Swan Reach declared top drop

Water produced from SA Water’s Swan Reach Water Treatment Plant in the Murraylands has been awarded ‘best tasting tap water in South Australia’.

The annual competition, run by the Water Industry Operators Association of Australia (WIOA), was held today in Murray Bridge and included more than a dozen samples from water facilities across the state, which were judged on colour, clarity, odour and ‘mouthfeel’.

SA Water’s Senior Manager of Water Expertise and Research Dr Daniel Hoefel said in the past four years, the state winners have all come from the Riverland or Murraylands region.

“You could say there’s something in the water!” Daniel said.

“In all seriousness though, we’ve found even through our own community blind water taste tests, people do tend to favour water which has been sourced from the River Murray and has been treated using a disinfection process called chloramination, as is the case at Swan Reach.

“Chloramine is an alternate treatment method to chlorine, which results in a less detectable taste and odour for end users. We use chloramine across most of our regional water networks, with around 220, 000 of our customers enjoying this product.

“Around 32,000 of these customers receive water which has been treated at the SA Water-owned, TRILITY-operated Swan Reach facility, including towns in the immediate Murraylands region as well as in the Barossa and Clare Valleys.

“A further 28,000 homes and businesses, some as far as Yorke Peninsula, are supplied a mix of water from our Swan Reach and nearby Morgan water treatment plants via a long, mostly above ground pipeline.

“The Swan Reach facility is one of our newer sites, becoming operational in 1998, and can produce up to 90 million litres of water a day.”

SA Water samples entered into today's competition were taken from water treatment plants at Anstey Hill, Barmera, Barossa, Blanchetown, Cadell, Happy Valley, Hawker, Hope Valley, Little Para, Morgan, Mount Pleasant, Summit, Swan Reach and Woolpunda.

Swan Reach will compete for Australia’s best tasting tap water in October as part of National Water Week, in the home of last year’s winner – Hamilton in Victoria. The winner of the national competition will then go on to represent Australia in the international competition held next year in the United States.

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