Join host Jo Taranto as she interviews Andrew Ward, Research Fellow at the Australian Centre for Water and Environmental Biotechnology at the University of Queensland. Season 7, United by Water is proudly sponsored by Schneider Electric.

Join host Jo Taranto as she interviews Mark Lautre, Interim CEO of SUEZ Australia and New Zealand on SUEZ' role with water sustainability and looking to the future. Find out more about SUEZ. Season 7, United by Water is proudly sponsored by Schneider Electric.

Join host Jo Taranto as she interviews Brendan Moore, Co-Founder of Pride in Water and Donald Hughan and Llewellyn Prain of WaterAble.  Pride in Water aims to create safer work place cultures for LGBTIQ+ staff, connecting them allies within the water industry to provide support, mentoring and guidance for LGBTIQ+ staff. WaterAble are a network of people with disability and their allies in the Victorian water industry to improve inclusion and access for employees and customers with disability, raise awareness about the rights of people with a disability and promote disability pride. WaterAble supports people with disability to progress their career and share good ideas and practices across the industry to support the employment of people with disability to advocate for all members. Season 7, United by Water is proudly sponsored by Schneider Electric.

Daniel Lambert, Executive Manager of Sustainable Infrastructure Solutions for Unitywater discusses Net Zero and Unitywaters' sustainability goals in particular a focus on Oyster Reef Restorations with host Jo Taranto. Find out more about Unitywater and their sustainability goals here. Daniel is the Executive Manager of Sustainable Infrastructure Solutions at Unitywater where he leads the strategic planning, asset management, capital delivery and water solutions functions. He has a long history of experience in Australia and internationally, and holds a number of industry positions and advisory roles. Season 7, United by Water is proudly sponsored by Schneider Electric.

Peter Carroll, Service Line Leader, Water Treatment and Desalination for GHD joins Jo Taranto to discuss why he got into water, his involvement in the Ozwater'23 Water Leaders Forum and more. Season 7, United by Water is proudly sponsored by Schneider Electric.

Season 7, United by Water is proudly sponsored by Schneider Electric.

Season 7, United by Water is proudly sponsored by Schneider Electric.

As utilities learn new ways of finding efficiencies in operating, they also need more sophisticated systems to identify where cost saving can be made. This is becoming more important as utilities expand into renewables and are keen to learn how assets like solar work with existing infrastructure to keep costs low or even at zero. Alana Duncker, Market Leader Digital Services for Water at Stantec, says her 20 years in modelling, planning and optimisation has helped clients like SA Water learn more about their systems. Alana sits down to chat with host Jo Taranto to talk about her secondment to SA Water, working towards a zero-cost future, and building a digital tool to help limit operating costs. Reaching a zero-cost future “For me, zero cost is about being able to have renewable energy behind the meter to use on your sites,” Alana says. “Then making the most of the price to generate money and getting closer and closer towards operating your assets at that zero level.” With South Australia being a dry state, the population relies on pumping water from the Murray River to feed Adelaide reservoirs. But as energy prices continue to go up, SA Water had to switch to an on-the-spot market. This flexibility in moving meant SA Water can pump water at lower costs and even turn a profit. “When the price is high: stop pumping. When the price is negative: start pumping. You can actually make money from pumping,” Alana says. Adding renewable energy into the mix Over the years, SA Water has brought in more renewables. Alana says when you add these energy assets into the mix, there are even more opportunities to save money. “When the price is high, the solar panels are generating and you're making money from solar. And you've turned your pumps off when the price is low, you can run your pumps and you can either make money or balance that.” “Having all these renewable energy assets in the mix adds a level of complication that you really do need to bring a model and an optimisation algorithm behind it.” Building the essential tools for a zero-cost energy future While SA Water had all the assets and resources, Alana says the team needed a dashboard tool that gave them the most accurate data and information.   The tool shows prices, forecasts, water demand forecasts, water level storage, pump availability, and more. All this together is presented in a format designed for SA Water employees. This would help the team in the control centre make the decisions that saved the most time, money, and energy. “Operations needed something that can guide them,” Alana says. “For instance, when is it optimal to pump? When should you be using your solar on-site? When should you be sending it to the market?” “In the control centre, they can run the optimisation, view that schedule, make changes if they want, see what the impact is on the network, and then turn around and commit that to the pump.” Alana says she can see other utilities bringing in their own optimisation tools for the same purpose. But she says you still need the right business goals, and most importantly, data. “You need the data, and you need the models to give you confidence in what you're doing as well,” she says. Season 7, United by Water is proudly sponsored by Schneider Electric.

