Current Water Sensitive Performance
Performance against the goals of a water sensitive city
Townsville’s water sensitive performance was benchmarked using the WSC Index in November 2017, at workshop attended by industry participants.
Townsville achieved its strongest result for the goal of Achieve equity of essential services (3.9/5.0). Areas for improvement included Ensure good water sensitive governance (2.4/5.0) and Improve productivity and resource efficiency (2.4/5.0).
Townsville’s proximity to the Great Barrier Reef world heritage area and surrounding fringing reef systems has resulted in extensive legislation on surface water quality (including wastewater treatment and discharge quality). Townsville’s wastewater is treated to high quality and discharged to the environment, with a small portion of it reused.
Townsville has extensive knowledge and information around flood risk, and has modelled flood risk across the city. Building on this work, stormwater quality improvement devices are being implemented across the city. While these solutions have improved surface water quality to an extent, there are ongoing issues with irrigation, maintenance and highly concentrated sediment loads from new developments.
Achieving city–states
Townsville’s results against the 6 city–states highlight its strong performance in providing basic services. It has equitable water supply and sanitation services that are safe, secure and affordable (100% Water Supply City and Sewered City).
Townsville also performs well in providing environmental sustainability services (94% Waterways City) and protecting the community from floods (83% Drained City).
The most scope for improvement relates to using water to increase resilience (34% Water Cycle City) and liveability (3% Water Sensitive City).
The city’s Water Cycle City rating could be increased by diversifying its water supply and pursuing a more holistic and integrated approach to water management.
The Water Sensitive City rating could be improved by implementing solutions that fulfil the multiple objectives of ecosystem protection and restoration, security of supply, flood risk management, public health, amenity, liveability and economic sustainability.
Change strategy: how to become more water sensitive
- Vision and Transition Strategy for a Water Sensitive Townsville defines a vision of a water sensitive future for Townsville and outlines the broad steps Townsville can take to enable a transition towards this future. The vision is that Townsville is an attractive, resilient city that manages water to enhance healthy ecosystems, embrace dramatic natural water cycles, drive world-leading innovation, and support citizens who are proud of their dry tropical identity.
- Benchmarking, Envisioning and Transition Planning for a Water Sensitive Townsville: Final Case Report brings together the results of interviews and workshops with industry, government and community stakeholders as well as detailed analysis undertaken by the CRCWSC’s research team. To further advance Townsville’s water sensitive city transition, particular focus is needed on establishing platforms that will support collaboration across diverse stakeholders to drive new solutions for a range of issues associated with water sensitivity.
- Overview: Vision and Transition Strategy for a Water Sensitive Townsville
Research relevant to Townsville
- Transitioning to water sensitive cities: insights from six Australian cities analyses and synthesises results across cities to develop insights about the Australian water sector as a whole. Despite varied biophysical and social conditions, cities articulated common themes about water sensitive city aspirations for their city.
- Queensland’s Planning Framework for Water Sensitive Urban Design assesses the role of statutory planning legislation, regulation and processes play in facilitating or constraining the adoption of water sensitive urban design, and identifies best practice planning policies and planning legislation to facilitate water resilience in cities.
- Enabling water sensitive greenfield development in Townsville identifies barriers to water sensitive development and opportunities for creating a more enabling environment through changes to planning and governance systems.
- Value proposition for water sensitive development in Townsville applies the Scenario Tool and INFFEWS Benefit: Cost Analysis and Value tools to assess the benefits of various water sensitive city interventions in Townsville. The tools were applied at both the whole-of-city scale, along with the precinct scale, to explore how they add value across different scales and how the outputs can be used for different objectives.
- Ideas for Townsville synthesises the outcomes of a workshop held in October 2019 which aimed to redefine what good urban development in Townsville would look like, when considered with water management in mind. The tangible output of the workshop is a series of ideas for establishing an urban forest that suits Townsville’s climatic and landscape context.