 Well, thank you everyone for joining us today for another one of our webinar series, the Hydrotera webinar series. This one is one of our expert webinar presentations. This time we have Dr Rowan Barling from South East Water who is going to be talking to us about encouraging the uptake of treated wastewater, a water authority perspective. It sounds like an easy job, doesn't it, giving water away? Well, Rowan's having to deal with all the challenges that actually do come with moving recycled water back into a valuable reuse. We've been working with Rowan at South East Water on several projects, most of them relating to wastewater irrigation and reuse, and that's how we've come together on this. Many thanks to Rowan for presenting today. Just before we get started, just a few formalities to go through. So we like questions and we've got a history of getting a lot of really good questions. So let's keep that happening on this one. It's been tremendous to get so many questions in other webinars. So to post a question, you use the Q&A button that is illustrated there and type into that and then at the end of the session, once Rowan's finished, I will read through those questions and we will both do our best to answer them. So looking forward to questions. Next slide. All right. So why do we do these webinars? Well, we'd like to generate awareness in the community for what is what is going on out there in the world of sustainable environmental practice and also in particular where there's technology involved around that. This is a classic example where a lot of you may not be aware of what South East Water are doing with wastewater reuse and hopefully you go away more informed. It's also a bit about training HydroTerror's client base and others in how technologies can be used to improve both operational efficiencies and reducing environmental footprints. Most importantly, this is about understanding industry needs. So in a way, there's two industries likely to be discussing questions today. We've got Rowan putting forward what he needs from a perspective for him to be successful in his role, but there's also understanding from yourself the challenges that you might have already seen yourselves in your operations, whether you're advising people or running these facilities. So looking forward to hearing about those needs, too. So over to a more formal introduction, if you like, to the presentation. So Dr. Rowan Barling has been working for quite a long time, actually started off at the Rural Water Corporation. Some of you may never have heard of that organisation, but it was around when Rowan started his career, which he started in really the area of water engineering. He left the Rural Water Corporation to become a consultant and spent about 25 years working in that sector. And then two and a half years ago, he thought he could make a real difference by getting involved with Southeast Water and helping them to improve their wastewater reuse and the use of the resource of that resource in the community. So today, Rowan's going to talk to us about encouraging the uptake of recycled water, a water utility perspective that will cover the framework in which a water utility has to operate. Where is recycled water produced in Southeast Water's operating area? Third pipe and recycled water schemes across Melbourne's Southeast recycled water use across our region. That would be the Southeast region and the biggest challenges that he's saying for these urban third pipe systems. So without further ado, I will hand over to Rowan and thanks very much for presenting for us today, Rowan. Hi, thanks, Richard, and thanks Hydroterror for organising this and welcome, everybody. I didn't realise you wouldn't be able to see me. I've trimmed my beard and had a had a post-COVID lockdown haircut today. And and none of you can actually see the trimmed up Rowan Barling as opposed to the pre-trimmed photo that came out on the webinar promotion on materials. So anyway, we'll keep going. And before we get going, I just like to acknowledge the traditional owners on the land where we all sit at this point in time. I'm in Moranjuri country where my home is. But Southeast Water basically sits pretty much a hundred percent in Boonaron country. And yesterday we actually were down on the the Frankston beach, having a smoking ceremony with the Boonaron elders. And we had a good day talking about, you know, what's actually happening in in water and what where the interactions are with with the traditional owners of the of the land. So next slide, Richard. So it's until you come to work for a water utility, you sort of don't understand what you don't understand. And I I guess, you know, we all appreciate that water utilities are a a stacked three corporations. We have a board that's appointed by the minister. We report to the minister for water through the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning. And we're regulated businesses. So basically we the the the regulated part of this is dealt with through the Essential Services Commission and every five years we provide our pricing submission to the Essential Services Commission. And that basically determines the price we can actually charge for our services over the next five year period. And there are two types of services. I guess there are sort of mandated services and their statutory requirements and things that fit in the mandated services of things like potable water and sewage. And then there are the statutory requirements, which might be government policy, which has directed that water utilities will will be 50 percent, you know, carbon neutral by, you know, 2035. And then there's our statutory requirements to EPA and the Department of Human Health and Human Services. So and I guess for those mandated services, we we do what we call postage stamp pricing. So all customers pay the same the same rate. You know, if you're a residential customer and there are different rates for industrial customers. But basically it doesn't matter whether you're close to the source of water or a long way away. The postage stamp pricing deals with, you know, things like distance. It's it's it's averaging across the the whole service region as a way of actually dealing with disadvantage and other things like that. And then there's no mandated services and requirements and things like recycled water use get in there and and other services that we provide our community like livability and biodiversity. And if we want to actually achieve more than, you know, 50 percent carbon reduction, they're sort of things that we're moving outside of the sort of the the mandated services and statutory requirements. And it's really important that we demonstrate strong support from our customer base, particularly around their willingness to pay if the Essential Services Commission is to endorse the impact on customer bills. And