Report
CRC for Water Sensitive Cities
Although funding and financing issues are widely cited as an impediment to delivering water sensitive urban design (WSUD), funding and financing issues are not the main impediment to delivering WSUD, at scale. Rather, the main issue is the ‘authorising environment’ for investment decision making. Read more here in this report by James Fogarty and Martin van Bueren.
Download
Report
Community values for green public open space in Perth, Western Australia – a choice modelling analysis
With a drying climate, Perth is facing difficult decisions about how to manage green public open space (POS) in the metropolitan area. At present, local councils irrigate POS with groundwater. But this resource is becoming depleted owing to reduced recharge, prompting the State government to consider reducing licensed allocations. In this study we use a choice modelling survey of 525 Perth households to assess whether community is prepared to pay for more expensive sources of ...
Download
Report
Water demand assessment for the NuWater Project feasibility study
This report presents the results of the economic and financial and commercial analyses of the shortlisted options for the NuWater project, which involves the supply of recycled wastewater from Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) located in South East Queensland (SEQ) for beneficial reuse in the Lockyer Valley and on the Darling Downs. The economic and financial and commercial assessment of the shortlisted options was
undertaken following the completion of a demand assessment for the project. ...
Report
Economic and financial assessment of the NuWater project
Synergies was engaged by the Queensland Farmers’ Federation to undertake a water demand assessment, a financial and commercial analysis, and an economic analysis of a proposal to supply recycled wastewater from treatment plants in South East Queensland to agricultural producers in the Lockyer Valley and on the Darling Downs. This involved extensive consultation with agricultural producers to firstly establish a demand profile for the water to be supplied by the project and secondly to quantify ...
Download
Report
Assessing the feasibility of the NuWater project
Synergies was engaged by the Queensland Farmers’ Federation (QFF) to undertake a water demand assessment and to assess the economic and financial and commercial feasibility of the NuWater project – a proposal to supply recycled wastewater from treatment plants in South East Queensland to agricultural producers in the Lockyer Valley and on the Darling Downs.
Download
Report
Emu Swamp Dam Business Case Stage 1
The report prepared by Synergies and GHD delivers a strategic assessment of the current and future need for an additional water supply in the Stanthorpe Region or urban, irrigation and regional development purposes. Previous historical work has identified the Emu Swamp Dam as the preferred option. Despite formal environmental approvals, it has not attracted the funding required for it to proceed past the preliminary stages of assessment in the past decade, however, it is the ...
Download
Report
DPI Water Expenditure Review
Synergies, in partnership with Cardno, were engaged by the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) to conduct a review of the efficiency of DPI Water’s actual and forecast expenditure over the period 2011-12 to 2020-21. The review would will inform IPART’s 2016 Determination of water management prices for the forthcoming regulatory period.
Download
Report
An Alternative model for Victorian water businesses
In 2014, the Victorian government reviewed and revised the WIRO, removing the prescriptive approach to water pricing. This allows the ESC significant discretion to decide on the manner, approach and methodology (the pricing approach) used to deliver efficient pricing and service outcomes for Victorian water and sewerage customers. This paper presents an alternative, lighter handed approach to regulating Victoria’s 19 water
businesses.
Report
Building Blocks Model River Murray Operations
Synergies was engaged by the Murray-Darling Basin Officials Committee (BOC) to develop a building blocks model for River Murray Operations (RMO) based on an assessment of efficient costs, and consistent with the Water Charge (Infrastructure) Rules. Our review was well received by BOC and the Murray Darling Basin Ministerial Council. We made various recommendations relating to improvements to operations, use of future
benchmarking and improvements to data capture and reporting to aid transparency. These ...
Report
Rural Water Pricing Business and Scheme Overview
Synergies was engaged by the Queensland Competition Authority (QCA) to compile a background report to inform the QCA’s investigation of the prices to apply to SunWater’s irrigation customers for the 2010/11 to 2015/16 pricing period. This report involved the analysis of a large volume of pricing and supply-related data provided by SunWater.
Download
Report
SEQ Water and Wastewater Distribution/Retail Activities
In this report, Synergies provided the Queensland Competition Authority (QCA) with a high level description of the physical and market characteristics of the water supply and wastewater distribution and retail activities in SEQ, and an economic analysis of the issues for access and price regulation. This included an analysis of the potential the three new Distribution Businesses to exercise market power.
Download