Kalkallo Integrated Water Management

Analysis of Integrated Water Management for Kalkallo:

Objective: to assess the sustainability of 11 water servicing options for the new industrial development at Kalkallo, Melbourne, Victoria using a multi-criteria analysis.

GHD was engaged by Yarra Valley Water (YVW) to determine the preferred option from a portfolio of 11 water servicing strategies for an industrial development in Kalkallo. The options compared a range of scenarios from rainwater and stormwater harvesting from both a local and development scale in order to meet a combination of non-potable and potable demands. Critical to this assessment was GHD’s Integrated Water Management (IWM) toolkit, a software package developed by GHD for the assessment of integrated water balances.

The assessment involved five main tasks:

• IWM water balance modelling of the servicing alternatives
• Development of concept design and layout of servicing infrastructure to each option
• Assessment of greenhouse gas footprint associated with each servicing option [undertaken by life cycle strategies]
• Assessment of overall sustainability from an economic, social and environmental perspective using the YVW Sustainability Assessment Framework (Multi-Criteria Analysis)
• Workshops held with key stakeholder groups to present the results

The information and conclusions drawn from this investigation will be used as a model for YVW to apply to future developments. The replication of the Kalkallo project approach demonstrates the effectiveness of the study and the strength of the methodology. The project also demonstrates the power of the IWM Toolkit in modelling complex water servicing strategies.

A key lesson learned from this project was the importance of understanding options in a broad context when using Multi-Criteria Analysis assessment tools. Although the study was considered robust, the project demonstrates that Multi-Criteria Analysis tools can produce highly varied results depending on assumptions.

After bringing these results to the key stakeholders to discuss the implications of the sustainability assessment, the next stage of this project is to develop functional design of a narrowed shortlist of options. The results of functional design will be presented to key government stakeholders including the Department of Human Services for additional review. GHD is currently involved in this next phase of work.

For more information, please contact:

Ashley Roberts
T: 61 3 8687 8256
E: Ashley Roberts