so we need to actually talk to our and we actually at the at the moment going out to do huge amounts of customer engagement. We've already done six months now and we've probably got another six months to go about what our customers are telling us about about what sort of services they want us to provide and what's their willingness to pay, particularly for non mandated services, including recycled water. So it's important to understand that we just can't can't just increase our customer bills by investing in huge amounts of recycled water schemes without actually discussing it with them. So next slide, Richard. So in our operating era, we basically have sort of nine water recycling plants, obviously the largest one. It's not ours. It's owned by Melbourne Water is the Eastern Treatment Plant and and it discharges via the Southeast and outfall to Bass Strait. And every year it produces, you know, class A water about 98 percent of the time, about two percent of the time, there's sort of wet weather events and other things. And it produces about 130 gigalitres per annum. And it's and it's approximately just under, but it's, you know, close to half of Melbourne's sort of treated sort of sewage. Southeast water also has eight water recycling plants of its own. So our largest is Mount Martha. It discharges to the Southeast and outfall as well. We have a bonyo plant, which produces class A and class bathable water, which also discharges to the SEO. We have a plant at summers, which actually we send the water to Mount Martha, where it's treated and discharged to the SEO. We have Blind Bite, which is a sort of a sleepy little holiday place down down on Western Port. We have literally one customer for that. For that water recycling plant and and they take all of the water and they they apply it to land as a turf farmer. We also have Kui Rup and Lang Lang, which are two water recycling plant, but they're connected via a pipe and we produce class C and class A water there. We don't have a discharge license to Western Port. So disposal of all that water to to, you know, to finding users to use that recycled water is really important to us. We also have a farm at Long Worry and we're required by the EPA to maximise the use of the water on our on our farm. And we have a sort of a high flow discharge licence as well. And at Pakenham, we have another farm and we probably also produce class C and class A water. And it's planned to go from to become a regional treatment plant in the future, which will grow up to sort of, you know, 40 to 50 gigalitres per annum in 30 to 50 years time as the as as growth continues in the sort of the Southeast Corridor of our area. Currently, we we use around about seven gigalitres per annum in terms of what's recycled and that includes some usage inside our own water recycling plants and it's highly variable. You can be plus or minus 30 percent, depending on your climate. And obviously this year we had a La Nina event and a lot of our external, you know, garden watering in our third pipe of states and a whole range of other applications is down. And so this year will be a low use year. But obviously when we run into an El Nino, we often get, you know, say a 30 percent increase as people as demand goes goes up significantly. Next slide, Richard. So this this diagram really just it's a bit cluttered. There was a up the very top in sort of green. You find Fisherman's Bend. Our area of operation extends all the way from the Fisherman's Bend precinct all the way down to the end of the morning to Peninsula and out to sort of out to sort of Lang Lane in the East. So it's quite a big region. And what you're seeing here is there's the Eastern sort of treatment plants, Richard, if you can find that. Yep, up a bit up a bit more up, keep going up. Keep going up. Eastern treatment plant. Yep. And that long blue line is the South Eastern outfall that goes all the way out to out out to Bass Strait. And what you see in orange there is a sort of opportunities that we're we go back to that slide, Richard. Yeah, we're opportunities that we're invest investigating for use of recycled water, such as the Dingley Green Wedge down in the hinterland area on the peninsula, Tyab and Somerville, Peerstale and Devon Meadows, Coraline and Katani and down in in the sort of the Lang Lane area. And I'll talk a little bit about that, including what we do at Fisherman's Bend and in our South Eastern suburbs as well. Next slide, Richard. So as Richard highlighted earlier, we've got both recycled water use in the urban area. We have recycled water use is mandated across our South Eastern sort of suburbs. It's it's it's supplied with class A water either from the it's generally supplied from the Eastern treatment plant via the Eastern Irrigation Scheme. We also have you know, a couple of other estates north of the Eastern treatment plant called Lodges, which is an industrial estate in Keysborough. We also. Yes, it's decided there's a time limit on Richard. We also supply class A water into Officer and Pakenham for third pipe estates. We have another estate called Aquarivo, which is, I guess it's really an opportunity to explore research and development to try and reduce potable water needs by about 70 percent in that estate. It was land that we owned and we actually teamed with a developer to actually work on the on the type of homes that we built there and and look at the sort of the long term performance of those homes. We have a bit of we have a historic stormwater harvesting scheme, it's trip trip, and we have fishermen's bend. And in terms of recycled water schemes that I'm going to talk about today, I'll talk about Dingley type, some of all hinterland, Pakenham and Bonio. And Bonio is an existing scheme that's been operating for about over 10 years now. We're sort of built back in the sort of the at the end of the millennium drought. Next slide, Richard. OK, so in terms of third pipe networks, go to the next slide, Richard. We'll talk about Fisherman's Bend. So Fisherman's Bend is the area right up on the Yarra, just sort of south of the the sort of the south, I guess, west of the of the city. You can see Marvel Stadium there up in the top sort of right corner, and it's going to be a massive redevelopment of this area. And the plan is as well as being a high rise development, there are flooding issues, so they need to harvest the the rain water off their buildings to prevent to help mitigate flash flooding. But there's also an opportunity for Southeast Water to actually take water out of the a Melbourne water sewer, treated to class A and put it back as into the third pipe network, which is also connected to the rainwater tanks as well to actually, you know, water this to actually provide an alternative water source to this whole precinct and at its sort of peak, it'll be about 18 megalitres. No, 18 gigalitres per year will be