AUSTRALIAN
WATER MANAGEMENT REVIEW
HYDROINFORMATICS Harnessing big data for big changes in the water industry
IRRIGATION Soil water monitoring’s role in water conservation
CLIMATE ADAPTATION Barriers to climate change adaptation in the water industry
ASSET MANAGEMENT Cost of urban water infrastructure failure
LIVEABLE CITIES The role of the urban water industry in contributing to liveability
2015 VOL 2
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CONTENTS
EDITOR Kathryn Edwards kedwards@intermedia.com.au MANAGING EDITOR Chris Maher chrismaher@intermedia.com.au NATIONAL SALES MANAGER Abigail Hickman ahickman@intermedia.com.au DEPUTY PUBLISHER Karen Jaques kjaques@intermedia.com.au
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EDITOR’S NOTE Kathryn Edwards introduces Australian Water Management Review.
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INTRODUCTION Building resilience for a water crisis Hon Mark Bailey MP, QLD Minister for Energy and Water Supply .
DESIGNER Ben Akhurst PUBLISHER Simon Cooper HEAD OF CIRCULATION Chris Blacklock COVER SHOT Rowallan Dam, Tasmania. Image courtesy of Hydro Tasmania. COPYRIGHT
All material in this publication is copyright to the publisher and/or its contributors. No material may be reproduced without the express permission of the publishers.
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NATIONAL WATER INDUSTRY NEWS Latest industry news from around Australia.
11 ELECTRIC ACTUATION For over five decades, AUMA actuators have provided reliable and efficient service to the global water industry. 12 INDUSTRY Q&A Duane Findley, CEO of Irrigation Australia, speaks with Australian Water Management Review about Australia’s irrigation sector 18 RESOURCE RECOVERY FROM WASTEWATER Damien Batstone, Tim Hülsen, Chirag Mehta, Jurg Keller, and Daniel Puyol report on how we are now entering the start of another wastewater treatment technology cycle. 22 INNOVATION INSPIRED BY NATURE Baleen Filters has been gaining widespread recognition both locally and abroad. 24 SOIL WATER MONITORING’S ROLE IN WATER CONSERVATION Peter Buss and Michael Dalton explore the reasons why irrigators need to embrace and improve water management. 28 SOFTWARE HELPING EFFICIENT WATER DISTRIBUTION International software group Bentley Systems has undertaken work on the 55 million tonne Roy Hill mining project in WA. 32 FLOOD FORECASTING MAKES HYDROPOWER A SAFER BUSINESS Flood forecasting can provide strategic operational benefits to water managers. Fiona Ling reports. 36 BARRIERS TO CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION IN THE WATER INDUSTRY Climate shift will present a troublesome future, reports Caroline Tsioulos. 41 MAINTAINING PACE WITH YOUR CHOSEN FIELD THROUGH TRAINING In an environment of rapid change it is essential that we embrace life-long learning.
42 OXYGEN CONES PLAYING A VITAL ROLE IN AQUACULTURE Specially-designed oxygen cones are helping increase the yield at a Goulburn fish farm. 44 HYDROINFORMATICS: HARNESSING BIG DATA FOR BIG CHANGES How can we use big data to make processes more efficient, sustainable and user-friendly? 47 ENHANCING STORMWATER HYDROCARBON CAPTURE With government agencies legislating more stringent standards for water discharge levels, Oleology saw the opportunity to incorporate its engineering expertise and MyCelx’s polymer-based oil removal technology into the Australian water treatment market. 48 MALENY SEWAGE TREATMENT PLANT AND WETLANDS A Sunshine Coast upgrade has become an award-winning model, writes Simon Taylor. 51 COST OF URBAN WATER INFRASTRUCTURE FAILURE The industry faces a challenge with ageing infrastructure, writes Wesley Fawaz. 54 USING STORMWATER, AQUIFERS AND RESERVOIRS FOR NONPOTABLE AND POTABLE SUPPLIES Key outcomes from the MARSUO research. 59 CHILLAGOE ARSENIC FILTRATION PLANT Mareeba Shire Council engaged Amiad Water Systems to design, construct and commission a 6-10 L/s Arsenic Filtration Plant. 60 URBAN WATER AND LIVEABILITY Supporting the amenity, sustainability and productivity of urban environments. Kaia Hodge reports. 64 USING ZEOLITE IN FISH FARMING Zeolite is improving the efficiency and effectiveness of water filtration in aquaculture. 66 PROTECTING OUR FRESH WATER Arcitecta’s Mediaflux data management platform is being used to capture and analyse crucial pollution data in Victoria. 71 INNOVATION ON SHOW This year saw the annual OzWater event return to Adelaide. 74 INDEX
Capture and track oil, prevent contamination and protect the environment with Oleology and MyCelx. MyCelx is revolutionary in removing oil from water. Its applications in the treatment of oil-contaminated water or tracing contamination to its source are diverse.
STORM WATER TREATMENT MyCelx has high capacity in removing gross oil and solids from water in storm water applications. Oil is permanently immobilised in the MyCelx media and does not build pressure/ clog after complete saturation with oil and solids. MyCelx is delivered in mesh bags as dry media with no chemicals or liquids and allows for easy handling and visual saturation checks. The technology can be deployed in stormwater drains and as a final polishing oil removal system. It is ideal for oil removal from water under heavy solids loading. MyCelx is hydrophobic (does not absorb water). Spent media holds <1% water so saturated snippets are easy to remove.
(Top left): Snippets in-situ in stormwater drain. Installation is very simple. (Bottom right): Snippets in grate inserted at the exit point of a storm water drain. (Bottom left): Oil saturated snippets following extraction.
TRUCK OR TREAT? Many of the systems designed by Oleology reduce water use immediately preventing the discharge of contaminated water. Removal of hydrocarbons and other organics on site enable treated discharge water to be recycled for wash down areas. By doing so, the water resource on-site is better managed. Oleology has supplied many customised, self-contained plants for Council water recycling, Mining truck wash-bays and O&G platforms with varying discharge goals from 15 to less than 5ppm. The Oleleogy system, utilising MyCelx technology, has been a significant success. It is not only robust, but also able to treat heavily contaminated oil-water emulsions while discharging at rates consistently below the compliance requirements.
Wash Water Recycling Systems on mine sites can be a permanent structure or mobile and can be re-located to a new site when required.
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EDITOR’S NOTE
WELCOME TO AWMR The Australian Government has allocated $500 billion to develop water infrastructure in the country and improve agriculture and roads in an effort to boost Australia’s agricultural competitiveness. The National Water Infrastructure Fund will allocate $50 million to support the planning necessary to decide on viable projects for investment, with the remaining $450 million flagged for the construction of water infrastructure in conjunction with states and territories. Announced in July by Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce, the funds will mainly be directed at Australia’s norther region, with $200 million of the funding set aside for the Northern Territory alone. In a statement Joyce said water infrastructure was central to the Agricultural Competitiveness White Paper because it set out the government’s priorities for agriculture for the next generation. Joyce acknowledged the importance of water supply for the country’s farmers and mentioned the work the Water Infrastructure Ministerial Working Group has done to identify dams and water infrastructure projects that will benefit agriculture in rural and regional communities. Joyce also singled out projects – such as managed aquifer recharge in the Northern Territory and Gippsland’s Macalister Irrigation District Southern Pipeline in Victoria – that could potentially benefit from the funds. Although it’s too early to see any real boost, the fact the government has acknowledged the need for water and allocated funds for investment in Australia’s water industry is promising. Duane Findley, CEO of Irrigation Australia, spoke with me about Australia’s irrigation sector. He expressed concern that the political cycle was relatively shortterm and that the Federal Government didn’t act with enough foresight to put structures in place to support Australia’s water supply and irrigation sector into the future. Hopefully the National Water Infrastructure Fund will alleviate some of these concerns. You can read more about what Duane has to say on page 12. Also inside this edition, Caroline Tsioulos reports on barriers to climate change adaptation in the water industry, and says people, communities, business and industry across the world will face difficult times in dealing with the shift in climate, but none more so than the Australian water industry. We look at hydroinformatics, harnessing big data in the water industry and how Associate Professor Rodney
Stewart from the Griffith School of Engineering is leading the charge in harnessing the power of big data to improve urban water supply. Peter Buss and Michael Dalton report on soil water monitoring’s role in water conservation and explore reasons why irrigators need to embrace and improve water management. Sydney Water examines the role of the urban water industry in contributing to liveability and says water in the urban environment is about supporting our cities’ resilience to shocks and change and the ability of water resource management to support our cities’ growth. We look at a project called ‘Managed Aquifer Recharge for Stormwater Use Options’ (MARSUO), that has investigated the public health, economic and public acceptance aspects of a number of different options for using stormwater via managed aquifer recharge or via reservoirs. Chief Executive Officer of the Australasian Corrosion Association, Wesley Fawaz, writes on the cost of urban water infrastructure failure and says the Australian water industry faces many challenges, particularly in the areas of asset management, of ageing infrastructure and the required training to support the prevention and remediation of corrosion. Fiona Ling reports on flood forecasting and how it can provide strategic operational benefits to water managers by providing enough warning of impending large flows to allow optimal preparation for capturing, storing and using the plentiful water. We look at Zeolite Australia’s operation in Werris Creek near Tamworth in New South Wales that mines zeolite used for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of water filtration, fertilisers, wetting agents, stock feeds, adsorbents, flocculants, and more increasingly in aquaculture.
