Watermining ®

The ACTEW Watermining® facility extracts wastewater from a sewer, treats the water to a high standard, and provides recycled water for local use in irrigation of the local Southwell Park fields.

In Canberra, ACTEW Corporation recycles and sells water as greywater for reuse. This greywater is used for the irrigation of parks and sporting fields. The greywater is obtained through a process called Watermining®.

Watermining® involves selecting an area where water is needed for irrigation, taking wastewater from an underground sewer, treating it to a high standard in a small water treatment plant and then recycling it for irrigation purposes. The solids removed from the wastewater are placed back in the sewerage system to be treated at the main treatment plant.

The largest benefit of Watermining® is that greywater does not have to be transported from larger treatment plants to where it is needed. Recycled water irrigates about 70 hectares of turf including about 15 hectares of ACT Government sporting fields (approximately five per cent of their total area). In 2005 ACTEW Corporation increased the amount of greywater produced from treated effluent to 516 megalitres.

Learn more about where water is reused in the ACT.

Learn more about Watermining in the ACT.