Young Achiever

Employed by Melbourne Water, Leon Harvey has set himself a goal that during his working life the time will come when ‘sustainable water’ is part of what we do and not a secondary consideration.

He works as the leader of a program called ‘Living Rivers’, which works across 38 councils in Victoria to improve the health of our waterways.

This involves Leon teaching and leading others through a range of projects to save millions of litres of water; including demand management, rainwater harvesting, storm water reuse and passive irrigation.

His most successful development thus far has been a tree planting project in Little Bourke St in Melbourne’s CBD. The project’s aim was to change the standard approach to planting new trees to allow storm water to be directed to them, which would save thousands of litres of water per tree each year and reduce storm water pollution to Port Phillip Bay.

Constraints such as challenging the status quo, budgetary limitations and tight CBD Streets made the execution of this project a challenge for Leon, but after 15 months of perseverance and collaboration, the project was realised with huge success by winning an industry award. The Council calculated that they saved a significant amount of water using this new design; now adopted as the new council tree planting design, which has been replicated many times in other councils across Victoria.

Leon also lectures at both The University of Melbourne and Monash University to engineering students about application of sustainable water principles. Leon regularly meets community leaders and presents to local government councillors about leadership in sustainable water.

Clare Lombardi, employed by City West Water wants to change attitudes towards water conservation by communicating the key message: “What if water saving was not about water restrictions but was a way of life?’”

Whilst in her current marketing role, Clare has designed and managed the successful ‘Water Wise for Life’ kiosk, an innovative mobile display that travels to shopping centres to educate customers about saving water.

Clare has also introduced the ‘Water Wise for Life Heroes’ campaign, which sought to recognise and reward the outstanding water saving achievements of City West Water customers. The initiative saw over 50 entries received, with winners rewarded with water wise prizes and acknowledgement on the City West Water website.

Furthermore, she has implemented an effective ‘showerhead exchange program,’ which has seen 12,000 showerheads replaced with more water efficient units.

“I am honoured to be a finalist in these awards. As well as a sense of personal achievement I feel this is recognition of City West Water’s commitment to delivering quality programs that benefit our customers, community and environment. It’s a commitment we all take very seriously,” said Clare.

Michaela Sargeant has a passion for teaching young people about saving water to ensure long term changes in community attitude. For the past four years she has worked as the Education Officer at Goulburn Valley Water and in 2008 she designed and implemented the hugely successful program, ‘Shorter Shower Mission.’

The program was a data collection activity for primary school students, who recorded their shower times over a seven day period to highlight the linkage between time spent in the shower and water usage. Results revealed a reduction in shower times from the beginning to the end of the week, with an average reduction of 46 seconds per participant. This program involved 20 schools and 1,600 students from the Goulburn Valley Water region in Northern Victoria, equating to an overall water saving of approximately 12,000 litres. This campaign not only raised awareness about the need to conserve water, but provided students and their families with tangible measures for saving water in the home.

Michaela’s future goals involve developing a range of campaigns that are engaging, short term education programs that will continue the water conservation discussion in the community.