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Tasmania's water future

Click on the cards below to explore the proposed outcomes.

Driving factors

We're at a critical juncture. With ageing infrastructure, a changing climate, and rising customer expectations, our fifth Price and Service Plan (PSP5) needed to set out a clear path forward.

The water and sewerage industry - across the country and around the world - is facing some of its toughest challenges yet. Rising living costs are putting pressure on households, making affordability more important than ever.

At the same time, the need for investment is growing rapidly - driven by ageing infrastructure, population growth, climate change, and increasing regulatory and community expectations.

In Tasmania, these pressures are compounded by a legacy of underperforming assets and the need to modernise our systems. These are complex, long-term issues that can’t be ignored - and PSP5 is our opportunity to start addressing them head-on.

Our current reality is:

  • We still lose around 24 per cent of the water we produce, down from nearly one-third in recent years.
  • About 23 per cent of our 110 sewage treatment plants pose a high risk to the environment, and only nine per cent meet all environmental licence conditions.
  • In 2023-24, we recorded more than 64 sewer main breaks and chokes per 100km - more than double the national median of 26.
  • We also had more than 43 water main bursts per 100km, compared to the national median of 18.
  • Only 48 per cent of customers are served by systems that meet our proposed water security standard.

Understanding what our customers and communities care about is key to how we tackle the challenges ahead. It’s also important that we meet the changing - and increasingly strict - requirements set by health, environmental, and dam safety regulators, who are there to protect the interests of the public.

As the rules become tougher and expectations rise, we need to make sure our plans reflect what matters most to the people we serve.

We’re taking important steps to modernise Tasmania’s sewerage systems, starting with major upgrades in key urban areas. These long-term improvements will allow us to streamline our infrastructure, reduce the number of ageing treatment plants, and deliver better environmental and public health outcomes.

They’ll also help support population growth and development in our major regions.

We know these challenges are solvable with the right planning, funding, and focus. That’s why we’ve developed a 50-year roadmap to guide our investments. For the next four years, we’ve prioritised the most critical projects - those that offer the greatest benefits for customers, the environment, and long-term cost savings.

We’ve shown we can deliver large, complex infrastructure programs and are on track to exceed our long-term investment goals.

Like many Tasmanians, we’re feeling the impact of rising costs and higher interest rates. These external pressures are making it more expensive to deliver essential water and sewerage services.

During the current pricing period (PSP4), we kept annual price increases to 3.5 per cent and even froze prices during the COVID years. But the cost of materials, labour, and services has risen much faster than that.

We’ve absorbed these increases as much as possible, but it’s no longer sustainable if we want to keep investing in the infrastructure Tasmania needs.

We have developed a comprehensive set of ambitious, yet achievable, service standards to measure our performance across PSP5 as we strive to deliver these customer outcomes.

The achievement of these outcomes is reflected in our proposed capital and operating investment plans.

Achieving these PSP5 outcomes is an important step towards getting us on a sustainable footing for the future.

See our propsal summary pdf



Since creation, the palawa have lived here in lutruwita - Tasmania. Over 2,000 generations of Aboriginal families have cared for this Country, looking after its lands, seas, skies and waterways.

In the spirit of respect and gratitude, TasWater acknowledges the Tasmanian Aboriginal community as the traditional and ongoing custodians. We pay our respects to them, their culture and to elders past and present. We also acknowledge any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are here with us today.

TasWater commits to working collaboratively and respectfully with the Tasmanian Aboriginal community to protect and sustain the precious resources on this ancient land for future generations.

Contact Us

Have questions or want to learn more about a project, contact us below:

Contact Information
Phone 13 6992
Website www.taswater.com.au
In writing

GPO Box 1393, Hobart TAS 7001