annum iron ore mining, rail and port operation being developed. Mal Sharkey, Senior Product Manager at Bentley Systems, spoke with Australian Water Management Review about how the team at Roy Hill are using ‘optioneering’ and pump analysis capabilities to facilitate solutions that meet the mining industry’s often stringent engineering design standards. I’m delighted to bring you this edition along with the rest of the team at Intermedia, and we’d love to hear your feedback or hear about any notable achievements and new developments in Australia’s water industry. Please feel free to pass on any comments or questions to me directly via email kathryn.edwards@intermedia.com.au or get in touch via our website www.awmr.com.au. Kathryn Edwards Editor
A team from the CRC for Water Sensitive Cities and the Advanced Water Management Centre share their research on resource recovery from wastewater, and we look at how a project to upgrade the sewage treatment plant on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast has become an award-winning role model. In other water industry news, international software group Bentley Systems has undertaken work on Western Australia’s Roy Hill Project where hydraulic models are being used to design the mine water distribution system for the 55 million tonne per
AUS T RALI AN WAT E R M A N A G E M E N T R E VIE W | 5
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INTRODUCTION
BUILDING RESILIENCE FOR A WATER CRISIS As Queensland’s minister for water supply, I am delighted to have been given the chance to contribute to Australian Water Management Review and highlight the Palaszczuk Government priorities in water management. Water policy has long been a contentious area but Labor governments in Queensland have been reformist and visionary, preparing water supply to be resilient in the face of floods and drought. Climate change is real and responsible governments plan for extreme weather. The Gold Coast Desalination Plant – like desalination plants across Australia – has received mixed media coverage since a former Labor government opened it in early 2009. However, during the January 2011 floods and the extreme weather on Australia Day 2013, it filled the breach and provided one-fifth of the Gold Coast’s drinking water. That plant at Tugun achieved another milestone in September. In an historic first, residents on the southern end of the Gold Coast had all their drinking water sourced from a desalination plant. More than 170,000 residents were pioneers for six weeks as the Mudgeeraba Water Treatment Plant temporarily shut down. This was for the most significant upgrade to the treatment plant since it was built in 1969 and was the first time Seqwater’s desalination plant provided drinking water to residents beyond bad weather or a drought – and without being mixed with dam water. The desalination plant cost $1.1 million to run during that period, which was less than half the $2.5 million amount it would have cost to build a pipeline from the Molendinar Water Treatment Plant to Mudgeeraba to sustain residents during that time.
additional local road disruptions. This government is also acting to better prepare Queensland communities for floods. Soon after coming to power, this government commissioned the Inspector-General of Emergency Management to undertake an independent review into the warning systems provided by Seqwater and SunWater to communities downstream of their dams. The review into current communications systems is looking at how communities, including irrigators, living and working downstream of the dams can better receive timely and clear notifications of any controlled dam gate openings. A record 183 millimetres of rain fell across south east Queensland during the May 1 flood – the highest since records began in 1840. The Inspector-General’s review will focus on Seqwater and SunWater’s gated dams, including the Wivenhoe and Callide dams. Water management often only comes to mind in times of crisis, but it is the decisions and preparations we put in place about how we manage water in other times that really build our resilience for when that crisis comes. That’s the approach I will bring to the portfolio.
The Hon Mark Bailey, MP Minister for Main Roads, Road Safety and Ports Minister for Energy and Water Supply
Mark Bailey is the State Member for Yeerongpilly and a former Councillor for Moorooka Ward on the Brisbane City Council. He was sworn in as Queensland’s first ever Minister for Road Safety and is committed to maintaining the safety of all road users on Queensland’s vast, state-controlled road network. He recognises the importance of a robust and reliable road network for all Queenslanders. As Minister for Energy and Water Supply, Mark is focused on delivering safe, efficient and affordable electricity and water supplies to Queensland households and businesses. He is a strong advocate for renewable energy and is focussed on a cleaner, greener energy future for Queensland. Mark recognises the important role Queensland’s ports play in supporting the state’s economy and creating stronger regional economies. The Minister acknowledges the significance of his portfolio as a jobs generator and the importance of roads, water and energy to business, industry and everyday Queenslanders.
Without a desalination plant, Seqwater was faced with the more costly option of having to construct an additional pipeline. The pipeline option would also have resulted in a 14-month delivery time as well as
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NEWS
NATIONAL WATER INDUSTRY NEWS SECURING AUSTRALIA’S WATER SUPPLY FOR THE FUTURE The Australian Government has set up a National Water Infrastructure Development Fund with $500 million for water infrastructure, including dams, through the Agricultural Competitiveness White Paper. Minister for Agriculture, Barnaby Joyce, said $50 million would be allocated to support the planning necessary to decide on viable projects for investment, and $450 million was available to construct water infrastructure in partnership with states and territories. “Water is the most basic input for life – this funding will help supply water for communities, agriculture and industry,” Joyce said in a statement. “It’s a critically important resource for our farmers, who have their work cut out for them feeding the nation, as well as 40 million people beyond our shores, while working the driest inhabited continent on earth. “This investment is nation building – and justly – up to $200 million of these funds are allocated to Northern Australia through its white paper announced in June. “A lot of work has been done to identify dams and water infrastructure projects that will benefit rural and regional communities and agriculture – including through the efforts of the Water Infrastructure Ministerial Working Group that I chair. “There is a long and growing list of suggested sites and projects that could benefit from funding right across the country from managed aquifer recharge in the Northern Territory to Gippsland’s Macalister Irrigation District Southern Pipeline in Victoria. “There are many great opportunities in the Nathan and Emu Swamp dams, Rookwood and Eden Bann weirs in Queensland, Dungowan Dam in New South Wales and the Ord Stage 3 in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. “The funding in the Agricultural Competitiveness White Paper builds on existing commitments to water infrastructure in the Great Artesian Basin, Tasmania and the Murray-Darling Basin. Minister Joyce said water infrastructure was central to the Agricultural Competitiveness White Paper because it set out the government’s priorities for agriculture for the next generation. “It will be up to all of us to play our parts to make agriculture an even more profitable and dynamic sector in the future.”
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The White Paper was informed by comprehensive stakeholder consultation—more than 1000 submissions were received and the government talked face-to-face with more than 1100 people across the country in developing this document. The White Paper is available at agwhitepaper. agriculture.gov.au.
ABERGELDIE COMPLEX INFRASTRUCTURE APPOINTS NEW CEO Abergeldie Complex Infrastructure has recently appointed Greg Taylor to the role of Chief Executive Officer. He commenced in mid-September 2015. The founder and current CEO of Abergeldie, Mick Boyle, will then move into an Executive Chairman role and focus on strategy, business acquisitions, joint venture relationships and international opportunities. “I am turning my focus to some major growth opportunities for the company,” Boyle said. “The appointment of Greg Taylor as CEO will allow me to pursue those opportunities whilst ensuring the Abergeldie management team gets the support it requires to continue to provide the complex infrastructure this country needs.” Greg Taylor has over 25 years’ experience in leading and delivering some of the most challenging, demanding and complex infrastructure projects around Australia and Asia, including tunnels, pipelines, stadiums, complex gas systems, materials handling, waste to energy plants, water/wastewater treatment plants, waste treatment, recycled water and desalination. “I look forward to working with Mick Boyle and leading his highly respected team through the next growth chapter for Abergeldie Complex infrastructure” Taylor said.
