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How we process water when you're done with it
Wastewater (or sewage) is the used water that goes down sinks, toilets and drains. We treat it so it's safe to recycle, reuse and recover valuable by-products from. We return safe, treated wastewater to the environment.
Where your wastewater goes
Wastewater is 99% water. The remaining 1% is made up of things you've added to water as you've used it. When wastewater leaves the pipes on your property, it connects with one of our 24 wastewater systems throughout Sydney, the Illawarra and the Blue Mountains. Our systems provide wastewater services to more than 5.6 million people.
The NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) sets standards for the performance of our wastewater pipes and water resource recovery facilities to protect public health and the environment. We have environment protection licences in place that we monitor. We treat our wastewater to meet EPA requirements to protect the environment.
Our wastewater systems consist of:
- about 27,000 kilometres of wastewater pipes
- about 30 water resource recovery facilities, which treat over 1.3 billion litres of wastewater every day
- 695 wastewater pumping stations.
You can find your local water resource recovery facility on our wastewater systems map.
We own and operate most wastewater systems in Greater Sydney. However, customers are responsible for maintaining wastewater pipes to where they connect with our systems. Find out how to deal with wastewater blockages.
Cronulla Water Resource Recovery Facility
Treating wastewater and recovering resources
Wastewater can go through up to 4 levels of treatment – primary, secondary, tertiary and advanced – to remove waste. Different sites treat wastewater to various levels. We treat it so that it's fit for purpose. This means that wastewater is treated to a level to suit the environment (creek, river or ocean) that will receive it, or how it will be reused. Find out more about wastewater treatment and how we treat wastewater.
Water resource recovery facilities give new life to wastewater through recycling, reusing by-products or generating some of the energy the facilities need to do their job. We're committed to reducing the environmental impact of what we do to help mitigate climate change.
We're building new facilities as our population grows. Learn more about projects in your area.
Sewer mining
Some non-residential customers produce their own recycled water through sewer mining. They extract wastewater from their local wastewater system and treat it on-site using a small treatment plant. They can use the recycled water in various ways:
- to flush toilets in commercial buildings and at industrial sites
- in cooling towers
- to irrigate sports fields, parks and golf courses.
Find out more about sewer mining and other ways we're producing recycled water.
Why we must protect our wastewater system
Wastewater from homes and businesses contains nutrients, organic matter, bacteria, and cleaning products like shampoo and detergents. Commercial customers and industrial customers produce trade waste. We protect the environment and waterways by treating wastewater before it's discharged to the environment.
In addition, we spend up to $27 million each year managing and clearing up to 20,000 wastewater blockages. Putting things like wet wipes, fats, oils, milk and food scraps into the wastewater system not only causes blockages in the system, but also in household pipes. Check out our SOS: Save our sinks campaign to learn what is safe to put down our sinks.
Monitoring and reports
We routinely check what's in treated wastewater and report it in our EPA pollution monitoring data reports. We also publish yearly reports on our detailed long-term aquatic monitoring programs.
RiverWatch® is our recreational monitoring and reporting program for rivers, creeks, lakes and harbour inlets. It monitors water quality at Urban Plunge® swim sites.
Controlling wet weather overflows
By preventing untreated overflows, we can help protect public health, recreational activity and aquatic ecosystems in the catchment.
Protecting Sydney Harbour's water quality
We monitor the Northside Storage Tunnel to minimise wastewater overflows and ensure it continues to protect public health, recreational activity and aquatic ecosystems in the Sydney Harbour catchment.
