SA Water Corporation

And, uh, so and they, there wasn't any policy around who actually could occupy those government houses.

Same, uh, you know, really a huge number of houses owned by the Education Department and SA Water and, you know, all these, police and so on.

And there was also the migrant hostels that were vacant and being used.

And, uh, so we, we developed some policies around all of that and emergency housing and put a lot of pressure on the Housing Trust to change some of their policies.

So I had a desalinator, a small one, in the roadhouse for, since probably 2009.

But about 20, no, over 22, 23 years, SA Water come in and put an insalinator in for the town.

And it's fantastic water, yeah.

It sounds like a lot of waste of money, but I actually thought that as well.

But we get charged the same as Adelaide, so why shouldn't we have good water as well? So it's really, really good water.

Yeah, hats off to SA Water.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's the aim.

Um, you know, as part of your SA Water fishing permits, uh, all of that money goes back in towards stocking.

So, you know, we've done a whole heap of, uh, work with, um, with SA Water and the community in, in gaining feedback and what's important to the, the sector.

Um, for example, the Myponga Reservoir has one of the most productive golden perch fisheries in the state now, um, and we've just got to keep diversifying and, and creating new opportunities, and that's why, uh, you know, over the next couple of years we'll be focusing largely on Australian bass as well.

And we're starting to really enter this space where we've gotten good at stocking.

So, uh, there's a, there's a, there's a designated carrying biomass that these reservoirs can, can carry, um, and that it's not even touching the sides.

So the water quality is top-notch.

Um, before and after stocking we do, um, a range of water tests as well as SA Water.

Absolutely.

This is a multi-party exercise involving the Australian Forest Products Association, obviously Forestry SA, Department of Primary Industries, Department of Environment and Water, SA Water, Department of Housing and Urban Development.

You know, this is a combined effort.

effort and you know i um you know i think it's the right effort i think it's achieving the aims that need to be achieved um and said whilst i can appreciate that it is challenging where we go in and take out so many trees from a from a community and the impact for that community ultimately it's about ensuring that we have the trees today to be able to build the houses of tomorrow

So sometimes, okay, you'll get a sewer approval, but the electricity approval or... hook up that, the water connection may take a lot of time.

Similarly, I've seen somewhere in South Australia, when you go towards the extreme north, A lot of projects delayed because SA Water doesn't have a capacity.

Everything is ready, but SA Water doesn't have a capacity.

You can build home, but you don't have water.

So you can't start the project.

Infrastructure, obviously, is a sticking point.

More than 300 potential homes at Kadena effectively stalled because SA Water can't confirm there's enough network capacity to connect them.

Yeah, and it's a big challenge.

SA Water's got the largest pipe, both sewer and water network, of any single utility in the country.

So we're obviously the driest state on the driest inhabited continent on the earth, and so we've built this amazing infrastructure over generations, but we're now running to capacity issues, both in the city and the country, and obviously one of the things we have to do is when we're enabling investments, we've basically got to look at how much money we put in for how many allotments we get out, and that is the metric which we look through.

We've enabled a lot of investments in the country in places like Bordertown over in Eyre Peninsula but of course we are running into capacity constraints and we have to make tough decisions about where we invest and what outcomes we get out of it.