GOYDER INSTITUTE RECEIVES WELCOME NEWS IN SOUTH AUSTRALIAN BUDGET 2015-2016 The Goyder Institute for Water Research has welcomed a decision by the South Australian Government to extend its funding for a further four years. With the initial five year term of the Institute concluding on June 30th, the Government’s decision will allow valuable research to continue and ensures South Australia maintains its position as a world leader in water research. When announcing the budget decision, South Australian Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis outlined the recognised the Goyder Institute’s vital work in helping South Australia secure and manage its water resources.
Koutsantonis said the Goyder Institute model, which brings together the best and brightest in relevant fields from its research partners, provides outstanding value for money.
SENTEK NAMED WINNER OF THE 2015 MAR HUB IRRIGATION & USE AWARD The internationally-acclaimed Water Industry Alliance recently held its annual Smart Water Awards ceremony, where eight companies were recognised as leading contributors to South Australia’s water sector. Sentek Technologies was awarded the honour of the 2015 MAR Hub Irrigation & Use Award for its Soil Moisture, Salinity and Temperature Management Solution, the Sentek Drill and Drop. CEO of Sentek Technologies, Nick Ktoris, said: “We believe in everything we do, we believe in thinking differently and in challenging the status quo; we challenge the status quo by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use and user-friendly, hence the Sentek Drill & Drop, Plus Compact and IrriMAX Live – our dynamic soil moisture monitoring solution.”
NEW WATER STEWARDSHIP APPOINTMENTS The Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS), an international not-for-profit organisation developing and promoting water stewardship as a mechanism to engage corporations and business in good water stewardship, and Water Stewardship Australia (WSA), an Australian not-for-profit organisation representing AWS and promoting water stewardship in the Asia Pacific region, have announced two new appointments. Zhenzhen Xu will become the Asia Pacific Regional Manager for the organisations based in Shanghai, China and Richard Robertson will become Technical Manager based in Vancouver, Canada. Both bring considerable relevant experience to the development, management and promotion of water stewardship, particularly in the Asia Pacific region that is experiencing major water challenges. Executive Director of the Alliance for Water Stewardship, Adrian Sym, said the appointments represented a major milestone for both the organisation and the development of water stewardship internationally.
COMDAIN RECOGNISED BY YARRA VALLEY WATER FOR EXEMPLARY SERVICE Comdain Infrastructure was recognised by Yarra Valley Water (YVW) for providing Exemplary Service, part of YVW’s 2020 Strategy, during the delivery of the Craigieburn Link Water Main project.
Comdain’s Senior Project Manager, Adam Maher, Project Manager Ronan Daly and two YVW personnel were presented with an award from YVW’s Managing Director, Pat McCafferty, during May. The team was nominated for their professionalism and management through the construction delivery of Victoria’s Craigieburn Link Main project. Extensive planning and community consultation were undertaken ensuring the public’s safety was maintained at all times during the complex works along Craigieburn Road.
and is also serving as a demonstration model for other Aboriginal pastoral stations. WA Water Minister Mia Davies said the important milestone was the latest development in the groundbreaking project that would benefit not only Mowanjum itself, but also the broader community through the creation of meaningful employment and training opportunities.
TRILITY/PENTAIR AGREEMENT FORMALISED
“It is extremely exciting to now have the irrigator installed and water flowing. It is a tremendous moment for the Mowanjum community,” Davies said.
Australian private water utility Trility has announced completion of the purchase of the bulk of the business being acquired from Water Infrastructure Group Pty Ltd, a subsidiary of Pentair plc. One further contract is presently being finalised to complete the whole of the previously envisaged deal.
“This water will be the lifeblood of the community and place it in a position to become an important player in the Kimberley beef industry. With seeding now under way, cattle should be able to start grazing the irrigated pasture in about five weeks’ time”
With this partial completion, Trility welcomes the Water Infrastructure Group Operations to its portfolio and looks forward to providing continued excellent services to its new clients and the communities which they serve.
OSMOFLO WINS SEAWATER DESAL PROJECT AT AUSTRALIA’S HIGHEST TONNAGE PORT Osmoflo has been awarded a 5+5 year contract to supply desalinated water to Fortescue Metals Group at Port Hedland, Australia’s highest tonnage port. The desalination plant meets the demand for dust suppression water, thereby providing an alternative to drawing upon limited potable and bore water supplies in the region. Osmoflo was originally engaged by Fortescue to supply a rental plant, which has been in use since 2011. The original plant was delivered, fully installed and operational in 12 weeks. Following a review of Fortescue’s water requirements, the rental contract has been converted into a longer term build, own and operate contract. The seawater desalination plant, inclusive of intake and pre-treatment, has a capacity of 4,500 m3/day to supply Fortescue, with an additional capacity to supply third parties within the Port Hedland region.
MOWANJUM IRRIGATION NO LONGER A PIPEDREAM Irrigated agriculture became a reality for the Mowanjum West Kimberley pastoral station in August as water flowed for the first time through the newly-installed centre pivot irrigator, as part of the Water for Food Mowanjum irrigation trial. The successful installation and testing of the centre pivot was a defining moment for the $3.6 million project that will access underutilised groundwater sources to provide stand and graze feed for cattle,
WA Regional Development Minister Terry Redman said the Mowanjum irrigation trial was just one of 11 projects under the $40 million Royalties for Regionsfunded Water for Food program that would assist commercial growth and development for regional areas. “I am pleased to see Royalties for Regions is investing in agricultural development and diversification opportunities to increase economic stability and create sustainable regional communities,” Redman said. A field day is being planned to showcase the Mowanjum irrigation trial.
OSMOFLO 450TH PROJECT SUPPLIES DRINKING WATER TO BROKEN HILL Osmoflo recently celebrated its 450th water treatment project, securing the contract to supply additional reverse osmosis capacity to the Broken Hill Water Treatment Plant, through a competitive tendering process for existing client Essential Energy. Essential Energy owns an existing Osmoflo reverse osmosis plant which will also undergo re-instatement. This reinstatement and additional capacity, combined, will help meet the drinking water needs for the Broken Hill community. The capacity of the plant will be attained utilising brackish water and high salinity reverse osmosis technology. Osmoflo is providing a turnkey solution, which includes onsite and remote ongoing operations and maintenance support of the plant, utilising Osmoflo’s proprietary PlantConnect software.
ANDRITZ TO OVERHAUL 14 LARGE-SCALE PUMPS FOR WATER SUPPLY OF HONG KONG International technology group Andritz has been
awarded a contract for an extensive overhaul of 14 vertical adjustable propeller pumps supplied by Andritz in 2002. The pumps form the heart of the water supply system in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China, which supplies drinking water to Hong Kong. In addition to a general overhaul of the 14 pumps, the life cycle of the shaft bearing is also to be extended by installing new bearing technology. Each pump has an impeller diameter of 1,950 millimetres and a power of 5 megawatts at the nominal head of 26.6 metres and the nominal flow rate of 15 cubic metres per second. Andritz supplied a total of 16 pumps for the plant, two of which have already been successfully overhauled.
DAM REFURBISHMENT PROJECT WINS PROJECT MANAGEMENT AWARD Hydro Tasmania has been awarded the Tasmanian Project of the Year by the Australian Institute of Project Management in the Construction/Engineering category. The Award recognised excellence of project management for the refurbishment of Rowallan Dam in Tasmania’s north. Rowallan Dam is a 43-metre high earth and rock-fill dam on the Mersey River in Tasmania’s north, built in the period 1964-67 and commissioned in 1968. The dam is comprised of two embankments separated by a central concrete-lined spillway. The two-stage refurbishment involved strengthening of the spillway walls and improving the capacity of the dam to withstand large floods. Work was conducted over the summers of 2013-14 and 2014-15. It was the first time that a project of this complexity has been successfully undertaken on a live dam in Australia. The work on Rowallan Dam cost $13.4 million over three years, and the project is part of Hydro Tasmania’s rolling 10-year asset management plan.
ANDRITZ TO SUPPLY PUMPS AND BOOSTER STATIONS FOR A DRINKING WATER TREATMENT PLANT IN IRAQ International technology group Andritz will supply 121 pumps and 18 booster stations for a new drinking water treatment plant in Samawa, Iraq, on behalf of PWT Wasser- und Abwassertechnik, Germany. The new plant will pump up 220,000 m³ of water from a branch of the river Euphrat, which will then be processed into drinking water, fed to a pipework, and distributed to end-consumers via nine pumping stations. After having received the first such order two years ago and the supply of 35 pumps in 2014, Andritz was now
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NEWS
awarded this follow-up order, which will be completed by the end of 2015.
