Article Masthead
- Category: Capital Projects & Infrastructure
- Topic: Recycled Water for Data Centres
- Region: Asia-Pacific
- Signal Type: Recycled Water Allocation / Industrial Demand
- Published Date: 2026-10-06
01 What Happened
ABC News reported on October 6 that Sydney Water sees a clear opportunity to supply recycled water to data centres from the new Badu Yarragul Water Resource Recovery Facility at Kemps Creek in Western Sydney.
The facility opened in September and currently treats about 35 ML/d of wastewater, with plans to expand to 70 ML/d as Western Sydney grows. It is intended to support up to 140,000 new homes and businesses, including development around Western Sydney International Airport. Sydney Water says the treated water is suitable for non-drinking uses including industrial and business applications.
Sydney Water’s dedicated data-centre policy page now states that data centres have high and highly concentrated water demand, and that the utility will prioritise recycled water where practical. It also says very large users should pay charges reflecting the true cost of supply and that residential customers should not face higher costs or additional supply risk because of data-centre growth.
ABC also reports that Sydney Water expects the planned Camellia-Rosehill wastewater treatment project, due to open by 2032, to provide recycled water for data-centre demand. No customer-specific allocation from Badu Yarragul has yet been published.
02 Key Takeaways
01 Badu Yarragul creates a new large recycled-water source in Western Sydney: about 35 ML/d today with planned expansion to 70 ML/d.
02 Data centres are now explicitly part of Sydney Water’s recycled-water planning, but the utility has not disclosed how much Badu Yarragul water will be committed to individual facilities.
03 The policy challenge is no longer only treatment capacity; it is how a drought-resilience resource is allocated among homes, industry, public-space irrigation and other future uses.
03 Why It Matters
Data centres can create large, location-specific water demands with high reliability requirements. Supplying those loads from recycled water can reduce pressure on potable-water systems, but it also converts recycled water from a general resilience resource into a contracted industrial utility.
That makes planning more complex. The relevant balance is not simply “wastewater available versus cooling water needed.” Utilities must account for seasonal wastewater flows, treatment availability, recycled-water storage, network capacity, peak cooling demand, drought conditions and the backup-water arrangements expected by critical digital infrastructure.
The project also shows how wastewater infrastructure is becoming part of industrial-development strategy. John Holland reports that the facility includes advanced treatment and more than 40 km of treated-water and brine pipelines, creating physical infrastructure that can support a broader circular-water network.
04 ATLAS Engineering View
ATLAS sees the key engineering question as fit-for-purpose water quality plus system-level water balance. A data centre does not automatically need drinking-water quality for cooling, but recycled-water chemistry must still be matched to the cooling system.
Design reviews should examine conductivity/TDS, hardness, alkalinity, silica, chloride, nutrients, microbiological control and the concentration factor expected in cooling towers. These parameters influence scaling, corrosion, blowdown volume and chemical dosing.
The second issue is reliability. Data centres generally cannot accept uncontrolled loss of cooling water, so recycled-water service requires clear storage, redundancy and backup arrangements. Those requirements can materially affect the infrastructure needed beyond the treatment plant itself.
Badu Yarragul therefore represents more than a wastewater project. It is an example of a future urban-water model in which wastewater treatment, recycled-water networks and high-demand industrial customers are planned together rather than as separate systems.