When Karina Dervidis started her career in engineering it was clear she was joining a very small club. Now, as the Senior Water Planning Engineer at Stantec, Karina says she got used to being the only woman in the room. But she was also seeing young women starting their careers notice it too. “I think the main thing that stands out is that you're usually one of only a few women, if any, in a lot of groups,” Karina says. “But I think when you're starting out in your career it's something that stands out to you. You ask yourself ‘where are the other women?’” In this episode, host Jo Taranto chats with Karina about starting a work experience program aimed at high school girls, the current gender disparity in engineering, and how Stantec is encouraging more young women to take up STEM careers. Gender diversity in engineering More and more STEM industries are making great leaps in attracting more gender-diverse talent to workplaces. Right now, about 29% of all STEM jobs are done by women in Australia. But Karina says for women in engineering there hasn’t been much of a change, with only 13% of engineers in Australia being women. “It's surprisingly low, and it's something that has remained fairly constant for a long time,” Karina says. “I think that's something that as an industry we need to work on. How do we encourage more women to consider engineering?” Karina worked with the Women in STEM group within Stantec to launch a work experience program aimed at parents of girls in years 11 and 12.      “We settled on high school students because they're at that critical point in their lives where they have to start thinking about career choices.” Connecting students with science in the workplace The program started as a trial in December 2023, beginning with asking Stantec staff parents with teenage daughters in their Brisbane office. It wasn’t long before they started inviting local high schools. Due to resourcing and the popularity of the program, they’ve had to apply limits of 5 students. But Karina says she hopes to increase that limit in years to come. “Being a multidisciplinary company, it was important to not just show what civil engineers do, but what the breadth of different careers and different fields and what they do.” Along with the work experience program, Stantec also partnered with a local school where staff speak to students once a term and run workshops about careers in STEM. The importance of role models and representation Karina believes programs like this go a long way to bringing engineering to young people. But she says there are still a lot of assumptions. “There's this perception by parents, teachers, and just the general public that these are not careers for women,” Karina says. “There’s virtually no media representation like what you get with medicine.” With the right backing and support, Karina says other organisations can run similar programs aimed at young women. “Showing them that we are women of different backgrounds, different career levels, we're at different stages in our careers. It's something that they can achieve too if they're interested in a career in STEM.” “You don't need to be the best person at maths or science. You just need to have an interest in these areas and there's so much more than just the numbers. Engineering can take you anywhere, there's so many opportunities out there. It's a great career to consider.” Season 7, United by Water is proudly sponsored by Schneider Electric.

