Do you stop to think what happens to your wastewater once you pull the plug?

The infrastructure required to manage the South Australia’s wastewater is vast and expensive.

In total, the State has 23 wastewater treatment plants - three major plants in metropolitan Adelaide and 20 in country South Australia. Each year across the State approximately 90 billion litres of wastewater is collected and treated.

Wastewater Projects

SA Water is committed to ensuring the sustainability of our State’s most precious natural resource. While this means using water wisely for most people, for us it also means reusing water wisely.

We have a number of projects that not only safeguard the quality of our wastewater, but seek out innovative ways to reuse it. Many of these are in rural or regional SA.

Most wastewater treatment plants use a three stage process to make wastewater suitable for reuse or discharge:

• Primary Treatment - a physical process which removes pollutants (either by settling or floating)
• Secondary Treatment - a natural biological process which breaks down dissolved and suspended solids using micro-organisms such as bacteria, protozoa, fungi and algae
• Tertiary Treatment - includes physical, chemical and biological processes to further improve wastewater quality and includes conditioning in lagoons, disinfection and filtration.

To find out more about wastewater treatment click here.