mechanisms that were not applied in 2022-23 included:
- water carting to supplement supplies (see Year in water) - this was not required in 2022-23, the same as the previous year
- temporary qualifications of rights to water (see Year in water) - there were no qualifications of rights in 2022-23, the same as the previous year.
Water deliveries via water supply systems
This section reports on the water delivered to customers by water corporations via water supply systems. The volume of water supplied does not include water taken directly by customers from rivers, groundwater or small catchment dams. Therefore, the volume shown here as deliveries is different to the use of water reported on in Statewide surface water, Statewide groundwater and Year in water.
In 2022-23, water supplied to customers via water supply systems was 1,655,252 ML, similar to the previous year (1,777,117 ML). This included:
- 404,244 ML for urban residential customers
- 223,825 ML for urban non-residential customers
- 1,027,183 ML for rural customers.
Table 1: Water corporation urban and rural deliveries
Recycled water
Treated wastewater can be recycled for a range of non-drinking uses. Once treated, the recycled water is suitable for a wide range of uses, including:
- agriculture for irrigating crops and for stock drinking water
- irrigation of sports fields and open spaces such as golf courses and parks
- residential and commercial uses (via purple pipe schemes) or industrial processes
- biodiversity support; for example, the Ramsar wetlands at the Western Treatment Plant
- wastewater treatment processes.
In 2022-23:
- 573,967 ML of water was produced by wastewater treatment plants. This was slightly more than the previous year (525,250 ML)
- 72,791 ML of wastewater was recycled and reused - this included 11,927 ML that was used in wastewater treatment processes. This was similar to the previous year (79,150 ML).
In Table 2, other inflow and other outflow can represent several activities or situations. They typically relate to examples of wastewater taken out of or transferred into storage or transferred between plants. More information on each instance of this is provided on each of the water corporation reports.