When South East Water launched their customer water usage app back in 2016 they learnt a lot of hard lessons. Alana Jones, Customer R&D Project Manager at South East Water, says the app was designed to help customers save water by monitoring water usage of toilets, showers and washing machines. Many of the features and ideas were based on customer feedback from question-and-answer research. What was expected to be a game-changer for the industry ended with disappointing results. “We got zero per cent behaviour change,” Alana says. “It's so confusing, and it was so disappointing. We went back to the drawing board and regroup for the next couple of initiatives.” Fast forward to today, South East Water’s latest customer apps and features have started to shift customer behaviour – all thanks to a few changes in the way they approach data and research. Alana recently sat down with our host Jo Taranto to talk about how changing customer behaviour is less about asking questions and more about listening. Digging deeper into customer feedback Alana says for the past 10 years she has been working on bringing new tools, apps and features to South East Water customers to save on their water bills. These include a compilation of five different products aimed at customers that let them know about peak water usage times or potential leaks and manage their appliance’s water use. During the customer research phase, Alana soon learned people are sensitive about revealing how much water they really use. “Question and answer research has a good role to play, but it's really hard to get beneath the surface,” Alana says. “Particularly in an area like water conservation where sometimes habits are quite ingrained.” “For example, some people love to leave the tap on the entire time that they're cooking dinner so they can come back and forth to wash dishes, wash food. “It's trying to interrupt these long-standing habits with some recommendations for better behaviour.” How better data makes better products Alana says observing and understanding customer behaviour, and intervening at the right times, produced much better results than just asking questions. When it came time to deliver their Water Saver app, a tool for customers that encourages them to track water conservation targets in their homes, the results were a stark contrast to their first app in 2016. “By the end of the trial we saw a shift in behaviour change of around 1.6 per cent,” Alana says. “Saving 1.6 per cent in a water context is actually huge. All of it counts.” Alana says while observational research has been key to the project, other factors such as changing customer expectations have helped in changing their approach. “As a water utility, we're used to delivering a bulk water product, taking it away, and treating it. It's quite a technical and highly specialised skill. “But now, we all have to become data experts, technology experts, and really customer experts.” Nudge, nudge, and keep nudging For Alana, the secret to changing customer behaviour and help them live more sustainable and healthier lives came down to one thing. “Nudge, nudge, keep nudging,” she says. “The things that I've learned most across doing these initiatives is that the data has to be quite personalised and relevant. “It's no good sitting there with rows and rows of data if you can't actually make it meaningful for the customer.” Season 7, United by Water is proudly sponsored by Schneider Electric.

After graduating high school, Maritsa Kacopieros and Rebecca Argento knew right away they wanted a career in engineering. Maritsa, who is now the Team Leader of Water in Canberra at GHD, and Rebecca, a Process Engineer also at GHD, were both inspired at an early age to take on engineering careers. Rebecca says this isn’t the case for most young women in Australia who rarely give engineering a second look. “I think I've said before to some people: we don't have a cool, sexy show like ‘Grays’ or ‘Suits’,” Rebecca says. “No one knows what we do and so when we talk jargon no one understands what we're talking about.” Knowing how important it is for girls to have exposure to STEM subjects early in life, Maritsa and Rebecca turned to a recent GHD initiative that was giving young women a much greater appreciation for engineering.    In this episode, Jo Taranto speaks with Maritsa and Rebecca about introducing GHD’s STEM Pathway Program to break down gender barriers and provide hands-on engineering experience for girls in Year 10. Understanding the issue firsthand Being women in the profession, Maritsa and Rebecca have first-hand experience with some of the challenges young women face coming into STEM professions. Rebecca says she also studied commerce as friends warned her that engineering may have not been the right fit for her. For Maritsa, while all her employers have been supportive, she has had her fair share of slightly awkward moments. “I had someone say to me once ‘I don't know if I should shake your hand or give you a kiss on the cheek’ and I said, ‘we're in a professional setting, so you shake my hand.’” Rebecca says also adding to the problem was that career programs aimed at young people made the mistake of focusing on students too late. “A lot of the research that has shown that females, particularly at high school, don't know what engineering or STEM is about,” Rebecca says. “Programs that are aimed at university students or graduates that have already gone through their schooling means you've already missed the boat.” How the program is making real change Created by Monica George from GHD’s Melbourne office, the program has students in Year 10 work on a mock project with the help of a GHD buddy. Maritsa says girls are faced with a real-life, tangible project where they get to see a range of disciplines and skill sets all at once. “Each of the girls gets assigned a role on the project. They might be the project manager, they might be the water infrastructure engineer, electrical engineer, and within those roles, they have set tasks to complete for the week.” The program, now in its seventh year and partnering with 10 schools, has inspired many students to take on STEM degrees and even careers. “The Academy of Mary Immaculate in Melbourne informed us that for the first three cohorts of students that went through the program, 80% of them are now studying STEM related degrees at University,” Rebecca says. “Female enrolments in STEM are currently around 35% and around 18% for engineering. If we can get 80% of the students that come through the program enrolling in a STEM degree, I think that's a huge success.” “The first students that we hosted were in 2017 are completing their university degrees within this year or next year,” Maritsa says. “I've got my fingers crossed that one of them will join us as a grad in the coming years, and hopefully, that's a stat we can add.” Season 7, United by Water is proudly sponsored by Schneider Electric.

