The 3rd WIOA South Australian Water Industry Operations Conference and Expo was held on 1 & 2 March in Murray Bridge. The event was a long time in the making with the pandemic continuing to impact the ability to be able to stage the conference. In fact, it was the first face to face event that WIOA was able to run in South Australia since 2019.
Although much smaller than WIOA’s East Coast events, the 2023 event set a new attendance record with a total of 212 participants across the two half days of the
conference.
The conference was opened by the Mayor of Murray Bridge, Cr Wayne Thorley who was pleased that the Council was able to support the event as Host, and welcomed everyone to the region.
Keynote on day one was Shaun Kennedy from SA Water who did a fantastic presentation on some of the ways SA Water is managing vegetation on their operational sites. The second Keynote on day two was by Jim Mahon from the Backflow Prevention Association of Australia who spoke about some of the changes to regulations in that space.
A total of 10 other high quality presentations were delivered over the two days. The Best Paper award was presented to Colin Shackleford and Dale Cuthbert
from Alexandrina Council who spoke about their SCADA development journey.
After making it through the heats at lunch time on the first day, the three grand finalists in the Ixom Best Tasting Tap Water in South Australia competition went head to head in the afternoon. The delegates at the conference acted as the grand final judges. The sample from BHP’s Olympic Dam Desal Plant came out on top over the TRILITY operated Summit Storage and Loxton WTP’s.
At the Conference Dinner held on the Wednesday evening, Jamie Hay from the District Council of Coober Pedy was announced as the winner of the 2023 South
Australian Operator of the Year award.
There were a total of 33 companies participating in the expo displaying their products and services and they were kept very busy over the course of the event with
interest levels very high. With a drone as the prize in the raffle, everyone dug deep for charity raising $750 with all proceeds going to WaterAid.