Water management
Downer delivers complete water lifecycle solutions for municipal and industrial water users. Downer’s expertise includes water treatment, wastewater treatment, water and wastewater network construction and rehabilitation, desalination and biosolids treatment.
As a leading provider of asset management services, Downer supports its customers across the full asset lifecycle from conceptual development through to design, construction, commissioning and into operations and maintenance. Downer collaborates with customers to manage their assets, so they create community benefits that are sustainable, innovative, cost-effective and provide value to all stakeholders.
While Downer provides end-to-end water management solutions to its customers, it is also acutely aware of the need to manage its own water usage and the associated impacts that this has on the environment and surrounding communities. In FY20, Downer has collated water data on a consolidated level for the first time. This has allowed Downer to understand, at a high level, where our largest impacts lie, and to develop a preliminary estimate for private disclosure in investor questionnaires, such as Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) Water Surveys.
In terms of volume, Downer’s largest water uses and discharges lie within the Mining and Laundries businesses. Most water usage and discharges across the organisation relate to those with public utilities providers, including operation of wastewater treatment plants, which treat various forms of wastewater to provide recycled water for non-potable uses, such as for irrigation and agricultural activities.
Downer aims to comply with and exceed environmental regulations in all instances of extraction and compliance. Unfortunately, the four environmental fines that were issued in FY20 related to water usage and discharge, and although relatively minor in nature, Downer discusses the learnings from each one of these breaches and puts plans in place to prevent these infractions from being repeated.
Downer is committed to refining the data integrity and confidence levels of its water data in FY21.
