Empowering Communities for a Sustainable Waterfuture for the City of Gold CoastGuillermo “Bill” CapatiManager Infrastructure Planning Gold Coast Water

2010 United Nations Public Service Awards21 – 23 June 2010Barcelona, Spain

Gold Coast City• Population of 500,000• 2056 population 1,200,000• Tourist population of ~10 million per annum• Lifestyle heavily based around water• Area of 1,402 sq km and 70 km of beaches • Present water consumption 145 ML/day• Present recycled water usage around 14 ML/day• Recycled water 114 ML/day released

• A water authority owned by Gold Coast City Council - the second biggest local authority in Australia

• Responsible for providing water, wastewater and recycled water services to Gold Coast City

Who is Gold Coast Water?

Our Challenges

• Water Security• Legislation• Rapid Population Growth/

Urbanisation• Customer Expectations• Climate Change• Economic Sustainability• Environmental Sustainability• Social Sustainability• Workforce Skills Shortage

Our Waterfuture

• Diversity is critical – cannot rely exclusively on dams

• Experienced most severe drought on record in 2002 when the main source dropped to 28%

• The Gold Coast Community are innovative water custodians

• Community involvement important to Our Waterfuture

Our Response

• Evolved planning activities to take an integrated approach:– Gold Coast Waterfuture

(GCWF) Strategy– Pimpama Coomera Waterfuture

(PCWF) Master Plan– GCWF Recycled Water Strategy

What is the GCWF Strategy?

• A Strategy that delivers a sustainable water supply for the next 50 years

GCWF Strategy Objective“To ensure the sustainable use of the region’s wate r resources by developing an adaptable, diverse and balanced st rategy to meet the total community’s water needs into the fut ure.

This will be achieved by a balance of environmental , social and economic factors and will be embraced by the commun ity”.

• Project commenced in April 2004 • Community based Advisory

Committee (AC) oversaw Strategy development in 2004 –2005

• Role of AC – provide forum for community

involvement– oversee & participate in development

of the Strategy– make recommendations to Council

• AC consisted of community members, experts, industry representatives, Councillor’s & Council officers

Creating the Strategy

• More the 13,000 community members offered feedback on the long-term plan

• Community feedback fed into final Strategy

Creating the Strategy

The GCWF Strategy

• The AC involved in an extraordinary review of the Strategy

• Resulted in changes to the GCWF Water Balance

Strategy Implementation and Review

GCWF Strategy Water Balance (2005 & 2007)

2009 GCWF Strategy Water Balance

Conclusion and Lessons Learned

• Sufficient time to brainstorm and discuss ideas, issues & potential solutions during meetings

• Independent chairperson with no bias towards any particular outcome

• Rigorous Terms of Reference fixed for entire project

• Focussed, representative AC to represent breadth of community sectors with equal voting rites for members

• Agreed process to undertake project, including multi-criteria assessment (MCA) methodology & stakeholder engagement

•• Strong and capable Project TeamStrong and capable Project Team•• Application of sophisticated tools to Application of sophisticated tools to

ensure comprehensive sustainability ensure comprehensive sustainability assessment, supported by simplistic assessment, supported by simplistic score cards score cards

•• Robust criteria weighting process separate from the Robust criteria weighting process separate from the analysis of strategy performance to avoid biased weightingsanalysis of strategy performance to avoid biased weightings

•• Quantitative and qualitative criteria developed & scored to Quantitative and qualitative criteria developed & scored to assess the performance of strategies assess the performance of strategies

•• Participation & engagement of community members via Participation & engagement of community members via workshops, presentations and feedback channelsworkshops, presentations and feedback channels

•• Public exhibition of preferred strategyPublic exhibition of preferred strategy

Conclusion and Lessons Learned