When Stantec was first approached to help a small community deal with overflows from the sewer network during major rain events, the solution seemed simple on paper. Canary Creek is nestled in the northern suburbs of Brisbane with a mixture of residential and light industrial sitting in a flat area. Tony Bamford, Practice Leader Network Planning at Stantec, says the region historically has seen plenty of overflows from the sewer network during big wet weather events causing property damage. Tony says while tried and true methods of containment would solve many issues for the area, they needed to listen to the community. “The area pretty much meets that containment criteria,” Tony says. “However, we had to take into account the customers and listening to what the customers had to say, and that wasn’t enough.” In this episode, our host Jo Taranto chats with Tony about the Cannery Creek pilot study, thinking outside the box, and how the community was key in helping Stantec solve some complex challenges. More than just ‘building a bigger pipe’ Stantec worked closely with stakeholders, including Brisbane City Council to look at alternative approaches and methods to prevent sewage contamination within the community. “Trying to find a solution that would improve the quality of life there, but also wasn't just a traditional ‘build a bigger pipe’ project,” Tony says. “This was almost initially a pet project. It was done extremely carefully, but we wanted to go in very much with our eyes open in terms of what we were going to achieve.” Containment vs. alternative methods Tony says Southeast Queensland has historically used a five times flow metric to calculate the size of their sewers to drain and take the flows away. He says the project ticked all the boxes for a traditional containment solution using this metric. But says community feedback helped them move away from more dated and tired solutions. “The feedback was absolutely crucial. We agreed right at the beginning, with this being different to a normal style of solution, that we had to take several people along for the journey.” “After all, they're the people that are being impacted currently.” Tony says the team settled on a solution that managed sewer overflow during big wet weather events where the existing network failed. This included adding wetlands to the area to help remove pollutants that ended up in stormwater running off roads and roofs.   “Whilst it does manage the wastewater and the screened wastewater when it needs to, during smaller events when the wastewater is still being fully contained, it takes some of that stormwater into the system and puts it through the wetlands.” “Hopefully providing an overall benefit much more frequently than just something that operates a small number of times just to dilute foul sewage.” Work underway on Canary Creek project Without the normal time pressures, there weren’t many barriers to the project.   “We were very fortunate we got a lot of really great support from Urban Utilities, but also the various stakeholders were very positive,” Tony says. “We were able to take our time with it.” While Tony is excited to see the finished works in 2024, he’s also keen to get his hands on the data to see if the project worked relative to their modelling.

Join host Dr Michael Storey (Managing Director, Isle Utilities Pty Ltd - Asia-Pacific and Deputy Chair of IWAA) and Professor Tony Wong for this exclusive podcast interview on Leading Global Practices for Smart Resilient Cities. Tony and Michael discuss innovative solutions to building more resilient cities and systems across many social-technical contexts - from cities in advanced economies to developing cities, from large cities to small island states.   IWA Australia (IWAA) is a branch committee of AWA and aims to connect the Australian water industry with the activities of the International Water Association (IWA). IWA is a non-profit organisation and knowledge hub for the global water sector that seeks to connect water professionals worldwide to find solutions to the world's water challenges. Professor Tony Wong is a civil engineer and  Professor in Sustainable Development at Monash University.  Tony is internationally recognised for his research and practice in sustainable urban water management, particularly in novel approaches to Water Sensitive Urban Design. Throughout his career, Tony has led collaboration and translation of research insights into innovative practices in urban water management both in Australia and overseas. Season 7, United by Water is proudly sponsored by Schneider Electric.