the sort of the peak expectation for this area. And there was a whole integrated water management study done as part of this precinct redevelopment, which the CRC for waters, water sensitive cities did. And that was sort of the key outcome from that. Next slide, Richard. The this map shows the sort of the current location of our sort of purple pipe or third pipe across the the southeast and suburbs over on the sort of the left, you can see the eastern treatment plant and a couple of areas north of that and industrial estate and the Keysborough area and off to the sort of the east. And, you know, you sort of get into Cranburn, Clyde and then if you keep going even further, you end up in Pakenham and Officer and basically all this area out to the east is now in the urban, you know, growth corridor. It was all sort of market gardens and the like, but it's now also all all being turned into residential areas and it'll fill out over the next sort of 20 years. So that's that's again, important to us to provide, you know, third to provide a cycle of water in this mandated area. Keep going, Richard. I guess, you know, the biggest challenge that we've got, you know, in terms of our urban third pipe sort of systems is is continually educating people about the benefits that actually flow to them from purple pipe. So you you're not restricted during a drought from using third pipe water, but you do need to actually show people that it has, you know, it can be used and for us, the other the real one that we want to continue to educate people about is using recycled water in their washing machines. And, you know, there's a certain sort of yuck factor OK, I'm washing, washing my whites in recycled water. And we've done lots of work looking at, you know, detergents and performance of recycled water or a range of other things. And it just performs, you know, as well as, you know, normal potable water. But, you know, it's obviously getting people to accept that and to actually move forward, you know, doing that. One of the other things I guess we've also observed is, you know, it was OK when people first arrived in their housing estates we did a lot of education about purple pipe. But as people actually come in and move and and whatever, you need to continue to go through and educate people about, you know, the the property they're buying and the assets that they have and and what purple pipe actually is. There's also, you know, there's also challenges with the regulatory environment. Obviously, we had to work really hard in the Aquarevo sort of a state, you know, and, you know, at this stage where we're providing UV treatment for rainwater for shells because that was deemed to be the, you know, meet the sort of the the the risk requirements, you know, from not from a regulator's perspective. The other one that, you know, we're looking at a number of sort of stormwater harvesting schemes, but, you know, often the volumes are quite small. Often it's complicated, you know, management around these schemes. And, you know, our operational people don't really like small stormwater harvesting schemes in comparisons of the bigger treatment plants that they used to. So there's obviously operational costs and issues of of managing distributed treatment assets across across our region and there. So, you know, at the moment, you know, stormwater harvesting and, you know, for for sort of third pipe use is really still in its infancy at this particular point in time. Keep going, Richard. In terms of our recycle water schemes, these are our large schemes that generally tend to be outside the urban area, although sometimes there's a bit of crossover between them. So we'll talk about a bit about, you know, Pachydum and Dingley and type some of all Bryce, Hinterland and Bonio. So so the first scheme I'd like to talk about is Dingley. So this is actually a really interesting scheme. It's been investigated two or three times beforehand and it's really taking water from the ETP back in towards the city into an area of green wedge that actually it's an area that's quite unique in Melbourne. This this green wedge area is let's go to the next slide, Richard. You're there, Richard. Yes, sorry. Bit of logistics at my end. That's all right. If you go to the next slide, yeah. So this sort of shows up the potential pipe. It would go. This is to the north of the eastern treatment plant along Pillars Road up a Melbourne water easement up along the Mordialic Freeway into a variety of reticulation networks. And as you can see across here, there's quite a lot of open open space in this area. But there's, you know, there's there's industrial land. There's Morabbin Airport. But a lot of it is owned by Council. A lot of it's still high quality golf courses. And by high quality, I mean, you've got five of the top 200 golf courses in the world here and one in the top 10. So it's it's quite a unique opportunity to to use recycled water for a variety of outcomes. And we've done a been we've done a detail what we've done a design of a scheme. We've done an economic analysis and the this the scheme actually has a benefit cost of two point two. And that's largely driven by big tourism benefits to Victoria from international and interstate golfers by the ability to water more green and open space and and through the actual water savings and other things like that. So it's actually quite unique and and does stack up very well from a recycled water sort of use type perspective. Next slide, Richard. So I just go back to that Dingley one. I guess, you know, the you know, the the the challenge for Dingley at the moment is is is is finding a funding partner. You know, to to pay for those sort of broader economic benefits. You know, we put it up in the in the state budget this year. We think it got close, but, you know, it's tough time. We're in, you know, COVID recovery, you know, and other things like that. So we'll continue to actually promote that scheme. But, you know, it's a scheme that. You know, that our customers, I guess, what we're saying here is that Southeast Waters customers shouldn't pay, shouldn't be expected to pay. And the ESE would tell us that as well, that we shouldn't be expected to pay for the broader economic benefits to the to the whole of Victoria. So that's why we're looking for external funding for that scheme. And it's sort of, you know, it's sort of roughly a third customers, a third sort of Southeast Water for the water savings and the livability benefits that will flow from the scheme. And it's it's a sort of looking for a third from the from government to actually pay for those broader economic benefits to Victoria. This is the Mornington Peninsula. We are investigating a scheme at Tyre of Summable. We've we've recently secured some funding from the National Water Infrastructure Development Fund to help with, um, you know, going forward to a