Remotely operated vehicles (ROV) are increasingly being used by the Australian utility sector. Rapidly evolving technology means that ROVs are now easier to operate and more cost effective. North East Water has been operating an unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone to conduct aerial inspections of water and wastewater infrastructure since late 2013. The drone transmits live vision to the Operator and takes high quality photos and continuous high definition video. This allows for quick collection of more useful information that was previously not possible via traditional on-ground inspections.

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}In 2014, fourteen Councils in the Central NSW region embarked on a major program of works to increase energy efficiency at their water and waste water pump stations by reducing the pump load at thirty sites across the region through the relining of sewer pipes and repair of leakages and manholes in areas subject to infiltration.

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Cobar Shire Council water supply system which includes vast uninhabited areas, and isolated remote villages where the water supplies are critical pieces of infrastructure. The paper will look at the challenges faced and the issues that wireless systems need to overcome in local distributed systems and also vast regional and remote areas. The demand on utilities is increasing and with the use of wireless telemetry, a faster response time and a lower cost of maintenance for these networks is a key consideration in making these projects come to life.

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Odour management is a significant challenge for industrial and municipal operations. For several decades biofiltration has been used worldwide for emission and odour control. Because of its ability to adapt to a wide variety of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC’s) the technology has been applied across a range of industries. The classic quote from the movie Field of Dreams “If you build it they will come.” is now perhaps over used but it neatly sums up the basic principal of the operation of biofilters.

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Six Councils of the Lower Macquarie Catchment formed a Water Utilities Alliance to provide a unified approach to the sustainable delivery of Water supply and Sewage Services.

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The CBD of Port Macquarie has had long term issues in regards to meter reading including high frequency meter reading, high pedestrian traffic, buried meters, trip hazards plus meters in difficult to read locations. Port Macquarie-Hastings Council (PMHC) have installed smart metering technology in order to overcome these issues.

This paper will discuss the selection process including the pros and cons of various smart metering systems, and the reason behind choosing the Taggle system. Furthermore, now that the system has been installed some of the issues will highlight some of the problems we encounter including installation, commissioning, staff training and bringing it in to our current billing system.

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Composite sampling is a widely used technique to monitor and analyse daily flow pattern and quality variations for council’s sewage treatment plants (STPs). Programs are usually run over several days and are used to collect information for examination of peak and non-peak loadings, investigation of abnormal conditions, exploration of legal or illegal trade wastes and provision of a basis for the augmentation of an existing STP and forward planning.

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Since commissioning in 2011 the Bootawa Water Treatment Plant (WTP) has struggled to deal with algae in the raw water, which then became a limitation to the plant’s operations, especially the membrane filtration and backwash water return process. All backwash water is settled in clarifiers before the supernatant is returned to the head of the WTP. Medium to high levels of algae in Bootawa Dam were blocking the WTP filters and not settling in the clarifiers. This combined with re-release of manganese from the clarifiers had added to greatly reduced backwash intervals from 30 minutes to around 10 minutes at times. This had the effect of tripling the backwash water produced. The backwash water system was never designed to deal with such volumes of water and therefore the backwash system quickly fills and threatens to overflow.

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Dawson River sewage treatment plant (STP) serves the towns of Taree, Tinonee and Cundletown on the Mid North Coast of NSW. The treated effluent from the plant is stored onsite and supplied for irrigation purposes to 7 farms on Dumaresq Island and 5 farms adjacent to Cundletown. This reuse scheme forms part of MidCoast Water’s Taree and Wingham Effluent Management Scheme (TWEMS). A mixture of hard hose irrigators, K-Line, bike shift, subsurface drip line and a centre pivot forms the basis of the TWEMS irrigation. The scheme has been operational for approximately 5 years and many lessons have been learned as the scheme matures.

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Geofabrics Australasia’s SmartDitch® Channel Lining System provides another alternative to Engineers for lining of open channel drains. SmartDitch® is a leak-free channel lining system engineered to control and direct the flow of water or critical fluids. Made from proven UV resistant HDPE, SmartDitch®’s unique corrugated design helps regulate the flow of water from flat to steep grades so that the drainage and flow patterns designed are maintained.

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An abnormal situation at the Stromlo Water Treatment Plant (WTP) resulted in a very high flow of water through one ultraviolet (UV) treatment train and the subsequent breakage of two UV lamps. Each ultraviolet lamp contains 2.2 g of mercury, which was released into the drinking water. The UV disinfection system is immediately upstream of the final water storage tank before drinking water is distributed to Canberra and Queanbeyan. Owing to the very small quantity of mercury involved, the risk of customers receiving mercury contaminated drinking water was very low.

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Veolia was awarded a contract to operate and maintain Hunter Water’s 25 treatment plants. Under the eight year contract Veolia will operate and maintain the plants which supply drinking water and wastewater treatment services to over half a million people in six local government areas. Operational establishment under the new contract commenced in earnest in July 2014. This involved various establishment activities undertaken in order to meet the October 1st operations launch. It was very important that any impact to existing staff was carefully managed throughout the entire operational transition.

