Mid April 2024, Landers Shute Water Treatment Plant (WTP) had its longest ever shutdown to enable important repair works to be completed on the pre-lime dosing spear. The planned shutdown at Landers Shute presented a significant operational challenge which required careful coordination and collaboration across multiple teams within Seqwater. The complexity of isolating the raw water main and completing repairs within a limited timeframe, along with the need to ensure minimal impact on water supply, presented a significant challenge for the team.
The pre lime dose point is on the raw water main into the WTP and it can only be isolated from the dam. This meant that a full plant shutdown needed to occur, including complete drain down of the raw water main. The raw water main is almost 3km long and the majority of the main is located within a tunnel in the Blackall range. There was a lot of time and effort dedicated to rigorous risk assessments and plans to ensure the work could be conducted safely. It’s not common to have a single piece of work such as this that requires such large collaboration across multiple groups.
Author
- Alysha Di Martino, Operations Process Engineer, Seqwater
- Chris Brown, Operator Supply, Seqwater