The community expect Hunter water to manage water resources in a sustainable way. To ensure water supply to the region Hunter water has a plan to make the most of its existing water sources, improve the resilience of its system by increasing sustainable, climate independent - supply.

High water leakage increases the risk of reaching low water storage levels and may bring forward the timing of future source augmentations. Reducing leakage is a key objective of Hunter Water and an ongoing program of activities has achieved a 27% reduction in leakage since 2016. Key initiatives in this program include active leakage detection (ALD), pressure management areas (PMA), district metered areas (DMA), and repair of point source leaks.

Hunter Water has a plan to further reduce leakage by 47% from current levels through additional investment in the above key initiatives through to 2030, with DMA monitoring aiming to contribute approximately half of the above reductions.

The DMA monitoring project began in 2018 with approximately 45% DMA coverage of the network and has increased to approximately 80% coverage. Further expansion to approximately 97% coverage is planned in the next 12 months. Works are currently in planning to further improve the effectiveness of DMA monitoring through to 2030 by reducing the size of large DMAs, improving data quality and implementing other leak monitoring technology including acoustic and pressure sensors and virtual DMA's.

Current DMA coverage also includes sixteen (16) pressure managed zones with an additional seven (7) in construction and plans for further implementation over the next 5 years.

Existing and planned DMA assets to be implemented over the next 12 months consist of:

* 120 existing DMAs + 11 planned

* 295 existing flowmeters + 38 planned

* 24 digital customer flowmeters

* 52 reservoirs

* 10 pressure gauges