Our customers experience different water quality and taste depending on their water sources. Communities paying an equivalent price for water services want equitable water quality and taste.

Although the tap water is safe to drink, many people in towns where there is a groundwater supply, such as Portland, Port Fairy and Heywood, find the taste less palatable as a result of the naturally occurring mineral salts. This leads to reduced consumption.

The Federal Government announced $26.1 million in its 2023 budget to support us in improving the water quality in those three towns as part of the Quality Water for Wannon Program (previously known as Great Tasting Water). The funding, from the National Water Grid Fund, follows years of planning and extensive community, stakeholder and government engagement.

We’re committed to make this happen for our communities, but we know that changing the treatment for a town’s water supply is complex and needs to be done carefully.

So, we will upgrade the water treatment plant at all three towns by adding reverse osmosis. This will reduce the saltiness to levels similar to our other water supplies across the region.

Reverse osmosis is a process that uses enormous amounts of pressure to force salty water through a membrane (a filter with microscopic holes). The salt molecules are generally too big to squeeze through the holes but the water molecules are small enough to pass through. This leaves most of the salt on one side of the membrane and fresh water on the other side.

The process will reduce the saltiness to levels similar to our other water supplies across the region.

It will produce high-quality drinking water that meets our strict quality requirements including standards set by the:

• Australian Drinking Water Guidelines
• Victorian Safe Drinking Water Act
• World Health Organisation.