ACCC SEEKS SUBMISSIONS ON DRAFT DECISION TO ACCREDIT IPART AS REGULATOR OF RURAL WATER CHARGES IN NSW MURRAY-DARLING BASIN The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has issued a draft decision to accredit the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal of NSW (IPART) as the regulator of water infrastructure charges in the NSW Murray-Darling Basin from 1 June 2016 for 10 years. IPART had previously set the charges applying in the Murray-Darling Basin until 30 June 2014. “The arrangements established by the ACCC’s draft decision to accredit IPART will provide regulatory certainty for stakeholders,” ACCC Commissioner Cristina Cifuentes said. “They will also maximise the efficient use of government resources devoted to the management of Murray-Darling Basin water.
CH2M ANNOUNCES FIRST GLOBAL REBRAND IN TWO DECADES CH2M HILL – a global engineering firm specialising in government, industrial, infrastructure and energy projects – has adopted a refreshed brand and logo designed to better reflect its clients’ needs and its own ambitions for growth. The company has also adopted a simpler brand name, CH2M. CH2M’s leadership believes that the rebrand and new logo, coupled with a refreshed business strategy, will help to deepen the relationships between its clients and CH2M’s sales and project delivery teams. In the past year, the company has focused its strategy on strengthening the culture of collaboration and sharing across its five business groups and around the world, to bring seamless solutions and full depth of the company’s capabilities to individual clients. “Our refreshed brand goes much deeper than just a new logo and shortened nickname,” CH2M Chairman and Chief Executive Jacqueline Hinman said. “It combines our client-centric mindset with our commitment to technical excellence and innovation. The challenges facing our clients don’t fit neatly into boxes any more. That’s one of the reasons our clients choose to work with us. We’ve been thinking outside-the-box since day one.”
$9 MILLION COOKS RIVER NATURALISATION PROJECT COMPLETED NSW Minister for Primary Industries, Lands and Water, Niall Blair and Member for Drummoyne, John Sidoti inspected the completed $9 million naturalisation of the Cooks River.
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The naturalisation along a one-kilometre stretch of the Cooks River involved replacing steep, deteriorated concrete panels constructed in the 1940s with more gently sloped river banks, stabilised with sandstone and native plants. “It is great that this project is now complete and that local residents are able to enjoy this stretch of river with its new walking paths, seating and viewing areas, allowing the community to reconnect with the river,” Blair said.
CLEAN THERMAL ENERGY FOR CLEAN FRESH WATER RMIT research into an alternative water desalination and irrigation system based on clean thermal energy will be boosted thanks to a $132,000 grant from the Australia-India Strategic Research Fund. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry and Science, Karen Andrews, announced the successful recipients of round eight of the fund.
“The work on the foreshore has created attractive spaces which local residents can be proud of and can get out and appreciate. The naturalisation has also provided extra habitat for birds and aquatic life.”
Dr Abhijit Date was awarded the $132,000 grant for his research into a sustainable and economical fresh water management system that could be used in coastal areas of India and salt-affected farming land in Australia.
All the sandstone used in the naturalisation was salvaged from construction sites in Sydney and Sydney Water has planted over 80,000 local native plants in three sites at Belfield, Campsie and Canterbury.
The system uses a special thermal water pump developed at RMIT and the University of Pune, India, which is driven by low-temperature thermal energy rather than grid electricity.
Sydney Water is continuing to work with local councils and the Cooks River Alliance to improve the health of the river. This work includes developing a Waterway Improvement Plan to reduce pollution entering the river and restoration works on Alexandra Canal near Tempe Reserve.
“There are many poor coastal communities in India where access to fresh water is an issue but they cannot afford to use standard power-hungry desalination and irrigation systems,” Dr Date said.
H2OX TO TRANSFORM THE AUSTRALIAN WATER MARKET H2OX, a joint government initiative, is a state-of-the art exchange built for the secure, transparent and efficient electronic trading of water entitlements and allocations. Launched in August by the Hon. Kevin Humphries MP, H2OX is the only independent water trading exchange in Australia and will enable all market participants to transact in an open, efficient and secure marketplace. Furthermore, a single point of liquidity will increase confidence in the market, and ensure that Australia remains the world-leader in water markets. With the water trading market currently unregulated, H2OX is providing a market mechanism to help selfregulate with strict trading and membership rules to manage counterparty risk, providing reassurance to the different participants in the market. H2OX currently services the Murray Darling Basin and, in time, will provide a national water exchange service, followed by expansion into international markets. H2OX is operated and managed by a team with significant expertise and experience in water trading services, agriculture, environment, governance, compliance, financial services and government.
“The desal and irrigation system we are developing is both cheap to run and sustainable, producing no greenhouse emissions. “Not only could this system help many coastal communities, it could also enable saline groundwater to be turned into fresh water and used for agricultural irrigation – helping farmers in Australia and across the world.” The sustainable water management system runs on clean power sources – such as solar thermal, geothermal or waste heat – and generates both fresh water and water pumping power using thermal energy at temperatures below 100°C. Researchers have built a lab-scale prototype of the thermal water pump system, with early tests showing the system can produce 1000L of fresh water from 2000L of saline feed water with a salt concentration between 5000-15,000 grams per cubic metres. The system works by boiling a refrigerant at constant temperature and using the pressurised refrigerant vapour to power a piston and pump water out. To suck water in, the vapour is cooled down, reducing the volume, pushing the piston in the opposite direction. n
ACTUATORS
AUMA: ELECTRIC ACTUATION SPECIALISTS FOR THE WATER SECTOR
A
UMA is a world leader in the global supply of electric actuators, controls and gearboxes. The pioneer of modular actuation technology has a strong reputation for customised solutions and its devices are adopted by major corporates and specialist organisations. For over five decades, AUMA actuators have provided reliable and efficient service to the global water industry and, with strong credentials for long service life and rugged design, the brand is renowned for requiring minimal maintenance. With headquarters in Muellheim, Germany, the actuator manufacturer today supplies more than 180,000 actuators per annum.
DEPENDABLE AND RELIABLE Recognising that clean water is essential and that potable water production / distribution, along with sewage treatment and disposal, are core tasks of modern water management, AUMA actuators are designed to ensure dependable valve automation. Reliability and robustness for outdoor operation, and low operating costs, are key factors for AUMA. With IP68 protection as standard and advanced corrosion protection thanks to the company’s unique two-layer powder coating, AUMA actuators withstand the most hostile environmental conditions.
TAILORED TECHNOLOGY
AUMA’s managing directors Henrik Newerla and Matthias Dinse proudly display the company’s globally-renowned modular electric actuators
RIGHT: AUMA modular SAR modulating duty actuators automate 1,200 NB VAG plunger valves at the Woleebee Creek to Glebe Weir water pipeline in Queensland, Australia FAR RIGHT: The compact design of AUMA SGC actuators meets limited space requirements – photograph shows a WTP installation
Part of AUMA’s success has been the company’s ability to cater for the diverse needs that are presented by the automation demands of the world’s water projects. Whatever the requirement, tailored solutions are the order of the day designed to meet the precise requirements of each scheme, and varying environmental conditions.
assistance. Whether it is for one actuator or 100, we go the extra mile to maintain plant services for any scale of council operation or private scheme.”
GLOBAL SERVICE, LOCAL SUPPORT
AUSTRALIAN APPLICATIONS
Regional representation is key to AUMA’s international success providing high-level, responsive local support. AUMA’s Australian subsidiary, Barron GJM Pty. Ltd offers more than 25 years of experience providing its Australian and international clients with complete engineering solutions incorporating AUMA actuation technology for a wide range of water and wastewater treatment applications.
A large number of installations in Australia endorse the capabilities of AUMA – an installation at the Woleebee Creek pumping station and Glebe Weir structure in Queensland Australia is just one example. AUMA SAR actuators for modulating duty, equipped with intelligent AC actuator controls and GS part turn gearboxes, were selected for this installation as control devices on VAG plunger valves.
Understanding the needs of the user is key and AUMA recognises that accessible support is central to the ethos of any supplier to the water industry. Reinforcing AUMA’s remit, and global commitment to high service levels, Jeff Briggs from Barron GJM said: “We are acutely aware that AUMA’s actuators are often adopted in critical automation processes – we recognise that it is essential to provide fast, reliable and effective on-site
Experts from Barron GJM worked onsite to manage the commissioning process. Barron cooperated closely with the scheme’s system integrators to ensure seamless communication with the DCS via Modbus interfaces.
