City of Armadale wins Water Sensitive City Award
The City of Armadale in WA won the second ever Water Sensitive Cities Award during the 5th Water Sensitive Cities Conference earlier this month.
Armadale won the award for its outstanding water sensitive city initiatives on ground, as measured by the Water Sensitive Cities Index, a tool for benchmarking urban areas against 34 indicators that characterise a water sensitive city. The City shares the award with WA Water Corporation, which played a major role in funding the benchmarking project and supporting the City.
The award recognises excellence in water sensitive city practice, and is given to the city that achieves that highest Index score since the award was last given out. The award was last won by the City of Port Phillip at the 4th Water Sensitive Cities Conference in Brisbane in 2019.
Neil Burbridge, Environmental Manager at the City of Armadale accepted the award on behalf of the council.
“We’re really thrilled to get this award”, said Mr Burbridge. “It recognises the excellent work our team does in relation to water sensitive matters.
“We’d like to thank the CRC for Water Sensitive Cities for providing the award and for the fantastic research they’ve completed. We’d also like to thank WA Water Corporation for its support for the benchmarking workshop and the report.”
The City’s outstanding results from the WSC Index benchmarking showed that it is comfortably progressing towards a Water Cycle City (63%); and has commenced the journey (24%) towards the Water Sensitive City state.
In response to these results, the City of Armadale is now working towards a 10-point action plan to help progress its journey towards a water sensitive city:
- Action 1: Build a clear vision for a water sensitive City of Armadale
- Action 2: Strengthen integration and collaboration across the City
- Action 3: Foster community engagement, collaboration and ownership
- Action 4: Strategic and collaborative investment in green-blue infrastructure projects
- Action 5: Review and update the Local Biodiversity Strategy
- Action 6: Showcase the City’s achievements and demonstrate leadership in water monitoring and adaptive management
- Action 7: Build partnerships to deliver improved water system management
- Action 8: Recognise economic benefit of WSUD
- Action 9: Encourage uptake of alternative fit-for-purpose water supply options
- Action 10: Consider the water-energy nexus and address GHG emissions.
We congratulate the City of Armadale on its outstanding effort, and look forward to seeing the results of the many other proposed actions outlined in the benchmarking report. We also acknowledge WA Water Corporation's important part in supporting local councils interested in becoming more water sensitive.
To date, the WSC Index has been applied in more than 50 locations throughout Australia and overseas.
The WSC Index supplies reliable evidence about a city’s strengths and weaknesses for use in strategy development, seeking project prioritisation and funding or approval, and to track progress over time. You can find out more about the WSC Index here. To arrange its application to your city or town, you can contact one of our accredited providers or email wsc-index@crcwsc.com.au.