Water conservation has long been recognised as vital to our sustainable growth. We take water management very seriously, and have a range of programs to conserve water and protect nearby water sources from unwanted run-off.

Our airport is almost entirely surrounded by water – the Alexandra Canal forms its northern boundary, the Cooks River its western boundary, Botany Bay its southern boundary and significant wetlands part of the eastern boundary. In addition, groundwater flows under the site.

Recent significant achievements

In recent years, we've:

• installed a water recycling plant which takes wastewater from T1 International, treats it and supplies it for toilet flushing and air conditioning cooling towers. Since 2012, this plant has delivered an average of more than 600 kilolitres a day of recycled water for use across the airport. This is equivalent to saving an Olympic swimming pool of water every four days
• worked to reduce fuel spill impacts by operating a dedicated 24-hour spill response vehicle and maintaining spill control kits available for use on all aircraft parking aprons
• maintained gross pollutant traps to remove rubbish from stormwater flowing from the airport into surrounding waterways and undertaken stormwater quality monitoring

Future directions

We're committed to:

• continuing to reduce total water consumed per passenger
• ensuring water quality monitoring results show no decline or show an improvement in water quality from the airport
• closely consider potential water quality impacts when a new development is being proposed
• ensuring new developments are water efficient and consider water recycling