About this project
About 1,500 customers across our service area are supplied with water via private water pipes under ‘Water by Agreement’ arrangements, paying the same prices as other GVW customers.
‘Water by Agreement’ means a customer’s property falls under one or more of the below categories:
• the property has no direct access to our reticulated water main and is supplied via a private service
• the property is located outside of our water district boundary
• GVW cannot guarantee water pressure to a property
• water supply is untreated raw water
• or a combination of the above.
These customers have repair and maintenance obligations and, at times, difficult administration processes to negotiate. These customers are often not aware that they have private services until a problem occurs.
Actions to date
More than 240 properties with Water by Agreement have been transferred to GVW-owned mains. This has been achieved by a combination of processes, including GVW taking ownership of short services and replacing private services with water mains.
In the past year, we’ve reviewed the boundaries of four towns which has meant we could make a small number of private service agreements redundant. In areas where further development has occured and has impacted existing private services, we have either made them redundant, or reduced the length of private service pipeline at no cost to the owner.
What's next?
The vast majority of transfer opportunities have now been taken up, with the remaining Water by Agreement properties less likely to be transitioned due to remote locations or other technical issues.
We’ll continue to identify the retirement of more private service lines – or if their length can be reduced – as development occurs around the fringes of towns.
Our accountability for this project
Developing a program to progressively replace private pipes with GVW-owned assets or otherwise transfer customers from private water pipes to GVW owned assets. We will deliver at least 60 property conversions per year over the Price Plan period.
We will include information on progress against targets in our annual reporting to customers. In the event of the funds not being effectively spent in property service conversions, any appropriate remedy will be considered by customers at the Annual Performance Forum.
For this information in PDF form, click here to download the factsheet (PDF: 371KB)