Three City of Casey projects have been recognised at this year’s Keep Victoria Beautiful 2020 Sustainable Cities Awards held last week.
The City of Casey won the Energy Award for the Casey ARC Energy Savers program, the Litter Award for its Bollard Camera initiative and was highly commended in the Environment Awards category for its Integrated Water Management program.
The awards recognise and celebrate positive actions taken by communities in urban areas to protect and enhance their local environments. They encompass initiatives as diverse as litter prevention, recycling, protection of the environment, preserving heritage, community action, and social wellbeing programs.
Casey’s Chair of Administrators Ms Noelene Duff PSM said it was a fantastic result that highlighted the many and varied projects undertaken by Council to enhance the City of Casey.
“These projects demonstrate Council’s commitment to delivering innovative projects that will provide environmental benefits, cost savings and enhance our City today and into the future,” Ms Duff said.
The Casey ARC Energy Savers program recognises the suite of energy saving initiatives that have been undertaken at the leisure facility since it opened in 2000, which have helped to reduce energy bills by 35 per cent and has delivered an approximate 30 per cent reduction in water consumption between 2017-2020.
This has been achieved through a combination of solar panels, improved monitoring and management of equipment and lighting to achieve savings outside of opening hours and updating infrastructure to more energy efficient models.
Casey’s Integrated Water Management Plan endeavours to build a water efficient city through a series of stormwater harvesting projects that help to reduce the amount of potable (drinking) water used on sporting reserves and open spaces and address seasonal flooding issues.
Three stormwater harvesting projects have already been delivered in Berwick saving 39 million litres of potable water and five others have been identified in Narre Warren, including the planned stormwater treatment and storage system for Max Pawsey Reserve.
The Bollard Camera program, used by Council’s litter prevention team, helps to reduce rubbish dumping in isolated reserves and sporting grounds and new housing estates. The relatively low-cost initiative, where cameras are retrofitted into existing bollards, has helped to identify areas where illegal dumping has occurred and provided evidence used to identify offenders.