SETTING THE STANDARD A comprehensive product range includes high performance multi-turn, part-turn, linear and lever
actuators and gearboxes. Thanks to intelligent actuator controls with extensive diagnostic functions, AUMA actuators improve plant performance and availability. An extensive range of fieldbus interfaces ensures seamless integration into all commonly used Distributed Control Systems (DCS). AUMA has set the standard in modular actuation technology, tailoring each device to meet the specific needs of each installation. AUMA’s modular SA multi-turn and SQ part-turn actuators adapt perfectly to any mounting requirements, aided by their flexible device positioning and their variety of sizes and versions available. The products have earned an outstanding reputation for easy handling, reliability, a long service life and a design that simplifies retrofits. The company’s small SVC globe valve and SGC part-turn actuator type ranges are the ideal solution to cope with space constraints and small valves. n Contact: AUMA is the leading manufacturer and global supplier of modular electric actuators. Visit www.auma. com for more information.
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AUSTRALIA’S IRRIGATION SECTOR – CHALLENGES AND THE ROAD AHEAD THE STATE OF THE WATER INDUSTRY CHANGES ALL THE TIME, BUT WHAT DOES THE CURRENT CLIMATE MEAN FOR AUSTRALIA’S IRRIGATION SECTOR? We’re are concerned that the political cycle is relatively short-term, and the situation is getting worse. Most politicians don’t look beyond the next election, so they tend to focus on the issues that are immediately in front of them, or that people create a bit of pain around – and one of the casualties of this is water – particularly water for irrigation. What we worry about is that, whether climate change is man-made or is natural, there is compelling evidence that the climate is altering and changing. So without getting into the political debate of whether it is man-made or not, there are changes happening around us. We know from studying history that climate change has always been with us and has impacted greatly on the globe over time. What we need is a government with enough foresight to be putting into place structures that will help protect this valuable asset and to minimise the impact from the next drought, because the next drought is a ‘when’ it’s not an ‘if’. It will come again and we do worry that governments at all levels seem to have lost a bit of focus on that at the moment. While it’s an important and essential part of Australia, there does seem to be a myopic focus on the Murray-Darling Basin, and we would argue that the focus needs to be broader. That’s not to take attention away from Murray-Darling, it’s to look broader than that and think about a country-wide approach to what you’re doing in the irrigation space. We also believe we should really be preparing people now for that next drought. Desalination plants are one part of a medium term
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answer, but there are a number of other structural things we should be doing. It really concerns IAL and the industry that one of the things we have seen the Federal Governments of both parties do in recent years is take money away from irrigation research. So much so that it’s very hard to find people trialling innovative and interesting things within irrigation now, unless it’s inside the larger private-sector companies. We’ve got very few people out there doing proper independent and ground-breaking research in irrigation at the moment. Australia was once a world leader in irrigation efficiency and we believe we are now resting on our laurels a bit – the rest of the world has caught us and in some instances, passed us by. As one of the driest continents, we should be leading the world in this area. Politics tends to throw resources at whoever makes the loudest noise or whatever the immediate problem is. And unfortunately I don’t believe that until another drought’s staring us in the face in the cities, not just the country, the politicians are going to focus the appropriate amount of attention on that. By then it may be too late.
ASIDE FROM INVESTMENT INTO RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, HOW ELSE DO YOU THINK A GOVERNMENT SHOULD BE PREPARING FOR THIS NEXT DROUGHT? I believe they should be doing more like some of the private sector companies do with future scenario planning. An example of this approach was a global oil and gas company took this approach back in the early 1970s and one of those (at the time unlikely) scenarios predicted the rise of OPEC and global oil price shocks. By planning
Duane Findley, CEO of Irrigation Australia, speaks with Australian Water Management Review about Australia’s irrigation sector, preparing for the next drought, and the work farmers are doing to make their irrigation practices more efficient.
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out this scenario, the company was able to bring its prepared playbook into action quickly, and emerged from the crisis much larger, stronger and as a dominant industry player. So we should have a playbook on what we’re going to do about preserving our water resources and what we will do in times of drought. I believe the Federal Government should conduct scenario planning for drought in our major centres and in our regional areas. They should be able to pull those playbooks out and say, ‘Well, if a drought hits in this city, what do we do and what plans should we have in place at each drought stage?’ We know when the desalination plants will come on, and that’ll help but they can only do so much. When do we start to say, ‘you can’t water your gardens’, when do we start to say, ‘you can’t hose your cars down anymore?’ and when do we say ‘certain industries need to restrict their water use?’ Planning could be as low level as saying that, where you’ve got an irrigation system in your lawn that’s been installed by a certified professional irrigator, and/or is certified as water efficient, do you get some sort of benefit, say should you be allowed to water your garden four times a week when everyone else only gets two? Those sort of things should be addressed and planned for. We don’t see a lot of evidence there, it may well exist, but we don’t see it and the industry doesn’t see it, and responses to drought vary greatly between the cities and countries and in between states.
IS ANYONE MORE DISADVANTAGED BY THIS LACK OF PREPAREDNESS? CITY OR COUNTRY? I think everyone suffers for it. If it’s not happening in your backyard, you don’t know about it. If there is drought in a regional area, most city dwellers will not know about it from the usual news sources until it is devastating, or they wonder why the prices of their meat and vegetables goes up. And news articles about livestock dying in a regional area doesn’t really pull the heartstrings and garner attention as much as it used to. So I think that ‘out of sight out of mind’ helps the politicians, if it’s a few farmers in a couple of regional locations, their local member will agitate about it, but the majority of the politicians are in Sydney or city locations and so it’s not a priority for them.
HOW IS WATER HEALTH LOOKING FOR IRRIGATORS NOW ALONG THE MURRAY-DARLING BASIN? I would say it’s looking fairly strong at the moment. With the implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin scheme, I think there’s a lot more certainty in the region. The Basin Plan was a bipartisan approach that committed large amounts of funding to make farms and utilities more water efficient and to return more water to the health of the system. Most of that funding has been allocated now. There is also a robust water trading scheme in place now, where water rights holders can sell their allocation on the open market
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and others can buy extra water at market prices where it is available. There is a growing momentum from regional stakeholders to try and cap buybacks for environmental water that was agreed to under the basin plan (with the argument that the buybacks are affecting rural communities much more harshly that anticipated under the plan), and there is a growing movement to allocate cultural water rights for indigenous groups. You could argue that more needs to be done, and more will need to be done in the future. There’s still over-allocation issues, and the next time we do face a wide-ranging drought and the water starts to dry up again, we’ll end up looking like California where people are arguing about who gets the water, the irrigators or the towns. But it’s looking fairly strong at the moment even though there are tension points. As an organisation IAL was never convinced that the National Water Commission should have been abandoned. There is work there for it to do, and although its duties have been passed onto others, without that really laser focus on water issues, there is a worry that the important role the NWC played will be lost in the mix with a whole range of other issues.
THE STRENGTH IN THAT BIPARTISAN APPROACH TO DEALING WITH WATER ISSUES ALONG THE MURRAY-DARLING BASIN, WHERE ELSE WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE THAT IMPLEMENTED IN AUSTRALIA? ARE THERE ANY OTHER CRITICAL AREAS IN PARTICULAR? There’s the opening up of the north for irrigation and a lot of people call it the ‘northern food bowl’, but we think that’s a misnomer. Horticultural Innovation Australia made comment in one of their white papers, that if you open up all arable areas in the north of Australia, the extra produce you would produce will only satisfy demand from the growing Asian markets for one year of their growth – so we’re never going to become a food bowl for Asia. What we’re better off doing is designing high-end niche products for that growing middle class. But you need a bipartisan approach as to what areas you’re going to open up, how you are going to irrigate those if you are going to irrigate them, and how you’re going to work about making sure all groups are protected, including the Indigenous groups. There is a big push for the inclusion of Indigenous water rights in any group, including along the Murray-Darling Basin at the moment, and that’s starting to come to the fore as well. The other areas that need a bipartisan approach are anywhere that’s not the Murray-Darling, basically. I’ve had a number of South Australian irrigators say to me just recently that they’re one or two valleys over from the Murray-Darling Basin, and they believe they don’t get funding for efficiency improvements, and they get ignored. Now, that’s an opinion, whether that’s
right or not is difficult sometimes to see. Whilst the Murray-Darling again is an incredibly important basin for Australia, and really is to a large extent a national food bowl, there needs to be acknowledgement that there are other areas in all states that require that focus as well. Probably part of the problem is water is a state issue and getting the Federal Government involved brings some tensions to the table, but the Murray-Darling Basin, because it goes through four states, is one that lends itself to a truly national approach where if you can sit down with all the states at the table and get everyone agree, then you can move forward. The other areas typically fall within one or two state boundaries so the Federal Government tends not to get too involved in those. The Federal Government could take a real leadership role, identify other priority irrigation areas, and work with the States concerned to assist and develop that region, using the Murray-Darling as a template for the approach.
