Background
The Australian Government announced $26.1 million in its 2023 budget to support Wannon Water in improving the water quality in its serviced towns of Port Fairy, Portland and Heywood, as part of the ‘Quality Water for Wannon’ project (previously known as ‘Great Tasting Water’). The funding from the National Water Grid Fund follows years of planning and extensive community, stakeholder and government engagement.
In 2022, Wannon Water evaluated several options for each town. In 2023, they determined that adding filtration (reverse osmosis) to the local groundwater is the preferred way to reduce salt levels, bringing them into line with other water supplies in the region.
The Quality Water for Wannon project is a four-stage public commitment to build and foster state, regional and local stakeholder partnerships to address the current negative perception of water quality through community education and awareness, which will lead to behaviour change.
Engagement approach
Wannon Water engaged Capire to design and implement a series of face-to-face and online engagements with stakeholders and community members to launch the project; then utilise the engagement findings to inform development of the project’s five-year engagement strategy.
Between February and April 2024, we reached more than 9,000 people through a mix of engagement and communication activities, including an online survey, stakeholder meetings and briefings, letter drops, and pop-up events.
Outcomes
The engagement findings provided Wannon Water and the Wannon Water Board with an understanding of community and stakeholder views on the project, as well as an understanding of what the community felt was important to deliver the project. These insights provided the Board with the confidence to commit to a preferred technology solution for Port Fairy: the filtration option, which mirrors the solution for Portland and Heywood.
Following the engagement period, Capire utilised the engagement findings to develop a five-year engagement strategy for Wannon Water. This strategy provided Wannon Water with the foundation framework to further develop the strategy internally later in 2024.
More information about this project can be found on the Quality Water for Wannon webpage.