Join host Jo Taranto as she sits down with Aislinn Prendergast (Area Lead of the Quality and Process Improvement team and Former Process Engineer at Melbourne Water) on the topic of 'Supercharging Granular Media Filtration'. This podcast was recorded during Ozwater in May 2023. At the Winneke Water Treatment plant, one of the three largest water treatment plants in Melbourne, Aislinn investigated issues surrounding the filters during their yearly inspections. "We found that the filters were starting to show signs of poor conditions like mud balling, cracking. It also showed our backwashing wasn't optimised," she said. "Our next step was to bring in consultants from Jacobs, John Bates in particular to run through analysis and figure out what was contributing to the condition of the filters." Testing filters through collaboration The tests between Melbourne Water and Jacobs looked at solids retention, the expansion in the filters from the backwash and the uneven distribution from this. The outcomes showed there was a significant increase in solids retention as the backwashing water was poorly distributed, especially towards the back end of the filter. Aislinn was able to rectify these issues by putting in items to redistribute the water and fix the cracked media. Pilot study Even with changing the media in the short-term, Aislinn clarified that she understands the backwashing is not effective and they are looking at doing more work including a pilot study for longer term solutions. "We're looking to do more refurbishments and one of those is changing the media type to one that is less dense and can be easily expanded by the backwashing process that's in place. The pilot plant enabled us to see what backwashing rates we would need to visualise which regime we would need in place for an effective better media.", she said. The Process "It was a real learning curve for me, I hadn't worked in filtration before, I had supportive people including John Bates from Jacobs and Mellissa Steele from Melbourne Water, she was able to pass down her knowledge and cutting edge research into the way filters operate." Aislinn said. Choosing action Aislinn points out the driver of these changes were the operational impacts, the quality of the water was high but the filtration and operation wasn't running at the best, optimal capacity. Aislinn wanted to improve the capacity of the media to get longer run times. "The root cause analysis process is interesting because I look at [the filtration process] from different angles and assess why we're in that situation. To have a pilot trial instead of going full throttle into execution allowed us to take our time carefully", she said. The final solution Aislinn outlined that due to the pilot trial, she was looking at implementing new technology shortly. "We looked at alternative media types and we looked at dual media has the added benefit of running at a higher capacity while removing solids at a better rate. Currently we have just sand mono media. Rather than being just one type, it removes the bulk solids through a coarse layer and then a fine polishing layer which acts as a device to remove the final bits from filtration. We're also looking to change our backwashing system, we're looking for a new backwash lateral system to improve capacity", she said. Aislinn Prendergast is the Area Lead of the Quality and Process Improvement team at Melbourne Water. Melbourne Water is owned by the Victorian Government. They manage the major water, sewerage and drainage networks across Greater Melbourne, together with local water companies and councils. They also care for 25,000km of rivers and creeks that sustain healthy communities and the environment – making the Melbourne  region a great place to live. Season 7, United by Water is proudly sponsored by Schneider Electric.