business case. And I'll talk a little bit about what their requirements look like and and and going forward. But that's that's federal money that's actually come forward to help us do that. We've got the existing we've got an area called the briars, which is a historic homestead next to our Mount Martha treatment plant that we're connecting up to recycled water. And that's in partnership with Mornington Peninsula Shire plus Delft, the Victorian government, who have provided funding for some of the capital there. We've got our existing Bonio scheme down down the end, which I said has been going for about 10 years. It's about 1.3 gigalitres of water, and it's mainly for market gardens, but some sporting ovals and other council open space down there. And we're currently investigating a scheme at across what's called the hinterland. But it's really if you think about Redhill main ridge down to sort of flinders, you know, and the like, that's in that particular area. So we're investigating a scheme down there as well. Keep going, Richard. Next slide, Richard. Yep, thank you. This is our Pakenham. And as I said, Pakenham's currently a sleepy little little town, you know, treatment plant. It's going to evolve into a major regional plant in the next sort of 10 to 20 years. And the reason why we're looking at at this as a regional treatment plant is we don't have to. We won't have to send water many kilometres and over a ridge line to Eastern treatment plant. So the treatment costs sort of, you know, are quite neutral between having a treatment plant here or sending it to ETP. But one of the things we do know is that we will run out of sewer capacity to be able to send it to ETP and to actually replicate the sewer system is like several hundred million dollars to be able to do that. So what we're looking to do here is treat the water here and use water for work and use water for third pipe. And we've recently gone out for an expression of interest to to look at potential users for about eight hundred mega litres per year of class A water just to the north of the, you know, where it says Coraline and Katani just to the top, just above that and to the left, literally. So we also have, you know, some class A use around Lang Lang. There's quite a bit of sand mining down in this area. And again, there's quite a bit of activity around market gardens and and the like as well. So keep going, Richard. OK, so as I said, Packardham treatment plant is shown in in yellow and currently we're investigating areas sort of A, B and C to see if we can find sort of demand for what we call in stage one or or stage one being sort of eight hundred to sort of one point eight, you know, gigalitres a year. And then as in the future, we're looking to expand that to the sort of the the south of the of the Bund of the Bunyan River and in sort of stage three and four. And we're starting investigations now. There's potential to think about aquifer storage and recovery as well as on farm above ground storage as well. OK, Richard, next slide. Yeah. And this is what, you know, this is a couple of options for what pipe work could look like, you know, for stage one and two as we go forward into the future. But, you know, you're talking about sort of, you know, 30 plus million dollars worth of pipe to get it from sort of one end, you know, of the of the pink to the other end. So, you know, we want to do that in stages. And we want to we want to try and find users at this stage on the the north side of the Bundy River and then we'll move hopefully to the south state, the south side in future stages. Next one, Richard. OK. So getting to the crux of things here, what makes it easy for Southeast Water to say yes to using recycled water? So I'm going to sort of talk through a number of case studies. And, you know, the first one is if we already have an EPA discharge license to the environment, what we're looking for here is, you know, that's that's actually the cheapest way of we've already made the investments or Melbourne waters or already made the investments in the sewer system to be able to actually treat the water to a standard that will allow us environmental discharge. So if a customer wants to connect to some of those assets, you know, it's really the beneficiary pays. The customer, if the customer is willing to pay for a 100 percent of the infrastructure to connect to recycled water assets, you know, we'll say yes. But our experience shows that this is really only affordable if you're, you know, within a kilometer of of of the sort of key assets, you have reasonable volumes and you sort of have higher value uses for nurseries or, you know, higher value vegetable crops. And as I said, their examples include customers along the length of the SEO or our summers pipeline. So that obviously, you know, puts a limit on on how much water can can actually be used. But it's it's it's one of the case types we find across our across our area. The second case is where we have no or limited EPA discharge license requirements. And we're obviously looking for least cost solutions to dispose of recycled water. And what we're looking for here is customers who either have consistent daily demand or customers who are willing to build winter storage and take water all year round, which which produces much more efficient use of our our class A plants. We don't like to turn them off and on, you know, some you can't they don't operate particularly well at low volumes over winter and and then put put a big demand through them in in in summer. The other options we have are things like tree lots or owning our own farms. And if you're going to own your own farm, the advice I'd give you is have a good farm adviser who can provide advice on soils, agronomy, irrigation and whole farm planning. Because basically, you know, the temptation is just to lease your land and say to the to your tenant, just go ahead and use water. Well, that doesn't cut it, firstly, from an EPA perspective, but it also doesn't cut it in terms of the long term outcomes for the sustainable use of your soils and other things like that. Basically, your farm is a way of actually disposing of water and nutrients and say and you need to have good advice around that. And, you know, we have a farmer at Long Worry who grows maize for us. Maze is a really great water use, you know, high high water use crop. And also, when you when you cut it and you take it off, it's actually a great way of exporting nutrients off the off the farm as well. So examples of this include by and blight, where we have a two farm Long Worry, where I talked about and our Kui Rup and Lang Lang systems. So there are areas where we have and and we're always looking for, you know, at least cost solutions to the rest of our customer base to actually dispose of that water. I've talked I've talked a little bit about case number three, which is, you know, a