QUEENSLAND RECENTLY PASSED THAT LEGISLATION WHEREBY ONLY LICENSED PLUMBERS CAN INSTALL NON-URBAN WATER METERS. HOW IS THIS ISSUE FARING? We’ve resolved this issue. A Government department issued a statement saying that all water meters in Queensland needed to be installed by plumbers. There was no mention of a difference between the urban meters and the larger and much more sophisticated rural meters, so the language used was not precise. IAL became aware of the issue when on the Wednesday morning after they passed the legislation, the CourierMail ran an article saying now only plumbers can do meters now, not urban or non-urban, just meters and the newspaper had a regional politician saying ‘this was great because it will stop plumbers leaving our regional areas.’ So my members were ringing up saying, ‘We thought there was COAG [Council of Australian Governments] agreement on our needing certification to install and maintain non-urban meters, we’ve undertaken the course to allow us to do this, we’ve
done all the right things and now we’re being told we can’t do a job that is a core part of our business.’ So we worked really closely with the Department of Natural Resources and Mines in Queensland to clarify the issue and the Queensland Government has since confirmed in a media release that it was only urban meters, not non-urban, and non-urban meters still have to be installed by people that are appropriately qualified with a meter validator’s course – so we actually had a win on that one.
WHAT OTHER STATE ISSUES WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE CHANGED OR IMPROVED? IAL wants to see a limited plumbing licence issued to appropriately qualified irrigation professionals, to allow these people to connect irrigation systems in urban areas to the potable water supply. IAL worked closely with COAG on this and we were close to an agreed approach – until the process was abandoned at a change of government. The background work is still there and it would not take much for progress it again.
You can be an irrigation professional and install an entire irrigation system, but when it comes to hooking up to a potable water supply you have to call the plumber in, and that’s because they’ve got to install a backflow meter to the system, something that is not technically difficult to do. It’s no more different than a plumber hooking up your hot water system where they also hook up to low voltage electricity. If you wanted to follow a similar restriction of trade to what irrigators face, you’d have to wait for an electrician to come in to install that. IAL can provide that training on how to connect to a potable water supply, which is only one subject in the plumbing certificate, and how to do lowvoltage work, which plumbers are already doing – and they should license our irrigators to do it. At the moment, every state has different rules in this area, leading to confusion. Irrigation professionals in Queensland used to have access to a restricted plumber’s license. You could
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INDUSTRY Q&A
prove you’re an irrigation specialist, go along and do a small course, learn how to use the backflow valve to isolate the system from the potable water supply, you’d learn how to do low-voltage electricity, and then while you’re installing a residential irrigation system, it’d take you an extra hour to hook it up, rather than wait for a plumber and have to pay a plumber half a day’s work to come out and do it for you – if you can get one to do it, as it is a job that most plumbers are not really interested in. So we are starting to push on that issue again now. We’ll have to go state by state because there is no national approach at the moment.
ARE ANY STATES DOING ANYTHING NOTABLE IN THE IRRIGATION FIELD? Queensland, through the Department of Natural Resources and Mines, is running a number of innovative programs. We run education programs out in the regions and help get people connected with local retailers to talk about new irrigation systems and learn about new technologies that are out there. The department has helped us write a new set of regional standards and codes of practice for irrigation, and they’re also subsidising some people to take on certification programs. New South Wales, through the Department of Primary Industries and Local Land Services, is running subsidised training programs for people in the country and city. We have seen a lot happen in Victoria and South Australia lately. Western Australia does a lot to promote irrigation efficiency. IAL operates a Waterwise program for the WA Government to ensure that their irrigation stores and irrigation professionals are up on the latest technologies and the latest legislation on efficient irrigation systems. This is so that when they go out and they install irrigation systems at golf courses or houses or anything else, they’re using the most efficient systems in place. It’s strong program and I know our IAL committees in other states are considering pushing for similar programs in their states. There are new irrigation regions opening up in Tasmania and these regions are now growing highquality produce on what used to be marginal land for growing produce. So there’s a lot of work going on out there.
WHAT ARE THE CURRENT CHALLENGES AROUND AGRICULTURAL WATER PRICING FOR AUSTRALIA’S IRRIGATORS? That’s a tough one, because it’s so variable across the different states and territories. If you talk to some people any price is going to be too high! Probably the biggest concern for people is the uncertainty, if you like, and any business loves certainty. When you have uncertainty as to your water pricing and your water availability, it makes it more difficult to plan ahead. If you’re a primary producer and you’re not sure whether
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you’re going to get 100% water allocation next year, it makes it difficult to plan ahead, it makes it difficult to go to your bank and ask for new funding for projects and it makes it more difficult to run a proper business plan that people will invest in. That’s always been part of the agricultural landscape. In the past I think banks and other financial institutions were a little bit more lenient on that but these days I’m not so sure they are. There’s no easy way to guarantee allocations, or to guarantee prices so it becomes very tough. The bigger issue for a lot of irrigators at the moment is energy prices. And when we look at the input costs of business –water’s one cost and it’s a significant cost – we’ve found in recent years the rapid escalation of energy costs has an adverse effect on primary operations. We’ve had growers put in pressurised irrigation systems because it’s more efficient and uses less water, but it’s a pressurised system so it takes more power to operate. And the power prices have gone up in some instances by 300%. So now they’re saying, ‘Well I’ve invested in all this new technology to save water, but my electricity costs have wiped out that saving and it’s costing me more – should I rip up my pressurised system and go back to flood irrigation?’ If your price of electricity goes up, do you switch to diesel or do you rip up the system, go back to just using larger scale water even though you know that’s not the most efficient way of using a very limited resource, but it’s cheaper. So when an agricultural business is looking at its inputs, it is the water, it is the fertiliser, it is the energy, it is the human cost to get these systems running and operating. And at the end of the day your outputs have got to be greater than your inputs to make profit, so it becomes a very complex matter. I know there’s a lot of push at the moment to try and reduce the impact of network pricing. There’s been a price determination in New South Wales which suggests power prices should be reduced, and the state government’s fighting against that. The NSW Government wants to lease their poles and wires to private industry for 99 years. Any reduction in electricity price means that they’ll get a lesser price when they try and sell it. So that’s not helping our industry either. The uncertainty of water and power pricing means you’re really stuck, because it’s in everyone’s interest to be more water efficient and to make better use of a very limited resource. If you look worldwide, access to clean water and good water now is becoming more and more difficult – and then we’re hit with these energy costs. But if you go off grid and use diesel or solar or wind or a combination of all of those, the way the networks price and charge is they say, ‘Well we’ve spent a million dollars on providing a network out to that hub and if that farm’s off then all the other farms are going to have to pick up the tab for the network pricing, because we’ve put all these networks, the poles
and wires out in place.’ Then all the other agricultural pursuits have to pay more, so it’s a really difficult and very complex question out there.
DOES THE SAME UNCERTAINTY SURROUND THE SUPPLY OF WATER IN RURAL AUSTRALIA AS WELL? In some ways you’re limited by the environment, and if you don’t have rain for the next 12 months, well you’re not going to get 100% water allocation. That’s just life and what our agricultural sector’s dealt with since the first day we turned a sod. Then with the electricity on top of that, the uncertainty around electricity prices is just complicated. But again, our interest in more efficient irrigation methods means the impacts of the variability of water supply are minimised. Electricity is a fairly stable commodity but water’s the one that fluctuates every year. So if we get more certainty around the power aspect and installing efficient irrigation practices, we’d have more certainty around the water we could supply people.
ARE THE STATE GOVERNMENTS ON TOP OF THIS ISSUE? IN HELPING THE FARMERS SECURE SOME SORT OF WATER SUPPLY. Well every government would like the agricultural sector to be more water efficient and everyone recognises that we need to protect this resource. But then, you also have governments in some states that are getting quite good returns from their electricity providers. We’ve got other states where it’s been privatised and a private company needs to maximise their return on their assets. And if not managed correctly, you could end up with some of your agricultural sectors making decisions based around the pricing of the electricity of the power inputs, rather than the pricing in using up a very valuable resource. Every government wants their agriculture sector to be more efficient and every government to a more or lesser extent tries to help their people, but they also are limited when it comes to the electricity pricing issue either because they’re receiving money from it, or they’ve sold off the control of it.
