Environment

The Sydney Catchment Authority (SCA) has the following environmental objectives:

  • Conserve water and minimise water losses
  • Minimise the environmental impact of the SCA's use of energy
  • Manage and minimise resource use and waste
  • Manage heritage according to principles of ecologically sustainable development
  • Minimise the environmental impacts of the SCA's infrastructure projects.

The SCA is committed to working towards these objectives and protecting the environment in line with the following principles of ecologically sustainable development.

  • Precautionary principle - If there are threats of serious or irreversible environmental damage, a lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason to postpone measures to prevent environmental degradation
  • Inter-generational equity - The present generation should ensure that the health, diversity and productivity of the environment are kept or improved for the benefit of future generations
  • Conservation of biological diversity and ecological integrity - This should be a fundamental consideration
  • Improved valuation, pricing and incentive mechanisms - Environmental factors should be included in the valuation of assets and services.

Highlights of the SCA's environmental management include:

  • achieving a five star rating under the Energetics One-2-Five Energy System for our environmental management system - only six out of 1,353 organisations audited worldwide have achieved this rating.
  • buying 10 percent green power since 2002
  • implementing waste reduction and recycling across the SCA 
  • actively investigating the potential to generate green power from SCA bulk water infrastructure
  • saving more than $100,000 each year since 2003 through bulk water pumping strategies
  • winning the NSW Energy and Water Green Globe Achievement Award 2006 under the Energy Champion Government category
  • coming first in the 2004 WSAA Asset Management Process Benchmarking Exercise under the Energy Accounting System in Australia and New Zealand.

Due to the geographic spread of the SCA catchment areas, we have a large operational and pool vehicle fleet (around 0.6 cars per person). It is important to negate the greenhouse gas emissions from these vehicles.  All of the SCA's operational vehicles are signed onto the Greenfleet Australia program.  Greenfleet plant and maintain 17 trees each year for each vehicle to offset greenhouse gas emissions related to the vehicles. The trees are planted in the Murray Darling Basin, which will also help tackle salinity problems.  The SCA also has two hybrid vehicles in its fleet.

More information about how the SCA manages and minimises the impact of our activities on the environment are in the SCA Environment Plan. The SCA reports its performance against the plan each year in the annual report.