Here to listen

Being local experts gives us insight into the needs of our customers who pay a share for WaterNSW to manage the state’s water.

An important way we connect with our customers is through our Customer Advisory Groups (CAGs) – a group of nominated customer representatives based in 10 regions across the state.

Each CAG comprises a cross-section of stakeholders including regulated and unregulated river customers, groundwater, stock and domestic and environmental water users, irrigators, major and local water utilities, local government and Aboriginal Cultural water users.

We regularly meet with our CAGs to share updates on topics and issues relevant to each region such as water delivery, asset maintenance and pricing. But, more than that, we attend to listen.

We use this face-to-face time to better understand the unique needs and challenges of our customers and valleys and take on board feedback to ensure we continue to meet the needs of our customers and the state’s water users.

Our team of water delivery, operations, customer services and engagement specialists, as well as our executives, have been on the road this past month, meeting with each of our CAGs starting with the Coastal-Hunter region in early July, making their way through to the Gwydir, Namoi-Peel, Border Rivers, Lachlan, Barwon-Darling, Macquarie-Cudgegong regions and most recently, the Murray-Darling.

It’s always insightful to hear directly from our customers and key topics discussed across many of our most recent CAGs included highly valued services and outcomes in our pricing conversations, flood and drought operations, maintenance updates at sites such as Oberon Dam and how we can improve WaterInsights, our interactive web data tool.

We appreciate the opportunity to hear from our customers and communities, and strengthen our partnerships with our most important stakeholders.

Fundamental to us is understanding and respecting the customers and communities we serve, and another way we are hearing directly from them is by attending agricultural field days across regional NSW.

Field days provide an important opportunity for our team of local experts to meet, listen and engage with our customers, and for the local community to find out more about our role in capturing, storing and delivering water.

Over the past few months, we have attended field days far-and-wide starting with Tocal Field Days in the Hunter Valley, Riverina Field Days in Griffith, and Primex Field Days in Casino in May, and most recently, the Mudgee Small Farm Field Days. Our team meets with locals, school groups and families to chat about what we do, the dams we operate in these regions and their water use requirements.

Ultimately, we are local partners, managing a vital natural resource.  We live and work side by side with our customers and communities across NSW and we will continue to listen and invest in face-to-face customer engagement – something our customers have told us is important to them. To see which field days WaterNSW is headed to next visit events.