WHAT CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION, IF ANY, IS TAKING PLACE THROUGHOUT THE IRRIGATION INDUSTRY? IAL advocates the best practice use of efficient irrigation systems. It could be something as simple as replacing a pump with a higher capacity than you need, or upgrading your pump to the latest technology. New pumps are much more energy efficient than pumps of even 5 or 10 years ago. Or using the size of irrigation piping and nozzles for more efficient water flows to suit the application. Our industry never stays still and we are always looking at new ways to improve irrigation technology and practices in the industry. The issue with any climate change is that it’s unpredictable, and we can only talk as the irrigation
industry on the type of soils that you use, the type of crop that you want, and the best way to achieve maximum outcome for your crop in the agricultural sense – if you’re talking about playing fields and gardens, it’s different again. But if you’re talking purely agricultural, it’d be the owner of the property or the person that makes the money, say the farmer or primary producer, he or she needs to get the maximum amount out of every hectare of land they can whilst minimising power and fertiliser and water use. And so that’s the balance around that. As climate change occurs and there’s different weather events happening, you might get more cyclones, for example, or you might get bigger drier spells, or you might get more frost or less frost, the type of crop you would grow would change over time. Climate change patterns in Europe now means that for the first time, winemakers have been able to plant French grape varieties in southern England (in regions with the appropriate soils) and produce good grape and good wine varieties. Many years ago if you mentioned English wine everyone would just laugh at you! But they’re now saying that there is actually a viable grape industry in the very south of England now because of the climate change. And the land costs a lot less than the prime French land for the wine, so the smart guys have gotten in there, they’ve planted the vines and now produce good quality wine. This type of change has potential major impacts on the types of plants you can grow and in what regions, and even the new types of pests and diseases that may become common in your area. Primary producers need to make a return on their investment, but they also have a strong interest in ensuring that the land and other natural resources are around for the next generation to use, and for many more generations after that. These producers working with local irrigation experts and others to carefully assess their soil types, the climate, the likely value of their output, and the types and costs of inputs, to produce as much as they can while causing the minimum impact on their environment.
SO THE WORK THAT FARMERS ARE DOING TO MAKE THE IRRIGATION PRACTICES BETTER VALUE FOR THEM ON THE WATER AND ENERGY FRONT, IS IN SOME WAY HELPING THE ENVIRONMENT AND THEMSELVES AS WELL? That’s correct. If you talk to the primary producers, overwhelmingly they want to preserve the environment, they want to preserve the assets they’ve got and this valuable resource which there’s not that much of. If the numbers stack up, overwhelmingly they will move towards whatever is most efficient to preserve water and energy. They even address things like water runoff from farms because they would like to reduce it as much as possible, but it’s got to be cost effective.
We can’t put in a half a million dollar system if you’re never going to make that money back. That’s just not a decision you’d make. So in those cases, you either need a very compelling reason to do so, or you need government support to help you make those changes to take your operation into the 21st century.
WHAT’S ON THE TOP OF THE AGENDA FOR IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA’S WORK OVER THE NEXT 12 MONTHS? The things that IAL will be pursuing over the next 12 months are that we really want to have a look at that removal of the artificial barrier about allowing irrigators to connect residential and smaller scale irrigation systems to potable water supplies, and to low-voltage electricity. We keep advocating for the increased professionalism of our people and the use, from government agencies at all levels, of properly accredited and qualified irrigation professionals for their work, and if they’re tendering for work, that they should specify for those. This is so you don’t get the typical situation of the guy with the ute and dog that does a bit of everything and says, ‘Oh I can do irrigation mate.’ We want to get away from that, because when it inevitably fails everyone in the irrigation industry gets painted with a very bad brush. We’ve had some instances where councils have gone to the lowestpriced unqualified and uncertified person and then they’ve had to call a professional in after that to fix the mess that the person’s put in. IAL is a Registered Training Organisation (RTO) and we deliver a range of training courses to support the industry to develop their skills and to attain certification. We’re working with other industry stakeholders to try and get a better sense of the issue around power and energy use, and we’ll continue to do that. We’ll also try and get the politicians to think again about the professional research function within the irrigation industry and look at the longer term rather than the immediate political cycle, because some of these research aspects can take four or five years. Research typically is tested through a few cycles in the agricultural space, you’ve got to replicate it to make sure it works, and you’ve got to take it onto other farms to make sure it works. And a lot of politicians just aren’t interested if it’s not within the short timeframe that they’re in power – so we need to deal with that.
DUANE FINDLEY IS THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA LIMITED Duane has previously held senior management positions in Australian Business Limited, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and the Housing Industry Association. In these roles, Duane has gained a wealth of skills and experience directly relevant to the needs of IAL. This experience is complimented by Duane’s Bachelor of Commerce degree and an MBA. Duane has also been active in his community, holding a range of community, school, and peak sporting Board positions. In his spare time, Duane referees junior and senior Rugby Union during the winter and captains his local cricket team during the summer.
So the things on top of the agenda are the inputs over the price of water and the availability of water and energy and your other inputs, the use of appropriately licensed people to actually connect to potable water supplies, the continued development of the professionalism of the industry in promoting certified people in contracts and tenders and providing high quality training to support this, and the research aspect so that there research in Australia, and it really regains its place as one of the most innovative irrigation industries in the world. n
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WATER AND WASTEWATER TREATMENT
RESOURCE RECOVERY FROM WASTEWATER We are now entering the start of another wastewater treatment technology cycle, driven partly by the end of life of the current infrastructure, as well as by recognition of a need to reduce global environmental impact and enable long term societal sustainability. DAMIEN BATSTONE, TIM HĂ&#x153;LSEN, CHIRAG MEHTA, JURG KELLER, AND DANIEL PUYOL report.
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astewater treatment has stepwise evolved from public sanitation to the current sophisticated biological nutrient removal process through three major step changes. We are now seeing the start of another major iteration towards processes that enable resource recovery and energy neutrality. This is not only due to the value of the resources in wastewater, but also because the current modes of anthropogenic nitrogen fixation and depletion of geological phosphorous and other elements is longterm unsustainable. A key process being developed enables biological partitioning to a solid phase in a single step process that is comparable in size to existing processes, but enables complete removal of nitrogen, phosphorous, and organics in this single stage without the current wasteful reactive process. The microbial biomass generated by this process can then be concentrated, and digested to recover energy and nutrients as a fertiliser resource. This allows use of digestion concentrate is used as a fertiliser for local agriculture, or recovery as mineral concentrates.
INTRODUCTION The worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cities have seen a number of major iterations of wastewater treatment technology, leading from sewering and centralised discharge in the 19th century, mainly for disease control1, to carbon and solids removal through activated sludge2, filtration, and clarification in the first half of the 20th century, to biological nutrient removal in the last half of the 20th century3, mainly by modifying the activated sludge process to remove nitrogen and phosphorous. The three iterations were driven by human health, local environment
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and quality of life, and impacts on the receiving environment respectively. Indeed, 2014 has seen commemoration remarkable advances in human health, standard of living, and improvements in the environment enabled by the activated sludge process over the last 100 years4. Each iteration required major investments in infrastructure, with a cycle length of approximately 50 years, which largely aligns with the maximum lifespan of this infrastructure. We are now entering the start of another major cycle, driven partly by the end of life of the current infrastructure, as well as by recognition of a need to reduce global environmental impact and enable long term societal sustainability5. This aims at reducing the substantial resource consumption (energy, chemicals, transport) of existing wastewater treatment and enabling instead recovery of the value inherent in wastewater.
