Planning & Building

Sustainable Water

Port Phillip's Water Situation

The City of Port Phillip is bordered by water along its 10 kilometre coastline and also embraces the largest inner-suburban lake at Albert Park. Much of our city is reclaimed swampland and is subject to flooding.

But we still have a water problem. Our soils are sandy and porous so rain, when we get it, is not retained to provide ongoing nourishment to trees and other vegetation. Rain runs quickly off all the impervious surfaces common to a densely built inner-suburban area - concrete, bitumen and roofs. 

We are forced to draw on our state's dwindling supplies of drinking water to keep parks as well as our gardens and ourselves alive. 

Our city has been and remains the most densely-settled area of Victoria with 34.5 persons per hectare - ten times the Melbourne metropolitan average and rising. At the same time, we're under extraordinary development pressure both residentially and commercially. One of the side effects of this trend is the loss of valuable garden space to more impervious surfaces such as additional roofing, carparks, paths and patios. This leads to considerably more stormwater runoff. In fact, there can be up to two or three times as much runoff created, which could lead to problems for much of our infrastructure - sewers, drains, streets and utility hardware - which is ageing.

Our bayside location demands that we have a properly functioning drainage system. Like many municipalities, we've been living off the massive engineering works undertaken over a century ago but many of our drains are now reaching the end of their useful life. As a responsible local government, we have no alternative but to start a planned and necessarily costly refurbishment of our drainage system. A means of reducing the cost of improving stormwater infrastructure is to reuse rainwater where it falls. This can be achieved by untilising road runoff or water from other areas of the public realm. It can also be achieved by encouraging or requiring the on-site use of stormwater in the private realm. 

The most effective method of achieving this is to harvest rainwater into a tank and re-use it for irrigation or toilet flushing. In multiunit apartments, because there is often an absence of extensive plantings, it is better to use the water for toilet flushing. This is obviously a worthy idea, but at some point you've got to walk the walk as well as talk the talk so with funding from Coast and Clean Seas, which in turn is funded by Environment Australia, council's Urban Design & Architecture unit established a demonstration project to show how practical examples will fulfill the theory.

Rainwater Tanks for Domestic Applications

The capacity to incorporate such large stormwater retention features into multiunit developments relies on thinking about how it can be done very early in the design process and building them in. Yet in houses, it is possible to install rainwater tanks any time and use the water for garden irrigation and other uses.

In fact, garden water accounts for 30 per cent of total water consumed at a typical residence. We're talking about drinkable water too, so a rainwater tank could be a valuable eco-friendly addition to any house. There are a host of other approaches to save water around the house.

The Savewater website at http://www.savewater.com.au/ features information on indoor and outdoor products that save mains water use. These include: washing machines and dishwashers, shower heads and tap ware, mulches and irrigation systems, watering devices, hoses, rainwater tanks for irrigation and toilet flushing, greywater accessories and treatment and pool covers. A brief summary of the company and their product range is listed, together with full contact details for sourcing more information about specific products, their water efficiency and also retail outlets. Where available, links to suppliers' web sites are also included.   
 

Pervious Pavement Treatments

Another method of retaining stormwater within multi-unit developments and houses is to use pervious pavement treatments for driveways, carparks and paths rather than asphalt and concrete. Some simple examples include gravel or porous asphalt, which allows water to percolate through to the ground underneath.

Also available are the new Eco-pavers, which are a system of paving that enables infiltration through the spaces between pavers. These were used at Homebush Bay, the Olympic Village, which was constructed with sustainable design objectives in mind. 

There are plenty of other ways in which pervious surfaces can be utilised, and their use is certainly becoming more important as stormwater management becomes a pressing issue to be addressed by local government.

The state planning provisions, ResCode 2000, reflects this concern with clauses that stipulate that 20 per cent of new residential developments be set aside for pervious surfaces. This is sometimes more difficult to achieve in areas like COPP where there are higher densities but applicants can discuss options for achieving the objectives of the clause with council planners.

Water campaign

For more information on how the council improves on its own water consumption, visit the Water Campaign page on this website.