South East Queensland
11.6 Delivery of desalinated water to urban water system
Supporting information
a. Supporting information
The volume for the line item during the 2012–13 year was 2,805 ML.
The Gold Coast desalination plant was designed and constructed in response to the unprecedented drought in South East Queensland (SEQ) and the need for a non-climate dependent water source.
This line item represents the volume of potable water produced by the Tugun desalination plant located within the Gold Coast Water Resource Plan area (2,805 ML), and transferred into the SEQ water grid.
b. Urban water supply system overview
South East Queensland's urban water system comprises three sub-components:
- urban water supply system
- wastewater system
- recycled water system.
There are four main sources of water for SEQ's urban water supply system:
The water intake to the urban water supply system (251,897 ML) is from four sources: surface water (224,420 ML), groundwater (158 ML), desalinated water (2,805 ML), and imported water (24,514 ML).
During the 2012–13 year, the volume of water delivered to urban users (potable and non-potable water supplied amounting to 219,392 ML) was the major outflow from the urban water supply system. This supply for urban consumption represented about 87% of the total outflow. Approximately 11% of the outflow was leakage (19.3 Urban water system leakage to groundwater) and 2% was remaining losses.
The following figure shows all the inflows and outflows associated with the urban water supply system. For more detail on a particular flow associated with the urban water supply system, refer to the line item notes.

Schematic diagram of water inflows and outflows during the 2012–13 year for South East Queensland's urban water supply system; line item numbers are provided in brackets
Quantification approach
Data source
Seqwater: WaterHub database metered data (meter M-056-MW).
Provided by
Seqwater.
Method
Based on master meter readings (meter M-056-MW) tallied to provide an annual total.
Assumptions, limitations, caveats and approximations
None.
Uncertainty information
Meter manufacturer (Promag) estimates an uncertainty of measurement of 0.26 to 0.37%.