regional treatment plant, Pachanum. And that's where it's cheaper to treat at the regional plant than upsized infrastructure and say pump to ETP and obviously Pachanum is the example there and we can make water available for third part and agricultural customers. It's obviously highly desirable if agricultural customers have storage, because again, we can we can operate our class A plants, you know, all throughout the year. We tend to find our sort of urban demand goes up and down a lot because, you know, quite a bit of its external garden watering. Obviously, a challenge here is, you know, where do we store the water in winter time if we don't have customers with storage? And one of the the the avenues we're investigating is aquifer storage and recovery. But that's really it's really a five to ten year journey to figure out does that will it actually work for us? So and and the and another option might be a discharge license to Western Port, but that's Ramza wetland and that's going to be tough. You know, it's going to come. It's going to be sort of the the disposal route of last resort and obviously would require a lot of interaction with the EPA and others. Next slide. Just before we do run quite a few people writing into the chat. Yeah, you can write into the Q&A that will make my life easier and be able to address these questions back to you. So if you've put one in the chat, if you wouldn't mind putting it into the Q&A, that would be great. But I will now mute myself again, Rowan. Yeah, no, that's OK. No, no, that's that's that's good. I've I've just brought it up here. So I'll I'll come back to those. And we've only got a couple more slides to go. So key fact and the last case is, you know, schemes with benefit cost ratio greater than one. So the example there is Dingley or Tiber Somerville has it's about one. Tiber Somerville is much more an agricultural scheme and the willingness to pay of agricultural users is is limited. It's limited to around sort of, you know, four hundred and fifty dollars a megalitre, five hundred, maybe. And that's that sort of, you know, market gardeners all compete against each other and they all know what everyone's paying. That's currently the rate for the Eastern Irrigation scheme. Our Baneo scheme is a little bit cheaper than that. But so there is a sort of a floor, but there is also a ceiling in terms of what users are willing to sort of pay as well. And and what you're there, what you're competing against there is people who also have potentially stormwater harvesting or groundwater boars. Now, whilst they have to put the infrastructure in themselves, you're still talking about water that, you know, once the infrastructure is expended, you're talking about, you know, water that comes at a price of four or five dollars a megalitre compared to, you know, four or five hundred dollars a megalitre. So it's it takes a customer to get their head around the head around the difference in the price, but also the the the drought proof nature of a of a recycled water product compared to say surface water harvesting, you know, and the benefits that that brings in in dry years. So as I said, Dingley was a great scheme because it has it sort of it's in a real sweet spot there. It has mega tourism benefits for Victoria. It has huge livability benefits. It does produce some potable savings and it has some really great water for work outcomes for nurseries and market gardens as well. Interestingly enough, the scheme would not get up if you take away tourism or if you take away livability, it won't get up. So it's actually in the sweet spot where we needed all of those to make it a high quality scheme. As I said before, the deals depended upon on external funding for you know, to pay for the broader economic outcomes that come back to Victoria. Obviously, you know, with all of these sort of schemes, you need to help customers understand, you know, what what are taken take or pay arrangement means. And basically that means if you have an allocation of 100 mega liters and it's worth five hundred dollars, you're paying fifty thousand dollars a year, regardless of whether you use the water or not. So and otherwise schemes just won't get up without a without a steady income stream. Yeah. And obviously current schemes that, you know, exist, as I said, with the Eastern Irrigation scheme, which is sort of 20 20 years old now and our Bonio scheme, which is 10 years. But obviously we're investigating a range of potential other schemes, you know, Pachanum type, Somerville, etc. I was I was lying awake this morning at about five o'clock and I had all of these other things come into my head. So this is sort of the the brain dump at six o'clock this morning. And it was about other things to consider. Obviously, there's a lot happening with the macro settings at the moment. And when we think about macro settings, we're thinking about water for Victoria, the Central and Gippsland Sustainable Water Strategy. You know, obviously there's there's an issue there. The Sustainable Water Strategy about thinking about, you know, reductions in flows in our streams that we've seen, you know, anywhere from 10 to 30 percent over the last sort of 25 years. And how do you continue to manage the health of your streams? There's obviously population growth and other things there. So that'll be an interesting document and things that happen, things that get sort of talked about in the Central and Gippsland Sustainable Water Strategy, sort of things that fit in that sort of mandated sort of group. There's the Greater Melbourne Water Supply Strategy that falls out of that, which says how is Melbourne going Melbourne and the Greater Melbourne, which includes Barlin Water and and others, you know, how are we going to actually meet our long term supply strategy going forward as well? And and there are also the catchment based Integrated Water Management Forums. So it is important to actually understand the macro settings and what's being discussed. And there's things like indigenous water being discussed. There's, you know, terminology around manufactured water and a range of things. And obviously this is sort of still got a way to run. But yeah, those macro settings are absolutely critical to what you can do from a recycled water perspective. There are also project settings. So, you know, one of my observations is that, you know, problem definition can sometimes be poor. So people dream up a scheme and then they decide, you know, and it's a scheme waiting to solve a problem, you know, without the problem really being identified and and, you know, I really encourage people to do sort of investment logic mapping, which is a step, you know, in in DTF business cases. And it's really about, you know, have we have we defined the problem appropriately and have all options being considered to solve the problem, not just not just