Benjamin Harris is an Operations Analyst in the Customer Hub at Sydney Water. When the Covid-19 lockdowns happened, Ben set up a virtual coffee club so staff could feel connected online while isolated from in-person social activities. Jo Taranto sat down with Benjamin during Ozwater’23 in Sydney last year to discuss the virtual coffee club. Back in 2020, the entire world faced the then unknown problem of COVID-19. Australia went into lockdown as a safeguard due to exponential growing cases while employers faced a difficult task of transitioning from in-person office environments to working remotely full-time. Benjamin Harris sought to create a virtual coffee club to enable social meets while working from home and he joins Jo Taranto to discuss the program and how it’s taken a new life. You experienced covid lockdowns at your employer, tell us what happened? I think it's a similar story for a lot of people, suddenly we were all working at home for the very first time [and] we were trying to figure out how do we do our jobs and nowadays we seem to have all these systems to stay in touch with people and stay connected even when we're physically at home but at the time we didn't! We didn't have those systems yet and so what I set up at Sydney Water was the ‘virtual coffee club’, where you could join and each week, you'd be paired with someone new to chat to. It was an early attempt to not be socially isolated. How many people signed up initially when you flagged it with them It was small initially but grew over time through word of mouth, our company’s social media and in that time, some people leave, new faces come in, it's been consistent and maintaining that level for the last three years is an interesting thing because when the lockdowns stopped and people have eased back to flexible work, the coffee Club has continued. Why do you think that is? We still have that need for social connection. We surveyed Members of the virtual Coffee Club and the benefits they talked about were breaking out of their silo’s and understanding other parts of how Sydney Water works. For some, it sparked collaboration and ideas from random pairings and conversations. What did Sydney Water think of this idea? They were very supportive, they said “yes, this is a great idea, go for it” and so I launched it and for two years I ran it on my own and kept it all going it and it's now been handed over to a group of volunteers. We've got a group called The Wellbeing Champions at Sydney Water, one of our employee networks who are passionate about wellbeing and so they're the people who run it now and they've kept it going. You mentioned that there are other employee networks at Sydney Water, can you give us an idea of what some of those are and what are the benefits of having these sorts of groups? We have amazing groups that are almost always started by employees in a particular group e.g., we’ve got the pride network which represents the LGBTIQ+ community of Sydney Water and allies. We've got the Women of Water as well who have run some amazing events including for International Women's Day. We've also got the First Nations employee network as well and all these groups have been positive so there's huge benefits to well-being. If you feel like I'm the only indigenous person in my team or I'm the only gay person in my team and then to find out that there's a whole network of [people like] you and you can connect with them and talk to them and so there's that boost of pride, confidence and also kind of a sense of activism in that people wanted to wanted to make a change. Why do you think diversity and inclusion is important for the water sector? It’s important, we should be respecting and valuing all people, but from the water industry, we have huge challenges, and we have huge aspirations and to do that, we need we need to be working together. We can't leave people out, we can't be exclusive, we need to be inclusive by allowing everyone to sit at the table and share their ideas. Thank you to Benjamin Harris and Jo Taranto. Season 7, United by Water is proudly sponsored by Schneider Electric.

Join host Justin Matters as he sits down with Mohammad Al-Saudi (Solutions Architect and Non-revenue Water Expert at Itron) to discuss water sustainable futures and how technology can improve the quality of water from all aspects. 1. Tell us about yourself and how did you come about working for Itron and being involved in the water sector? My journey with the water sector really began somehow unexpected. I'm a computer engineer by education and training. I graduated back in the Middle East and started working for a small technology and IoT (Internet of Things) Company. My work was focused on developing control and monitoring systems for small utilities and central, cooling companies. This work was my first step into the water industry, at the time I didn't really envision becoming an expert in the field. I joined Itron a few years later Technology specialist, a role that really took me through a deep dive into the water business. Over the years, I’ve had the privilege to work with water utilities across the Middle East, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific, helping clients navigate all the complexities of water supply and demand, and integrating cutting edge technologies to enhance their operations. 2. How does technology play a part in a sustainable water future? I remember years ago walking into a control room that had a lot of screens monitoring different parts of the distribution network. It was complex but unfortunately, it was not flexible at all. That made me realise the complexity of the water supply and the dynamics and the significance risk and cost associated with digital transformation in this sector. It was very clear that water utilities needed a simpler, faster and more flexible way to move forward the demands for a smart new approach to digitally transform their business innovation and adapt to their new challenges. What makes this possible today is that there are a lot of exciting new advancements in the Internet of Things, the IoT e.g. new water meters, new water sensors, devices that will help utilities to have the most needed visibility and to understand what's happening with the network because this is one of the biggest challenges in my opinion. Today, water utilities have low visibility on what’s happening on the network. 3. What is your best advice for young professionals looking to advance their career in water and technology? The water industry offer offers a lot of opportunities for Innovation, impact, professional growth and the water and Technology sectors are rapidly evolving. They're changing very quickly. Every day, we’re having new things coming up so starting a career in the water and technology sector is about contributing to our environment and our essential needs. The water industry in particular is increasingly shifting to smart technologies. My advice for any young professional is if you have skills in data analytics, IoT or AI, the water industry is a great place to b. Joining a professional association like the AWA can allow you to engage with Industry leaders. Be ready to adapt to new technologies and shifts in this sector. Flexibility and resilience are important for navigating the opportunities in both the water sector, and the technology landscape. It’s a great place to be. Please check out our playlist above for more podcast episodes and if you'd like to keep up to date with all the latest technology and Water Solutions with itron, please visit itron.com/apac Season 7, United by Water is proudly sponsored by Schneider Electric.