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From 1 September 2014, New South Wales drinking water supplies must adhere to a quality assurance program or Drinking Water Management System (DWMS) that adheres to the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines 2011 (ADWG) Framework for the Management of Drinking Water Quality. Like any other management system, to successfully implement a DWMS relies upon ensuring that the associated management plans, operational procedures and related documents are reflective of and integrated into everyday working practices.

It is the water treatment plant operator’s that play an essential role in ensuring this occurs. This paper will present practical information to assist water treatment operators to successfully implement their organisations DWMS. It will draw upon the knowledge and experience gained in Victoria over the past ten years since the introduction of the Safe Drinking Water Act 2044 (Vic).

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For those of us who have had the opportunity to travel, a question which is always relevant is; “do we drink the water”. While there are now alternatives and most carry with them drinking water from a bottles, in Australia, because of the hard work of a lot of Councils across this Country, we have the luxury of being able to drink the water from any tap, even garden taps in most parts of the country. With this expectation however comes the responsibility that the water being made safe for drinking is always safe.  Following processes and procedures, proper and timely monitoring, proper maintenance and attention to detail will, in most cases, ensure that good quality water is always available to our communities.

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Tumut Shire Council have five activated sludge sewer treatment plants ranging from 150 EP to 12,000 EP. Each of these plants produces waste activated sludge that had to be dewatered and disposed of. Having multiple plants that are up to 40 kilometres apart complicated the logistics of sludge management, potentially proving a difficult and costly problem. The largest plant is Tumut (12,000 EP) located on the Tumut River flood plain, and which has little space to construct sludge management facilities.

Previously we utilised sludge bags and sludge drying lagoons to dewatering/drying of sludge. As there were not many dehydrators out there in use, we opted to purchase the base unit and adapt it to suit our particular needs. The unit we opted for was an ES 202 ST Volute Dehydrator purchased from VOR Environmental.

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Orica were the largest single consumer of drinking water in the lower Hunter, using over 4% per year of Hunter Water Corporation’s (Hunter Water’s) total water supplyas part of their ammonium nitrate production process. Hunter Water have constructed an Advanced Water Treatment Plant (AWTP) as part of an Alliance contract, to significantly reduce the drinking water supply demands of Orica. The Kooragang Industrial Water Scheme was created with the Mayfield West AWTP at the centre. To deliver the required quantity and quality of effluent to the scheme, the Shortland WWTW underwent several upgrades.

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In October of 2013, Goulburn Valley Water (GVW) received a call from a customer complaining that the water had a horrible chemical like taste to it and was undrinkable. Analysis of a drinking water sample taken from the customer’s tap confirmed the presence of high levels of the aromatic hydrocarbons toluene and xylene. 

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Integrated Fixed Film Activated Sludge Plants (IFAS) rely on the use of a media on which a biofilm is grown, which results in a compact footprint as a majority of the biomass is fixed to a high surface area as opposed to being suspended. A recent development of this process has been to combine naturally occurring plants with engineered media. To put simply, a botanical garden is placed on top of the IFAS reactors, with the plant roots penetrating into the reactors. The interaction of enzymes and various organic acids from the plant roots to the bio-media creates a diverse biology, leading to increased process stability, less sludge production and lower energy demand when compared to conventional activated sludge plants. And the sewage treatment plant looks like a botanical garden.

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Suma Park Dam is the main water supply reservoir for Orange and is owned and operated by Orange City Council. The dam was designed and constructed to the respective safety standards of the time. In 1985, a safety assessment by the New South Wales Dam Safety Committee and the Australian National Committee on Large Dams (ANCOLD) was conducted. Following the assessment, Suma Park was categorized as a category 1 dam under Schedule 1 of the Dams Safety Act, 1978, in need of urgent upgrades to meet a 1: 1 000 000 year Probable Maximum Flood (PMF). The predicted stresses placed on the dam wall as a result of water overtopping in a flood event is the primary concern. Council has taken advantage of the required safety upgrade and undertaken investigation and concurrently raising the spillway 1m.

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Concrete sewer assets are corroded in situ by acid produced in the sewer. Stricter pollution norms and changes in our dietary habits has increased rate of corrosion substantially over the last 2 decades. One of the solutions to stop corrosion is by spraying of Magnesium Hydroxide Liquid (MHL) on the surface of concrete sewers. Compared to existing corrosion protection technologies like plastic lining, MHL spray coating is 7 times cheaper over the life cycle of the asset and does not require flow diversion or man entry for application.

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Fnding from the Water for Futures Federal funding pool was awarded to the NSW Water Directorate and LGSA in 2004 to build capability in NSW non-metro water utilities in the management of system water loss, as well as to build a methodology for those utilities to demonstrate the magnitude of their losses and directly fund repair projects based on the expected return. Funding was then also used to retrospectively fund the investigation activities that led to the quantified losses such as the installation of bulk meters in networks, the hiring or purchasing of data loggers, communication equipment and software. This investment led most utilities to purchase rather than hire and obtain the additional benefit of permanent installations to provide ongoing system feedback.

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