| Type | Government enterprise |
|---|---|
| Industry | Public utilities |
| Predecessors | Ben Lomond Water, Cradle Mountain Water, Southern Water, Onstream |
| Founded | July 2012, Tasmania, Australia |
Area served | Tasmania |
| Services | Water and sewage supply |
| Total assets | A$2,187.5 million |
| Owner | Local Government Areas of Tasmania |
| Website | https://www.taswater.com.au |
TasWater is Tasmania's water and sewage utility. It is responsible for providing drinking water across the state as well as collecting and treating sewage. It is owned by Tasmania's 29 local governments. [1]
TasWater commenced operations on 1 July 2013, following the merger of the three former regional Tasmanian water and sewerage corporations (Ben Lomond Water, Cradle Mountain Water and Southern Water) and the common services provider company, Onstream. [2]
Prior to 2008, Tasmania's water and sewerage infrastructure was owned by either one of the state's 29 local government councils or one of the three bulk water authorities; Hobart Water, Esk Water and Cradle Coast Water. In 2006 a State Government appointed Ministerial Water and Sewerage Taskforce "...noted that Tasmania faced significant challenges to enable its water and sewerage infrastructure to keep pace with demand and that in many areas existing water and sewerage infrastructure was reaching capacity." [3] The taskforce also noted that 33 towns had been identified with water supply problems and 58 wastewater treatment systems were operating below standards.
In 2008, the State Government passed the Water and Sewerage Corporations Act 2008 [4] as a result of a report from the Taskforce. The Act transferred council owned water and sewage assets to three new entities: Southern Water, Ben Lomond Water and Cradle Mountain Water. A fourth entity, known as Onstream, provided shared services to the corporations including payroll, billing and procurement. The state's 29 Local Government councils became joint owners of the corporations with Onstream being jointly owned by the three corporations. These changes took place in July 2009. [3]
In September 2011, the common chair of the boards of the three corporations and Onstream started talks on creating a single statewide water and sewerage corporation. In 2012 a House of Assembly Select Committee report into the issue supported the creation of a single entity. The report's executive summary found "after considering the evidence presented to it, the Committee accepts that a single entity will deliver material benefits to the Tasmanian community. These benefits will manifest as either, downward pressure on future price increases, better health outcomes as a result of increased investment in infrastructure, improved financial security for owner councils, or a combination of all three." [5]
On July 1, 2013, the four entities were merged into the one corporation trading as Tasmanian Water and Sewerage Corporation. [6]
Since TasWater's creation, it has been accused of overspending, bureaucracy, causing spiralling water price increases and decreasing the quality of Tasmanian water. It has had ongoing disputes with unions, who have criticised it for spending over A$1 million to hire outside consultants to investigate a staff member violently running over a duck, [7] spending AU$280,000 to hire a recruitment agency to conduct 100 interviews, [8] and spending $450,000 on advisers to create a new corporate structure for the company. [9] Extensive use of outside consultants led to a number of senior employees applying for a hearing with the Fair Work Commission in June 2014 [10] leading to union negotiations that broke down in August that year. [11]
The company was criticised for a sewage spill into the South Esk River in April 2014, which it failed to inform the Northern Midlands Council of until three days after it was reported by residents and would not inform the Mayor of when the spill had started. [12]
The company was the subject of a petition by residents of Circular Head Council, requesting control of local water services be returned to the council. The petition was handed to TasWater by local alderman upon receiving 350 signatures. [13] Residents of Gretna presented a petition to Will Hodgman, the then Premier of Tasmania in January 2015, demanding fixing of their water which had been dangerous for up to six years but degenerated even further recently. Gretna was at the time one of 21 towns in Tasmania with permanent danger warnings on their water supply. [14]
In February 2015, the state peak body for property investors, the Property Council of Australia – Tasmania branch, launched a call for the fixing of major water quality issues by paying less dividends to councils and returning profit to the companies maintenance. [15]
Cradle Mountain is a locality and mountain in the Central Highlands region of the Australian state of Tasmania. The mountain is situated in the Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park.
Lake St Clair or leeawulenna is a natural freshwater lake located in the Central Highlands area of Tasmania, Australia. The lake forms the southern end of the Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park. It has an area of approximately 45 square kilometres (17 sq mi), and a maximum depth of 215 metres (705 ft), making it Australia's deepest lake.
Kentish Council is a local government body in Tasmania, situated in the north-west of the state, to the south and inland from Devonport. Kentish is classified as a rural local government area and has a population of 6,324, the major towns of the municipality are Sheffield, Railton and Wilmot.
Central Highlands Council is a local government body in Tasmania, encompassing the Central Highlands region of the state. Central Highlands is classified as a rural local government area and has a population of 2,144, the two largest towns are Bothwell and Hamilton.
