Desalinated Water Plant in Full Swing

With little rain on the horizon, Norfolk Island Regional Council is closely monitoring water resources and planning for a possible rise in Drought Response Level.

2024 was notable for being the driest on record, with 653mm recorded as at 31 December, compared to 1129mm the previous year.

NIRC’s Interim Drought Response Plan is key to operational aspects of drought and water management. With the drought response level currently sitting at HIGH, Council is working closely with water carters, supplying water produced through the desalination plant and from existing storage around the island.

The desal plant is producing 20,000 litres per day (140,000 litres per week), sufficient to meet the demands of the community under current conditions, which this week was around 112,000 litres.

To help offset operational costs of running the plant, desalinated water is being supplied at a rate of $8 per kilolitre. This follows discussions with water carters to determine a rate in the short term, however better understanding of actual operating costs of the desal plant is being investigated with a view to feed this information into future budget and operational planning activities to enable costs to be recovered.

Staff have received queries from residents about the production and quality of desalinated water, and we are developing a series of FAQs that clearly answer these. The FAQs will be available on our website from next week.

We thank the community for being waterwise, as your collective efforts help to ensure availability of this precious resource for everyone.