Where your money goes?
Victoria’s independent regulator, the Essential Services Commission, approves our prices and charges. They generally change on 1 July each year.
Your payments help us to provide fresh drinking water and manage sewage and trade waste.
You also contribute to:
- Maintaining and upgrading our assets, including treatment plants and water and sewerage mains.
- Customer service, cyber security and new technologies.
- Community support and environmental programs.
We’ll send you a bill every three months although some business customers may receive them more often. You’ll generally have 28 days to pay unless you’ve made special arrangements with us.
Our charges
Our bills may include a range of fixed and variable charges.
They include:
Water usage – A variable charge depending on the amount of water you use.
Water service and sewerage service – These fixed charges help cover the cost of maintaining and upgrading our water and sewerage systems. If a water or sewer main passes through – or in front of – your property, and can provide a service to it, it will be called ‘serviced’. The charge you pay will depend on whether your property is connected to the mains or not. Note: These charges don’t apply to residential tenants.
Fire service – A charge for properties that have a private fire service connection.
Sewage and trade waste volume charge – A charge that applies to business customers who dispose of sewage and trade waste through our systems.
For more details take a look at our approved prices and charges.
Pricing 2026-27
Schedule of Charges 2026-27
If you fail to pay by the date on your bill, we’ll take action to recover the outstanding amount, including interest. You’ll face collection or legal costs and we may restrict your water supply.
Breaches of the Water Act 1989 or Wannon Water’s By-Laws are linked to penalty units. The Department of Treasury and Finance updates the value of a penalty unit in July each year.
If you’re worried about paying your bills, you’re not alone. Our Customer Support Team is here for you, with practical options to help ease the pressure. Call the team on 1300 926 666 to find out how we can support you.
All customers who have access to our water supply system or sewerage system are required to contribute to the cost of maintaining these systems.
Fixed service charges apply regardless of whether your property is physically connected or not. If a water or sewerage main runs past, through, or near your boundary, your property is legally designated as ‘serviced’ land.
Even if your property is not connected to the services, the infrastructure exists and must be operated and maintained to ensure it remains reliable. These charges are known as ‘availability’ charges or ‘unconnected’ service charges.
It’s important to remember that all properties benefit from the presence of water mains for firefighting purposes. All properties also benefit from the presence of sewerage infrastructure due to the reduced environmental and public health impacts of septic tanks in urban areas.
If your property isn’t connected to water, but the service is available, you won’t pay any usage charges, you’ll only pay the water service charge.
If your property isn’t connected to the sewerage system, but the service is available, you’ll pay a sewerage service charge. This is a reduced charge – around 70 per cent less than the charge that applies to properties that are connected to the sewerage service.
The charges have been approved by the Essential Services Commission who is the independent industry regulator.
Questions & Answers
Find the answers to the mostly commonly asked questions about our prices and charges.
Our bills cover the cost of having quality water ready and available in your kitchen, bathroom, laundry and garden. And to have the sewage from your toilet, sinks, showers and basins taken away. We always aim to keep them as low as possible.
If you’re an average homeowner, connected to both water and sewerage, this costs just $3.75 a day*. That’s less than one takeaway coffee!
And if you’re a renter, you only pay for your water usage – so that’s 77 cents a day*.
*Based on the average customer using 140,000 litres of water a year, or 384 litres a day.
This amount is based on the amount of water you use. An average customer uses 142 kilolitres (142,000 litres) of water each year.
We charge $1.87 per kilolitre which covers the cost of treating your water to ensure it’s safe to drink and use. Therefore, the average customer pays just over $265 a year for their water.
This is a fixed charge for each property owner. If you own your home, you’ll pay about $197 in water service charges.
This helps us cover the cost of maintaining and upgrading our water supply network including reservoirs, pump stations and treatment plants.
It also helps us maintain and renew nearly 2,000 kilometres of water mains. If we laid them end-to-end, they’d stretch from our coastline to Mount Isa.
This is a fixed charge for each property owner connected to our sewerage network. If you own your own home, you’ll pay around $889 a year.
This helps us cover the cost of taking away and treating your sewage. For the average household, this waste would fill the equivalent of 30 big brown bins every week. Just imagine having to dispose of that yourself!
It also helps us to maintain and upgrade our sewerage system including pump stations, treatment plants, lagoons and biosolid facilities.
And it helps us to maintain and renew more than 1,000 kilometres of sewer mains. If we laid them end-to-end, they would stretch from our coastline to the Queensland border.
Your service charges are based on the services that are available to your property. Even if your block isn’t connected to any of the services, we still need to maintain our water and sewerage networks. These charges are around $197 a year for water services and $267 for sewerage services.
Did you know?
