About this project

We’re committed to providing community access to our drinking water to encourage more people to drink water more often. Community feedback in 2016-17 during our last pricing submission indicated strong support for the expansion of the program.
This project also links in closely with our Choose Tap campaign, which encourages people to drink more tap water using refillable bottles, rather than purchasing bottled water. This project will see a total of 40 permanent hydration stations installed in towns across our service area to ensure there is at least one in each of our 48 towns supplied with potable water by the end of the current Price Plan period.

Actions to date

We’ve committed to installing eight permanent hydration stations per year. We’ve worked on a roll-out plan and engaged with communities to identify suitable locations, and install them in partnership with a local organisation or council. In 2021-22, we’re again installing more than our required eight - in the last 12 months, stations have been installed or are being installed at the front of the emergency department at GV Health in Shepparton, the Botanic Gardens in Kialla, Victoria Park Lake (south end) in Shepparton, Public Park Recreation Reserve in Rushworth, Colbinabbin Recreation Reserve, on the foreshore near the Nagambie Lakes Information Centre, Avenel Recreation Reserve, Yea Railway Reserve and the Mansfield Botanical Gardens.
In consultation with community, we’ve also installed an additional hydration station in Strathbogie, which is supplied with non -potable water. The station is connected to a separate drinking water tank supply, with the hydration station designed to be a boost for tourism in the town.
As well as an online location map, we’ve refined our agreement process and we are working closely with local councils to target key locations for future installations. We’ve also taken on responsibility for maintenance and operation of the stations to encourage communities to install a station.

What's next?

We’re proactively working with towns without stations for our final year of the installation program in 2022-23, to identify suitable locations. An expression of interest process will run in July before location assessment and approvals. We’ll also look at other opportunities to partner with councils to install stations at other key places and continue implementing a plan to promote the stations and encourage communities to use them once installed.

Our accountability for this project

A prioritised list of hydration station installations to cover all of our towns over the Price Period will be developed. In the event of a hydration station not being delivered within the indicated timeframe, each customer in that town will receive a GSL payment of $20 for each year of delay.

For this information in PDF form, click here to download the factsheet (PDF: 514KB)