In the latest episode of our United by Water podcast, host Jo Taranto sits down with Alicia Fry (Marketing and Business Communications Team Leader at Hunter Water) to discuss the 2023 Student Water Prize Paper ‘Water itself is life: how to encourage conversations through the power of Indigenous art’ Hunter Water, like many utilities have branding and there comes a time where it’s time to refresh, try out new avenues and also come together to include social value in the messaging of the brand. Tell us about the branding opportunity and why that changed when you started thinking about the Reconciliation Action Plan? We had the opportunity to rebrand our water bottle refill stations that we use at community events so something that's out and about in the community, they just needed a freshened up look, something a bit more modern and we realised that it was an opportunity instead of just putting a new fresh brand on it, to actually engage with an Indigenous artist and get them to help us create a new piece of art that we could use on that. Part of that process is utilising their knowledge to tell a story about water so that we could then use it as a talking piece at events and a way to engage further with our community about water conservation and connection to Country. Did you have a clear idea of what you wanted and how did that change when you first met Tyson? I didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted, all I knew was that it needed to be told in the right way, a  personal way from an indigenous artist that reflected our connection with water. I actually met Tyson on a day off on the weekend at a distillery in Newcastle, he was painting a surfboard as part of the festival and he was just chatting to people while he was painting so I approached him afterwards and he was definitely interested in helping us with the project and then just sort of after having a few chats with him I realised that it was going to be more than just the piece of art for the project and that it was a real opportunity to create a relationship and I saw the value in sharing that conversation. What were the results? We created a video of Tyson painting and while he's painting, you get to know his story and his experience and his messages about water. We shared the video to our social media pages and in Reconciliation Week. The response has been phenomenal. It’s our most engaged piece we’ve had on social media and the biggest reach for an organic post ever. The best part about the reach was that the indigenous community in our area had a unanimously positive sentiment as well, everybody felt really proud to be part of that and I guess when people are at events and they see the water stations, there is a sense of recognition of the artwork. You said one of the most unexpected outcomes of this project was the effect that it had on staff at Hunter water? Tell us more We engaged Tyson to work with our staff, we had our celebration event and Tyson did a live installation at that event. He painted a water tank and anybody that was at the event was able to come and help paint as well so while they were painting, they were having a chat to Tyson, hearing his stories and understanding his point of view and so it was really insightful for staff to be able to have those conversations instead of just seeing it on the video or the end product and Tyson actually told me a beautiful story that touched him in a huge way was that one of our executive managers had come up to him and thanked him for his words and his participation in the video and she mentioned that one time previously, she was going into a board meeting and she was nervous. She watched Tyson's video just before she went into the board meeting and it grounded her. I love the circle of that inspiration. What did you learn from this process? The biggest learning was the value of having those conversations rather than procuring somebody for a specific purpose. I know that I've developed a great relationship with Tyson and I hope because we've had that connection and we've continued those conversations, it's not just a business transaction. Moving forward, we're able to take those learnings and look at how we can sort of change how we do things in the future as well as how we engage Indigenous organisations. Just have an open mind about it and have those conversations. Season 7, United by Water is proudly sponsored by Schneider Electric.

