Icon Water

For 100 years, Canberra has enjoyed some of the highest quality water and sewerage services in the country. They are serviced by Canberra’s water and sewerage utility Icon Water. Here at Icon Water, we use innovative techniques and expertise to make clean, safe water. This year, on our hundred-year anniversary, we have launched our new brand and an ambitious new vision as Icon Water. The business has realigned its goals and, faced with the challenges that a growing inland city bears, we aim to become the best provider of water in Australia.

The name Icon Water was chosen to express the company's promise to become the premier water and sewerage service in Australia. But to be the best there are a range of factors to consider such as safety, sustainability and innovation as the city grows. Perhaps the most important of these however, is that of water security. This vision leaves Icon Water with the opportunity to refocus how we want to serve the community in the future by remaining relevant and sustainable. It reinforces the critical importance of ensuring the security of the water supply in the Canberra region for generations to come.

As an inland city, the way Canberra uses its water will always be important. Achieving true long-term water security will never be a finished project because the environment is constantly changing—this is a reality that Icon Water recognises. Factors such as climate change and variability, continued population growth and increased expectations of quality mean we can never completely say 'job done.'

However, in the act of striving to be the best, Icon Water will contribute to Australia's future prosperity through better environmental practices, providing value to our customers, water security and technological innovation. In becoming Australia's premier water utility company, Icon Water will continue to strive for better practices, ensure that water is safe and secure in the region for the long-term future and continue to support the Canberra community.

Our attitude to land management over Icon Water’s 100 year history has changed a lot. Landmark events like bushfire, changing weather patterns and a stronger focus on sustainability, have shaped Icon Water’s approach to land management.

In 2015, we’re combining our community safety obligations with business needs and positive environmental outcomes by taking a proactive approach to land management, rather than reactive.

We now operate in accordance with our Bushfire Operational Plan, a strategy that is core to our land management approach. The plan aims to not only minimise the impact of bushfire on Icon Water assets and the delivery of water and sewerage services, but also to protect the lives of people in the community.

The extremely close proximity of the 2003 Canberra Bushfires to the Mount Stromlo Water Treatment Plant highlighted the need for Icon Water to proactively manage bushfire fuel in order to mitigate the threat of fire to Canberra’s key water treatment facility.

In recent years, African Love Grass was identified as bushfire fuel on Mount Stromlo. Fire was identified as the most efficient way to clear this fuel.

African Love Grass is a noxious weed and known for being highly flammable, and without a management plan it has the ability to highly increase the risk of fire damage to the Mount Stromlo Water Treatment Plant.

As a result of these findings, Icon Water conducted a hazard reduction burn of land surrounding the site this year, to reduce the build-up of bushfire fuel (i.e. grasses) to a manageable level, reducing the threat of wildfire impacting the area. This will be repeated as necessary well into the future.

Another activity conducted by Icon Water to mitigate the impact of fire to our assets and the surrounding community is through vegetation management at our reservoirs. This involves the pruning and removal of trees at multiple reservoirs across Canberra.

Any hazard reduction burning or vegetation management conducted by Icon Water is done after a comprehensive environmental assessment and approval process to ensure that any potential impact to the environment or endangered ecological communities are considered. We also work in accordance with the ACT Weeds Strategy.

Environmental considerations include timing, intensity and frequency of burns and vegetation management activities, to ensure that endangered species of plants and animals are positively impacted by Icon Water’s land management activities.

Our Murrumbidgee to Googong Offset areas for example, are home to Black Cyprus Pine, Button Wrinklewort, Pink-tailed Worm Lizard, and Golden Sun Moth, and we ensure that fuel management activities in these areas are carefully considered so as not to disrupt these ecological communities.

Our work at Icon Water impacts all Canberrans as we provide water and sewerage services to households, businesses and community organisations across the ACT and surrounding region. Many Canberra residents have family members and friends who have worked for Icon Water or its predecessor organisations.

We are a community based business that’s been trusted for 100 years to deliver quality, safe and reliable water and sewerage services that help our community flourish. Every day our team works hard to achieve this and we take pride in what we do.

To work with us is to be part of a team that protects the health and safety of Canberran’s and regional users, and the environment. We offer a range of employment opportunities in various sectors such as engineering, construction, health and safety, environment and business.

Many of our staff report that working with Icon Water provides gratifying involvement in the Canberra community.

Team Leader of Impact Assessment and Approvals Ben Bryant says the best thing about his job is how local we are. “I like how local the utility is; we’re in people’s back yards and what I do in my job every day I get to do on the weekend too. I like going to the parks, I like making sure that we’re being a good responsible environmental citizen and yet we’re still supporting the people here in Canberra.”

Our team is our greatest asset and we ensure each staff member has the support and training they need, not just when they start but throughout their whole career with us.

Asset Planner and Maintenance Engineer Dulshan Hewage explains that “it’s human nature where everyone believes what they do is most important, but the fact of the matter is everyone’s a cog in this large machine so everyone’s just as important as everyone else. It’s not just people independently that make Icon Water work, its multiple groups that keep the whole thing working harmoniously”.

We are a part of a bigger picture and a true team that works towards providing a quality lifestyle to our community, and we are proud of it.

Icon Water has made a family out of our fleet by naming new trucks after iconic Canberrans. Over the past year our fleet has been updated with impressive new trucks and as an initiative to honour iconic Canberrans we have named the new family members. So far we have:

• Walter, after Walter Burley Griffin designer of Canberra
• Marion, Walter Burley Griffin’s wife, joint designer of Canberra
• Charles, after Charles Scrivener, surveyor eventually responsible for selecting the specific city site once Canberra had been selected.
• Joseph, after Joseph Wild, one of the first Europeans to expore the Canberra area in 1822
• With Ernest, after Ernest De Burgh engineer and early advocate for the Cotter River being the basis for Canberra’s location, to come.

By naming the fleet it has changed the perception of the trucks altogether, giving them character and a personality. Often we refer to them as “he” or “she”, if not their real name. For the staff members that drive the trucks there is more of a sense of ownership.

The Maintenance team has worked tirelessly for over two years on designing and creating these new types of trucks in order to create a more efficient and safer maintenance resource. For example, Walter has all the necessary equipment to provide planned and reactive services.

The features include:

• Increased safety, such as reflective tape on all opening doors
• More powerful engine, 6-cylinder instead of 4-cylinder as per the other trucks
• Larger cab for driver comfort
• Better and larger compressor to run more equipment for longer, such as grinders, jackhammers, vent fans
• Easier and more ergonomic access, including limited doors opening on road side and accessible stairway on curb side
• Larger and more powerful crane, 2 tonne lifting power versus 500 kilograms.

Walter has the features in one truck that would previously require trailers combined with the old trucks to deliver. Eventually the fleet will be replaced with the brothers and sisters of Walter to make a bigger and better Icon Water family.