Update to stormwater quality knowledge for AGWR

As an alternative water resource, stormwater has a great potential to be reused for various purposes, including for the augmentation of drinking water supplies, but the reason stormwater run-off has not been widely used is because it contains unknown and variable amounts of chemical contaminants and microscopic organisms, some of which can cause illness and disease.

The project will collate previously unpublished datasets from Australia’s water utilities and academic institutions about the types and amounts of pollution in stormwater from different sources, the best ways to assess the hazards and risk that stormwater poses to public health and safety, and explore innovative treatment processes that can be applied to recycle and reuse different types of stormwaters.

The careful consideration of all these up-to-date sets of information will result in improvements to the Australian Guidelines for Water Recycling, and will increase Australia’s capacity for safe stormwater recycling and reuse schemes.