In the latest episode of our United by Water podcast, host Jo Taranto sits down with Judy Arasanilai (Water Quality Systems Officer at MidCoast Council) to discuss Water Quality in MidCoast Drinking Water Catchments - Impacts of Drought, Bushfires, Rain & Recovery. The MidCoast area suffered a three-pronged climate attack with droughts, severe rainfall and bushfire affecting the local communities and impacting water sources including catchment and groundwater. Judy Arasanilai completed research on local catchments to better improve water conditions while abiding by the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines. There’s been a situation where several severe weather events have placed the drinking water in your area under significant strain can you tell us a little bit about what happened over the period? From when we had the first drought in the MidCoast Council area and then it was the hottest and driest year on record for us and all our drinking water catchments and the rivers ceased to flow by December. We also had the bush fires from October to December which was the worst bushfire wise in in Australia in terms of deaths and area affected. All our catchments were affected by the bush fires and our biggest catchment is the Manning catchment which supplies our biggest customers. We have been using extensive groundwater supplies not only for drinking purposes but also to provide water for firefighting effects as well so when the rains were predicted for January, we needed the water. How did you choose the testing sites? We knew that two of our water supply drinking water catchments were affected by the fires, the Manning and the Crawford catchments and the Manning catchment is the biggest catchment and made up of several sub catchments. The fires and the drought also affected vegetation, the soils become parched and then the fires came in and burned all the trays so now the catchments become even more erodible. We also have metals and firefighting chemicals like fire suppression come into the waterways so if we extract the water, it presents challenges to our water treatment plants and processes. This is particularly crucial as when we supply the water to the customers, we have to comply to the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines so that we don't adversely affect the customers health. We needed to go back and assess the risk and tweak our treatment processes so that’s why we needed to do the study, to find out whether we can mitigate these risks or whether we needed to go back and look for another water source. These three weather events happening in a row are a unique opportunity for us to study and plan for the future. When you were doing the testing, did you expect the results to have a different combination of impacts than if you just had a drought, or fire, or heavy rain as opposed to almost all three in a tight succession, did that really skew what you saw? Yes, the drought parched all the vegetation and soil as I mentioned prior so the water wouldn't flow through the soil, and it made the soil erodible. The bush fires led to all the ash and the vegetation is now gone because the vegetation would have held the soil together and filtered some of the contaminants but now the vegetation is gone as well and then the high intensity rain would have washed all these contaminants into the water. All three events had a devastating effect compared to if it was just individualised. Was there anything surprising in the results? With the Barrington catchment, we saw recovery at the second phase of our research, however surprisingly the Barrington and the Crawford River catchments during the initial results had peaks of nutrients and organic carbon which basically comes from the burnt vegetation. During the subsequent rainfall events, we saw a decrease in those contaminants, we still had a peak but not as high as the initial peak. We expected that everything would be washed into the sea after this rain event and the vegetation would regrow naturally but when we looked at the Barrington and the Crawford catchments, the peaks were different for each so that was the surprise but also, we didn’t see any metals in the water. After we did the initial test, we optimised our water treatment processes and we increased our monitoring. We have an extensive network of reservoir and reticulation pipes so it's a big system, so we had to go in and put chlorine tablets in the reservoir. By doing this, we were able to supply safe drinking water to all the communities. How will your findings help MidCoast Council plan for future water management strategies? We can see that these events are going to become more frequent because our region is getting dryer and hotter while simultaneously, the rainfall events are becoming more intense and unpredictable as well. These events are going to be more frequent so what we've done is we’ve created a base for future work and identified the gaps as well so currently our Council is in the middle of doing integrated water cycle management strategy which means we look at the whole of the water supply system. It’s a strategic plan so the Council are looking at where they may need extra dams or whether they need extra groundwater supplies. We've got all this information for the planning team who can use this information and plan accordingly. We've also got a water resilience team, so they are looking at making the systems more drought resilient because we also must consider the community. The Council also have a Catchment Manning River Estuary and catchment management plan so that the communities receive good drinking water sources and they have also got our information, research, and results to utilise to make the drinking water catchments safer. Season 7, United by Water is proudly sponsored by Schneider Electric.