March 12th, 2010
For those of you that read todays Advertiser, I thought I would offer Coliban Water’s perspective as we were not asked to comment.
Bendigo’s Water consumption has increased from 175 litres per person in the 2008 calendar year to 202 litres per person in 2009.
It is important to remember that during this time Bendigo moved from Stage 4 (General Exemption) to Stage 3.
For the purpose of our forecasting, we take use historical usage rates to estimate volume required for the 12 month ahead.
In recent times we have added a reduction factor of about 10% to the volume because people are being more water wise and using less water than they have historically.
We estimate that up to 70% of households have substantially changed there behavior and have invested in things like mulch, tanks and grey water systems.
In Castlemaine, whilst we eased restrictions from Stage 4 (General Exemption) to Stage 3 in December last year, the usage rate is still tracking at Stage 4GE levels.
This is to be commended.
gavin
Posted in Easing restrictions in Bendigo, General | No Comments »
March 9th, 2010
Since the update yesterday, we have continued to receive inflow to the Coliban storages from rainfall and flows from the Coliban river.
We expect these river flows to continue over the next few days and by Friday we estimate that we will have recieved up to 200 to 250 ML for the week commencing Friday 5th March.
This will equate to about a weeks supply for Bendigo.
Its all welcome.
gavin
Posted in Easing restrictions in Bendigo | No Comments »
March 8th, 2010
What a weekend. Storms, flash floods and damaging winds.
It was reported that parts of Bendigo had up to 150mm on Friday…
The BOM site in Bendigo recorded 47mm Saturday, 10mm Sunday, 29mm on Monday and between 9am and now an additional 4mm a total of 90mm.
At our gauge at Malmsbury for the same period we have had a total of 58mm. Total inflow into our three storages in near Malmsbury were 96 Megalitres or the equivalent of about 4 days of supply to Bendigo at stage 4 levels.
As a general rule, we don’t expect much in the way of inflow until about June when the catchment has had time to “wet up”.
A welcome amount of rain and hopefully a good start to the season but not much in the way of inflows.
It may have been a bit different if one of the bigger, more intense storms had fallen in the right in middle of the catchment area.
Gavin
Posted in Easing restrictions in Bendigo, Recent Media | No Comments »
March 4th, 2010
Our blog is starting to get a bit of momentum to the point that it might be worth creating a discussion forum for people to contribute to and create their own topics etc.
comments welcome
gavin
Posted in Easing restrictions in Bendigo | 4 Comments »
February 19th, 2010
Original
Predicted
Posted in Pricing | No Comments »
February 19th, 2010
For those of you that have read today’s Bendigo Weekly, here is a little more background.
Bendigo continues to grow at about 1.6% and our customers continue to be very efficient with their water. Whilst we have experienced this growth, the amount of water needed to supply Bendigo is the same now as what it was in 2006 because of restrictions.
We believe that upgrading the treatment plant is necessary to better service a growing community in the longer term and also help minimise the need for harsh restrictions into the future.
One of the components of our pricing proposal is to responsibly ease restrictions over the coming years as water becomes available.
We anticipate that the works should be completed by the end of this year. Stage one restrictions may be possible but not guaranteed.
Gavin
Posted in Pricing | No Comments »
December 18th, 2009
Yesterday we released our pricing proposal for the next three years.
Fundamentally we are proposing to
1. change our inflow assumptions to be more conservative to reflect the drier climate
2. revise our restriction level forecast in to the future to reflect the drier inflows
3. bring forward prices rises that we proposed next year.
This means that a house that uses about 170kL (which is pretty close to the average) will have an increase of about $90.
For more information try this link.
Look forward to hearing your comments.
Gavin
Posted in Pricing | 12 Comments »
