The impact of the Millennium Drought on water filtration plants

摘要

Sydney’s eleven dams can store 2,581 billion litres of raw water (the largest, Warragamba Dam can store 2,027 billion litres water (Figure 1). Nine water filtration plants (WFPs) in Sydney produce 600 billion litres of drinking water every year. By 2007, due to the Millennium Drought, dam total storage dropped below 35% capacity. As the Millennium Drought broke, a significant change in raw water characteristics developed causing a 50% reduction in Sydney’s WFP production capacity. Through its response efforts, Sydney Water has achieved a 20-30% increase (400 million litres per day) in production capacity from the initial constrained capacity, and thus secured water supply to the expanding city.