Shoalhaven water supply

Overview

As the providers of your water supply and wastewater services, Shoalhaven Water plays an important role in bushfire preparedness, especially as we head into a forecasted hot and dry summer.

As you prepare your individual fire plan, consider how the Shoalhaven water supply could impact you and your home in an emergency.

A message from Shoalhaven Water:

Shoalhaven Water's priority is to supply fresh, clean drinking water to households and businesses for drinking and domestic use.

During a major fire, the demand on the water supply is likely to exceed the capacity of the supply system. This means we cannot guarantee uninterrupted supply of drinkable water or to maintain normal water pressure during a fire.

We encourage residents to be prepared and consider an alternate water supply as part of your bushfire readiness plan, especially if you are in a high risk area. Your individual fire plan should identify reliable alternative water sources such as a large dam, irrigation channel or creek.

If you have water tanks that need filling, we strongly advise you make this a priority.

Improvements since 2020

Shoalhaven Water has completed a number of resilience related projects since the devastating 2019/20 bushfires.   

Immediately following the fires, we undertook several 'lessons learned' workshops, and then developed water and sewerage resilience related works programs. These have included projects that have: 

• Improved the strength of our communication towers, which are vital for the remote monitoring of our water and sewer networks across the Shoalhaven. 
• Worked with the Rural Fire Service to install additional water storage tanks at key locations across the Shoalhaven.
• Made changes to our network to reduce the impact of blackouts and the loss of electricity on our water and sewer networks. 

Projects completed include:

Improvements to water pressure

Asset Protection Zones 

Increase water storage capacity

• We have worked with the Rural Fire Service to locate and install 2 additional water storage tanks at Kangaroo Valley, dedicated for use by the RFS and NSW Fire and Rescue. 

• A 500,000 litre water reservoir is being built at Kangaroo Valley to increase storage capacity in this water scheme. 

Drought management planning 

• We have been working on our Drought Management and Operational Plans to improve the overall water security for Shoalhaven. 

Communications tower upgrades