NSW MINISTER for Primary Industries Katrina Hodgkinson today welcomed a $432,000 contract that will see up to 1200 new water meters installed in the Murray and Murrumbidgee valleys.
“Comdain Infrastructure was awarded the contract by State Water Corporation to oversee the planning and installation of water meters in two concurrent projects – the NSW Metering Scheme Murray Pilot Project and Murrumbidgee Metering Project,” Katrina Hodgkinson said.
“The $22.4 million Murray Pilot Project is funded by the Australian Government under its ‘Water for the Future’ initiative, and is an early works component of the NSW State Priority Metering Project.
“It aims to improve the measurement of water extracted from groundwater and regulated and unregulated rivers through the installation of low maintenance, high accuracy and tamper-proof meters across the Murray-Darling Basin.”
The Murrumbidgee Metering Project is just one initiative of the $65 million Murrumbidgee Water Efficiency Project. Funded by Water for Rivers, the project will improve both management and water efficiency in regulated rivers.
“Both metering projects have similar objectives and aim to create water savings through more precise water measurement,” Katrina Hodgkinson said.
“The NSW and Commonwealth Governments are committed to water management reforms and ensuring national standards for water measurement and metering are in place in line with the National Water Initiative.
“The state-of-the-art meters will provide water usage readings to centralised databases via telemetry.”
Water licence holders, who will be involved in the projects, have been contacted and initial site data has been collected.
Installation of water meters is scheduled to commence in August 2011 and is expected to be completed by mid-2012.