expensive infrastructure. As I said before, solutions that deliver multiple outcomes are more likely to have a benefit cost ratio greater than one. Make sure you get your, you know, your economic framework in your base case to find early and get your economists engaged early, particularly to do a sort of a rapid benefit cost analysis to see if the preferred solution stacks up and also to actually look at who are the beneficiaries of the scheme. Because there's often a mismatch between beneficiaries and willingness to pay. And you need to actually look at who are the winners and the losers potentially in terms of all or who's potentially subsidizing another another another group. Only then should you proceed to the detailed business case. It should be DTF compliant. I'd encourage people to consider getting infrastructure Australia to assess near your project because it obviously, if they give it a green light, it would strengthen the business case and strengthen the ability to attract funds. You've got to know the willingness to pay of all the beneficiaries and and where the active sources of funding are. So you can still have a benefit cost ratio greater than one. But but the parties just aren't willing to come together and share and put their money on the table and schemes can still be unfundable. It's less likely if the benefit cost ratio is greater than one. But it is it is complicated when you have to go and try and stitch a deal together that requires, you know, attracting external funding to make it happen. You've got to know if your funders requirements and limits, you know, some funders say will only provide up to 50 percent. Others are. So you've got to know what their what their requirements are and their preferences are at the federal level. You know, if you're getting money from the National Water Infrastructure Development Fund, they want projects and by shovel ready, they want everything to have been de risk. They want to see all the planning approvals have been obtained, you know, contracts or it could be, you know, pre contracts are signed by the users. Delivery models have been determined, detailed design and literally you've got to have at least literally a construction prize from a potential constructor to be able to say, yep, we've actually de risk this project. So so it's not just the business case. It's not just a certain level of design. It's planning approvals, it's contracts, it's delivery models and it's a firm price. So so you've got to go to that extra you know, effort to be able to attract funding from that particular stream. The other thing is that stream will only find primary production. They will not find they will not find sort of urban, you know, integrated water management that that that's a that's a sort of a national party driven, you know, funding scheme. So you've got to have, you know, a huge amount to the primary production to be able to track money from that one. So I know your funders know their requirements and know how far you have to go to get across the line because it actually can be quite considerable. You've also got to have strong project advocates, you know, your customers, local government, industry groups, sporting groups, indigenous owners, et cetera. And my other advice is always have a shovel ready project and business case in the draw because or have multiple of these because you're never quite sure, you know, what will come about. But if you've done the work and you've got a good scheme, you know, having it there, having it available is the way to go. Last slide, I think it is things that often get overlooked, you know, build relationships, dumps been fantastic in terms of co-funding and co-supporting some of these business cases. As I said, now, the National Water Infrastructure Development Fund has also been great with funding as well. Make sure that you've got great support from local government, industry groups. We probably don't have a strong. We've started to engage better with some of the industry groups, but we don't have the strong relationships as we should. Real estate agents are a great source of knowledge, you know, when when blocks are being bought and sold, that, you know, if you can actually tell them that this blocks are a great place to use recycled water, they're only too happy to tell potential potential purchases of that. Make sure you know your agricultural contractors. They deal with a whole range of people across your across your area and they know who wants more water and who's who's willing to sort of expand. Make sure you engage with Southern Royal Water, who look after, you know, surface water and groundwater licenses. And the other one is get out and meet potential customers face to face. We had a, you know, we had someone say, I didn't put an application in the other day because I was in the middle of potato harvest, but I'd really like to see you now. OK, all right. So we're going to go out and meet them and have a talk to them. Make it make it really absolutely clear. And again, we're not great at doing this where you can supply water, both the volumes, the classes and the sort of the dollar per megaliter and what areas you're prepared to serve as we don't. We don't signal clearly enough to the market where where we have our needs and we need to do that better, particularly with the industry groups that are out there. Other water quality parameters matter. We often forget this. We often think about, you know, class A versus class C, which is around pathogens and viruses and other things, but salinity, nutrients, potassium, you know, et cetera, et cetera, also matter. Don't forget to your involve your own delivery and planning teams. So your delivery and planning teams are really important around some of the detailed engineering, constructability, metering, delivery models, planning and approvals, et cetera. Don't forget to involve your ops team. They will have to operate the scheme long after the, you know, myself as a planner has moved on and they have to deal with all of the other other sort of stuff like, you know, if there are water quality incidents or failure to supply or other things like that. In your design of the scheme, absolutely try and minimize OPEX costs. For a water utility, OPEX is is at a premium. It's much better to spend a bit more capital to minimize OPEX. In general, all new schemes should be able to be operated remotely. Historically, you know, we're probably, you know, the rural water corporations like a Galbo-Marie water or a Southern rural water are further ahead in that area than we are, you know, and you want to minimize as many manual steps as possible. So notification processes or other things, just take people out of the equation and there's less likely to be errors and problems and other stuff like that. Also, think about your asset maintenance and replacement. So, you know, we've done quite