Seawater

Sustainable design principles have reduced the impact of our facilities – the Adelaide Desalination Plant has one of the smallest carbon footprints of any plant in the world and the independent Environmental Protection Authority confirms operations of the plant do not cause harm to the environment.

Some of the ways we achieve this is by:

• using a best-in-class desalination process with high-efficiency process equipment
• using energy from renewable sources
• harvesting rainwater on-site for use within the plant
• capturing stormwater and surface water run-off in local wetlands as this process naturally cleans the water before it goes out to sea
• growing Indigenous plant species and encouraging animals to return to the site
• using baited remote underwater video cameras to observe and monitor a wide variety of fish and other marine animals living on the artificial reef surrounding the outfall.

We also work together with government and community groups to help protect the Gulf St Vincent.

The Adelaide Desalination Plant at Lonsdale is the state’s largest desalination plant with a capacity of 100 gigalitres per year. It is Adelaide’s only climate-independent source of drinking water and has been delivering drinking water since 2011.

Drinking water produced by the Adelaide Desalination Plant is pumped along our 11 kilometre pipeline to storage tanks at our Happy Valley Water Treatment Plant, where it’s blended with treated water from the reservoir. The interconnection of our network pipelines and pump stations gives us the capability to supply drinking water produced at the Adelaide Desalination Plant to people across Adelaide, from Aldinga in the south, right up to Elizabeth in the north.

We regularly host 90-minute tours where you can see the vast site by bus before heading inside to a viewing area in one of the main process buildings. Learn more and book via our education team.

Map of suburbs supplied by the Adelaide Desalination Plant

List of suburbs supplied by the Adelaide Desalination Plant

Adelaide Desalination Plant water production

Water production to date (as at end of November 2024) = approximately 212 billion litres.

Water production for last month (November 2024) = 1.2 billion litres

*The Adelaide Desalination Plant is in standby mode during wetter months of the year, when customer demand is typically at its lowest. No water is produced during this period, enabling maintenance work to be done while the facility is in standby mode.

We operate two desalination plants at Penneshaw on Kangaroo Island – a 400-kilolitre-a-day facility which has been supplying water since 1999 and a second larger two-megalitre-a-day plant which began operating in late 2024.

To provide a drinking water source independent of rainfall and help ensure water security for agriculture, industry and the community for generations to come, a desalination plant is planned for the Eyre Peninsula.

The Development Application was approved in November, with early site preparation works planned before the end of 2024 and first water from the plant expected to be delivered by mid-2026.