Thames Water Utilities Ltd, known as Thames Water, is a large private utility company responsible for the public water supply and waste water treatment in most of Greater London, Luton, the Thames Valley, Surrey, Gloucestershire, north Wiltshire, far west Kent, and some other parts of England; it has a considerable local monopoly. Thames Water is the UK's largest water and wastewater services company, and supplies 2.6 billion litres of drinking water per day, and treats 4.7 billion litres of wastewater per day. The area covered by Thames Water has a population of 15 million, that comprise 27% of the UK population.
Bryan Alexander Green is a former Australian politician. He was the leader of the parliamentary Labor Party in Tasmania from 2014 to 2017, and a member of the Tasmanian House of Assembly in the electorate of Braddon from 1998 to 2017.
Rail transport in Tasmania consists of a network of narrow gauge track of 1,067 mm reaching virtually all cities and major towns in the island state of Tasmania, Australia. Today, rail services are focused primarily on bulk freight, with no commercial passenger services being operated. The mainline railways of Tasmania are currently operated by TasRail, a Government of Tasmania-owned Corporation, who owns and maintains both rolling stock, locomotives, and track infrastructure.
The Rowallan Power Station is a conventional hydroelectric power station located in north-western Tasmania, Australia. The station is located 25 kilometres (16 mi) south of Liena.
The Tasmanian AFL bid refers to several Australian rules football teams that have proposed to eventually join the Australian Football League (AFL) and the AFL Women's (AFLW). Proposals have been made on several occasions since the expansion of the Victorian Football League into an Australia-wide competition started in 1987.
North West Tasmania is one of the regions of Tasmania in Australia. The region comprises the whole of the north west, including the North West Coast and the northern reaches of the West Coast. It is usually accepted as extending as far south as the Pieman River and including the Savage River National Park within the Tarkine region.
TasRail is the trading name of Tasmanian Railway Proprietary Limited, a Tasmanian Government state-owned enterprise that has operated the mainline railways in Tasmania since September 2009. It operates only freight services.
Henry Hunter (1832–1892) was a prominent architect and civil servant in Tasmania and Queensland, Australia. He is best known for his work on churches. During his life was also at various times a state magistrate of Tasmania, a member of the Tasmanian State Board of Education, the Hobart Board of Health, a Commissioner for the New Norfolk Insane Asylum and President of the Queensland Institute of Architects.
Gretna is a rural locality in the local government areas (LGA) of Central Highlands and Derwent Valley in the Central and South-east LGA regions of Tasmania. The locality is about 20 kilometres (12 mi) south-east of the town of Hamilton. The 2016 census has a population of 211 for the state suburb of Gretna. It was formerly known as Stony Hut Plains, though the Gretna post office was known as Macquarie Plains for many years. It has a postcode of 7140.
The 2016 Tasmanian energy crisis was an ongoing energy storage situation in the state of Tasmania, Australia in 2016. Two years of high volumes of energy exported to Victoria via the Basslink HVDC cable, followed by low rainfall, and a fault which rendered the cable inoperable, resulted in record low storage levels in Tasmania's hydro-electric system. This resulted in a number of contingency plans to be enacted by Hydro Tasmania and the Hodgman Government.
Mount Olympus is a mountain in the Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park in Tasmania, Australia. It is the 24th highest mountain in Tasmania at 1,472 metres (4,829 ft) above sea level and is situated about 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) South-East of Mount Gould and about 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) west of Lake St. Clair.
In Australia the predominant term used for SOEs is government business enterprise (GBE). Various Australian states also have GBEs, especially with respect to the provision of water and sewerage, and many state-based GBEs were privatized in some states during the last decade of the twentieth century. Former Commonwealth SOEs include Telstra, established in the 1970s as Telecom Australia. Telstra, now Australia's largest telecommunications company, was privatized in 1997 by the government of John Howard. As of June 2010 Telstra owned a majority of the copper wire infrastructure in Australia and is pending sale to its former parent, the Australian government, for a non-binding amount of 11 billion Australian dollars, as ducts in the copper wire tunnels are needed to install the fiber optic cable. The Commonwealth Bank, as its name indicates, was also founded as public company before later being privatized.
Swan Point is a rural locality in the local government area (LGA) of West Tamar in the Launceston LGA region of Tasmania. The locality is about 22 kilometres (14 mi) south-east of the town of Beaconsfield. The 2016 census recorded a population of 282 for the state suburb of Swan Point. Historically the area has been mostly a summertime shack locality because of health risks from Launceston city's poorly designed sewerage system frequently overflowing untreated sewage throughout Winter/early Spring. Historical orcharding has left chemical residues present in its soils and these pose a health risk for small children and pets.