a lot of work on sort of standard meter assemblies and a whole range of other stuff because, you know, if you don't standardize that stuff, you just end up with you just end up with, you know, we've got a quite a few interesting meter assemblies that are sort of left over from the Millennium drought that, you know, you look at them and you wonder, you know, how they were ever ever built or it was just sort of expediency at that time. Don't forget your legal and regulatory team. So you need a standard up to date recycled water contract. But you also need other clauses based on the specific risks that the customer and the projects that you're looking at need to consider. And the other thing I'd also encourage people is to make sure that, you know, customers have some skin in the game. So if you've got a 15 year water contract with someone and they're taking 200 mega litres of class C water at $60, that's $12,000 a year. So if they want to renege on that contract, they can do that and it's not going to cost them much. But if you spend a million dollars on the pipes and the other infrastructure to get it to them, it might be worth actually tying them to some sort of, you know, contractual penalty if they want to get out early. Because, you know, we've found recently there have been you know, the contracts have been lopsided in terms of Southeast waters being bearing all of the risk and our customers, you know, don't don't bear the risk. And it's interesting to see how customers evolve over the sort of the typical lifespan of a contract, which could be 15 years. So people get sick, land changes ownership, businesses change ownership, et cetera, et cetera. And the contracts need to reflect all of that sort of stuff as well. Try and simplify and standardise your pricing models. We've got postage stamp pricing for class C water. It's hard to do for class A scams because you've got treatment plants and you're building large assets, which are much more bespoke. But wherever you can, try and make it easy from a billing perspective around how you how you standardise your pricing models as well. I think that's it, Richard. So, yeah. That was great. Thanks, Raul. I'm really interesting and it's it's it's really impressive, the investment that's going into these scams. We have a lot of questions coming in, so I will get into those straight away. Hopefully this works. All right, Charles Essary. Third pipe non potable schemes have been used in New South Wales for over 25 years now. Why do this now when indirect and direct potable treatment is totally feasible and has so for several decades without the necessity of the expense of third pipe infrastructure? Yeah, it's a good question and and Charles. You know, you're obviously in the water industry and the water industry is promoting a lot of, you know, keep all options on the table. It's not Victorian government policy to think about indirect or direct potable reuse at this at this time. So it's it's it's an interesting conversation. We're having, you know, with the government and we we work for the government and that's their policy. And and you're absolutely right. There are there are other ways that are that have been dealt with around the world and plenty of good examples and, yeah, appreciate your sentiments in that area. OK, thanks, Rowan. So the next question is from Alex Peale. I would be interested to hear more about your thoughts as to how the production of green hydrogen may fit in Southeast Water's recycled water use journey. Yeah, yeah. We've actually done a project looking at some hydrogen production. I guess it's fair to say that you'd need very little water to produce a lot of hydrogen. There's actually a lot of hydrogen in a megalator of water. The the key drivers for for the production of hydrogen at this stage are your renewable energy price. And in many cases, the markets are a bit immature. So you can you can put it into the gas network. That's the least. That's the least return per unit of hydrogen gas. And obviously, we, you know, but it is something we are interested in. It is it is I think you will see more of it. But at the market, the at the moment, the market is immature. And I guess arena is funding a number of trials. One's in with Northeast Water up in Wadonga, where they're going to produce hydrogen, put it back in the gas network and demonstrate its viability. There's some in WA and others. So it is actually happening, but but they're all being underpinned by arena dollars, if you know what I mean, the business cases on their own right aren't yet stacking up. But and I guess it's it's partly to do with we don't have enough hydrogen powered trucks and, you know, in forklifts and other things like that. But we have we have actually done some work with industry to have a look at that. And the other product that is is produced is lots of oxygen. But but you can't always use that at some of your treatment plants either, because depending upon what process you have, you know, the oxygen, the oxygen is almost worthless. You could use it in your treatment process, but it all it all forces you down a particular treatment train, which which the treatment people may not want to go down. So lots of oxygen produced great byproduct. But you've got to have them the right water treatment trained to actually use it. Very good answer. Another one from Charles, sorry. Why are decentralised systems operationally difficult for staff? Your Pekingham Pekingham, I think that means to be all. He's got Pekingham in there, but I think it's Pekingham. Future regional development is a good example of becoming decentralised from the Eastern treatment plant. Yeah, yeah. At that scale, Charles, yeah, our operators are very comfortable. I guess they're comfortable working at scale. They're not they're not comfortable. We don't have a we don't have a sort of a history of of working on sort of what I call more package plants. So decentralised approaches. Yep, we will do more of those. I guess I made the comment in relation to, you know, Pekingham is going to be a decentralised plant, but it's going to go to, you know, it'll be a big plant in its own right. And so that sort of economy of scale makes a lot of sense to our operations people. What they don't really like and they've had historic bad experience with this is, you know, a package treatment plant for 50 or 100 or 200 mega liters. That's that's where the management effort and requirements and other things, you know, so they there was an example where we did try something and it required a lot of operator time and effort and operator time and effort is an OPEX expense. They're they're under the pump and they they just don't like it from that perspective. So it's the really small stormwater harvesting schemes, which I think are going to be problematic, decentralising at Pekingham. That's not that's not an issue. Yeah, we can