The Australian newspaper reports that “The government's top infrastructure adviser has warned that water utilities in regional towns are failing to comply with water quality standards. This is because they are starved of crucial resources. A secret report commissioned by Infrastructure Australia (IA) has found that some utilities are not meeting the national guidelines on what comprises good quality drinking water and are failing to deliver a secure water supply. In recent previously unreported testimony to the Productivity Commission, IA said the report had found water quality reporting was very patchy for regional towns but available evidence indicated there was a problem that warrants attention.
They found that water utilities in many towns really struggled to comply with drinking water guidelines for a range of reasons: fewer resources, lower availability of technical knowledge, competition for the technical knowledge that exists in regional areas, inadequate infrastructure and poor processes for operation and maintenance of equipment. A key factor is the lack of adequately skilled people to operate, and systems to operate, and maintain water systems.
The IA’s director said many regional water utilities were not charging "anything anywhere near" cost-reflective prices. "Many of them aren't even charging the sorts of prices that are obtained in major cities, where you would expect there would be economies of scale," he said. "We believe that without pricing reform, many of those water utilities are never going to achieve financial sustainability."
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