get our heads around that. It's the sort of small package plants, which are which are, you know, yeah, not in our normal DNA, maybe they should. But at the moment, we we we struggle with that for a variety of reasons in terms of historic experience and just the volumes just don't seem to get into the right scale. OK, so next question is from David Brophy. Have we missed the opportunity with Dingley now that the freeway development is proceeding without purple pipe? Does cost increase significantly? We we still have an opportunity to. We're still in discussions with major projects, Victoria. There is a once the freeway is built, there is a sort of a two year defects period, which, you know, we think we can still, you know, we can still build something. And so the opportunity as we see it still exists. But if we can't use the freeway corridor and we have to go go through backstreet and industrial areas and other things, it'll be it'll be tougher. It it it it it probably will mean the benefit cost ratio will come down, but it'll probably still stay high. It just makes it it just makes it tougher. I don't think the opportunities, you know, have been missed. And, you know, and yeah, but it's it there will come a time and it could be a couple of years where it might might be missed. But at the moment, it still exists as my is my assessment of where things are at. Yeah. And next question, I might go to Dan Evans, a little off topic, but wondering how progressed southeast water are in terms of by a solids management, especially, especially the reuse and emerging contaminant concerns. Yeah. Yeah. We have a biosolids program where we do spread bryosolids on on land. And yes, that has that has some requirements around, you know, heavy metals and other contaminants that we know exist in biosolids. We are actually looking at an R&D project at the moment, which would actually turn the biosolids into hydrogen. And that's something that we're doing with RMIT at the moment. And it's a way of effectively burning up, getting rid of, you know, using the the energy from the biosolids to produce hydrogen and and also, you know, getting rid of getting rid of some of those contaminants by basically incinerating them. So yeah, it's it's an ongoing issue, I think, for the the whole of the water industry. I think the key thing we're also trying to do as a water industry is get on top of some of the sources of supply and contamination for those, you know, those contaminants and actually try and reduce them over time as well. But you're right. We have a both an input issue and we have both a disposal issue and we and we have to sort of carefully monitor, you know, what we're putting out onto people's land and also and and also but also thinking about different ways of using biosolids. So current R&D in that area is with RMIT and ourselves trying to think of other ways of using biosolids. Yeah. OK, last question. We might we might squeeze a couple more in if people want, but the time is running out. Betty Allegria is a circular economy thinking being embedded in your water treatment plans. If so, how? Yeah. Yep. So yes, circular economy is being considered. So our newest treatment plant or one that's being rebuilt at the moment, getting close to being finalised is Bonio. And Bonio has two engines on it, which are turning methane gas into electricity. And we also are using Fogo waste in some of our as well. So and that's an ongoing discussion we're having with, you know, Moorland's and Peninsula Shire and others. So yes, it is it is part of our thinking. And yeah, and it's a sort of again, it's a rapidly, you know, evolving sort of space at the moment, I guess, you know, the best way for us to deal with most of these things is to turn it into energy and to, you know, renewable sources of energy rather than actually having it as methane gas or, you know, coming out of, you know, disposal and and turn that into electricity. But yes, it is it is being considered. All right. I've just got a couple in the chat. Well, I'm not sure how many of these are questions, but I'll just have some of these have already been answered. Like with your meeting, Sam. Yep, we've covered that one. Lots of people appreciate what you've presented. I think there was another thing that Daniel Rath from DELP said, if you he's provided his email details there, if you want to talk to about emerging contaminants, if you want more information at the moment, EPA is doing a sampling program around emerging contaminants as well. So Daniel, I think I think DELP is actually funding that project. So I hope that's right, Daniel. But yeah, Daniel Rath at DELP.vic.gov.au. So anyway, yeah. Thanks for that, Daniel. We might circulate that email around to all the attendants as well, just so they've got that. Rowan, I think I think that's it. Thanks so much for presenting today. It's really interesting. And, you know, it's great to be able to reflect on the investment that goes in to these schemes and to see government working in a really proactive way and its utilities, you know, developing this infrastructure. It's I think the big challenge is that return on investment calculation and getting all those things to stack up. But thanks very much for presenting today. That was that was fantastic and really interesting. Now, a pleasure. And if people have follow up questions, happy to have them directed through you or to me. But yeah, always happy to share our experiences. There's sort of. Yeah, we've got lots of good things to share online from each other. So yeah, happy just to sort of share where we're at on the on the journey. And I guess, you know, as I said before, you know, DELP's been a big supporter. And, you know, if you wanted to follow up with Daniel about the sort of things DELP's trying to do to encourage greater use of recycled water as well. And yeah, but happy, happy to if people have sort of follow up questions or interest in in any of these schemes or or want any further advice. We often talk with, you know, City West Water or Yarra Valley Water or others about about, you know, what they're doing in this phase. So happy to share that broadly. Yeah. Fantastic. All right. Well, thanks, everyone, for those questions and for attending today. It's been great and really a big thank you to Rowan round of applause. Well, Rowan and thank and thank and thank and thank your team back there who kept me on, you know, kept pushing me forward to make sure it all it all happened. So, you know, I know that, you know, you know, particularly Bridget, you know, Tompkins, who helped get all the publicity material out and make sure I was on the right timelines. It was it was greatly appreciated. So thanks. Thanks, Richard and team for helping to organize it. Yeah. Thanks very much, Rowan. Really appreciate it. All right, we will finish up there. Have a great day, everybody. Thanks, everybody.