THE CASE FOR RESOURCE RECOVERY Energy efficiency Activated sludge wastewater treatment requires a substantial amount of energy. That is, approximately 0.15 kWh/person/day, or approximately 0.6 kWh/kL. Approximately 50% of this is for aeration to enable reactive nitrification and denitrification6. A the same time, wastewater contains 1.3 MJ/person/day (6.5 MJ/kL) of chemical energy5, and additional energy embedded in the other resources (e.g., energy required to manufacture the nitrogen embedded in the wastewater). While electricity costs have not changed substantially in the last 10 years, there is a high degree of uncertainty in future pricing (to 2035) due to changes in energy generation methods that may need loadgenerator balancing7. At 0.6 kWh/person/day, wastewater treatment represents only <1% of the total national electricity
consumption, but it is a major driver for overall wastewater treatment costs and particularly the cost of managing pricing uncertainty is a major driver to achieve energy neutrality. Nutrient resources Current world fertilizer consumption (2013) is 111 MT Nitrogen as N, 19 MT Phosphorous as P, and 26 MT potassium as K8. All three of these fertilisers are subject to resource and pricing pressures, as well as regional concentration, and in all cases, Australia is a net importer (in the case of potassium, a 100% importer), and hence substantially exposed to world pricing fluctuations, and possibility of countries limiting exports. Phosphorous Depletion and availability of phosphates, as well as market fluctuation have been recently addressed extensively in the public arena and scientific literature9, with peak phosphorous likely to occur within the next 100 years, and as early as 20359. Pricing has also fluctuated strongly in the past 10 years, rising to $4000/tonne P in 2009, and currently sitting at $2000/tonneP (calculated from DAP pricing10). Pricing increases, as well as a focus on reducing wastewater treatment costs have driven a substantial increase in research in, and commercial application of phosphorous recovery from concentrate streams, mainly through magnesium ammonium phosphate (struvite) crystallisation in dewatering reject streams. The main drivers for phosphorous recovery are that phosphorous can be recovered (removed) economically from concentrate and reject streams. If this driver is not present, calcium or magnesium phosphate precipitates recovered from wastewater generally cannot compete with mineral phosphorous pricing when cost of capital is included.
Figure 1: Partition-release-recovery process enables complete nutrient recovery from domestic sewage
Potassium There has been almost no discussion of potassium as a macronutrient target for recovery in the literature. This is perhaps at current consumption rates, there are some 330 years of reserves11, and pricing has historically been <$500/tonne K, which given its moderate consumption level, has not affected a substantial economic impact on farming compared with phosphorous. However, long-term pricing has doubled over the last 10 years to $1000/ tonne K12, and is projected to substantially rise in the next 10 years. This does not account for the accelerated depletion being seen in intensive grain areas. There are concerns for developing countries for long term availability and self-reliance on potash based conventional fertilisers. This is because potash ores have a limited geological distribution, with the bulk of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s potash mined in Canada and Europe. Nitrogen Nitrogen is not a geological resource, and indeed, is manufactured using the Haber-Bosch process using electrons derived from natural gas. Sixty percent of the cost of ammonia is natural gas costs, and nitrogen manufacturing utilises 1-2% of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s energy supply13 (dwarfing the energy costs of wastewater treatment). However, recovery of nitrogen from wastewater using conventional technology is almost never economically competitive, with costs well above the $1/kgN readily achievable using the Haber-Bosch process. The sole exception may be recovery from animal manure concentrates, particularly where heat, high-pH, and high ammonia concentrations enable recovery of ammonium sulfate14. However, there is increasing recognition that large amounts of nitrogen being fixed exceeds the capacity of the terrestrial environment to absorb the nitrogen being manufactured. Already,
Figure 2: Recovery of nutrients and use in local horticulture changes wastewater into a $20M business for a city of 100,000 persons
approximately 30% of the nitrogen in the terrestrial cycle is anthropogenic15, and anthropogenic nitrogen fixation is predicted to rise substantially. The reason nitrogen manufacturing has a strong impact on the terrestrial cycle is that very little of the 100MT of nitrogen manufactured (and 35 MT of nitrogen fixed through farming of biological nitrogen fixers) enters the human food chain16. The remainder is lost to volatilisation or run-off. Nutrients in waste The amount of nutrients available in wastewater are substantial. One fifth of the mineral phosphorous consumed as fertiliser is excreted by humans (and hence recoverable from wastewater). Including domestic animals, the mineral phosphorous market could be almost fully supplied from excreta streams, though much of the waste is currently recycled as manure from grazing animals and is hence not practically or beneficially recoverable. Long-term, additional environmental or geological input is required, though this could be on a much lower level. Approximately 20% of the manufactured nitrogen is recoverable from human wastewater (more in total waste). There are generally large amounts of potassium available in specific wastes such as sugar cane processing, spent grains, yeast, and manure and processing by-products from animals fed with grains and legumes17 and particularly in the Australian context, the potassium market could be fully serviced from the waste market, replacing what is currently a 100% import. The net effect of these drivers is non-economic drivers are likely to play an increasing role in motivating recovery of resources from wastewater, and that indeed, the use of recovered resources may allow a complete change in economic drivers as further outlined in this paper.
TECHNOLOGIES FOR RESOURCE RECOVERY Addressing global nutrient needs, as well as recovering energy and water from wastewater streams are powerful drivers for change in the wastewater industry. This has led to three major concepts for resource recovery from wastewater, all of which represent a substantial deviation from classical wastewater. In particular: Major and minor: Verstraete18 proposed separation of streams into major and minor (M&M) concentrated and dilute streams. The default sets of technologies identified were filtration based treatment (gravitymicrofiltration-reverse osmosis), with treatment of solids and concentrate by anaerobic digestion, and recovery of the nutrients from digestate though (possibly as mineral products). Verstraete also identified alternatives, including biological concentration through organisms that grow quickly such as heterotrophic activated sludge organisms. Low energy mainline: McCarty19 proposed a low energy mainline (LEM) process, in which domestic wastewater is primary settled, and treated through low strength anaerobic treatment (Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor, or Anaerobic Filter Membrane bioreactor), which would remove solids and dissolved organics, and generate methane gas, but not remove substantial amounts of nitrogen or phosphorous. Phosphorous could be recovered through adsorptive phosphorous removal. Nitrogen can be possibly removed by anaerobic ammonium removal (anammox), which uses nitrite to oxidise ammonia at a far lower energy input. While nitrogen is lost, energy and phosphorous is recovered. Bioproduction: The first two options focus mainly on recovery of energy and nutrients, (see also5), or possibly upgrading of these elements to microbial protein and
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WATER AND WASTEWATER TREATMENT
organics16. The ultimate value of these commodities is on the order of $0.01-$0.02 per person per day. The other option, which has been discussed in a number of forms, but particularly by van Loosdrecht20 is the use of the wastewater treatment plant as a microbial factory or biorefinery, possibly even with input of power to generate increased product. Products may include biopolymers, commodity chemicals, and fuels. This would enable generation of products on the order of $0.1+ per person per day, but with a much higher technology risk, including further processing.
PRACTICAL RESOURCE RECOVERY FROM WASTEWATER Our research in the CRC focuses on biological application of the M&M18 concept, as the “partitionrelease-recover” process, which uses biological agents to selectively remove nutrients and carbon from the liquid phase5. This is a combined and scalable process, able to treat wastewater at essentially zero energy input, and recover nitrogen, phosphorous, and potentially, value added organics or microbial products from the effluent. An overall scheme is shown in Figure 1. The overall process has a single entry point (wastewater), and four key discharges:Water, in which the main hydraulic load is dispersed through reusable water, with a target of N>10, N<10, or N<5 and P<1, depending on reuse requirements and technology options chosen. This is the main discharge from the “partition” stage. Biogas, which is the main sink stream for excess chemical energy. This is the energy product from the “release” stage. Biosolids, in which inert organics, non-recoverable nutrients and excess metals are lost. This is the byproduct from the “release” stage. A fertiliser stream, which is the main sink for N, P, and possibly K. This is the valuable product from the “recover” stage. All streams except the biosolids have a positive value. Biosolids generally has a negative value due its bulky nature and cost of transport. Therefore, it is important to minimise volumes produced, while treating biosolids to the highest quality standard possible. This section describes technologies available for each component: Partition: Biological partitioning relies on transfer from the soluble to the particulate phase using a number of mechanisms, including chemical adsorption. However, the primary mechanism in this case, needed to enable very low nitrogen and phosphorous levels
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is by biological growth (i.e., assimilation and/or accumulation). This can be done through enhancement of the current activated sludge concept. Ultimately, oxidative growth wastes energy and the nitrogen cannot be effectively removed. An alternative is the use of photosynthetic organisms, which generate their own organics from light. Algae (macro and microalgae), as well as plants have been widely proposed for nitrogen removal from wastewater21, particularly in large area and lagoon processes. However, their requirements for high-energy white light, slower growth rates, and tendency to form macroscopic structures such as streamers makes them less suitable for engineered systems. An algal based system may be perfect however, where there is sufficient land space to completely remove the nitrogen. Bacteria can also grow on light, and a particular class called purple phototrophic bacteria (PPB) are particularly interesting, as they (a) grow on lower energy infrared light, and (b) growth through anoxygenic phototrophism, rather than photosynthesis. Essentially, they use the energy generated from light to drive uptake of wastewater organics, rather than by generating their own organics through photosynthesis. This means they can be selected through only the use of infra-red light22, and without the need for pure cultures. PPB contain high levels of microbial protein which enhances nitrogen uptake. Proof of concept work22 has now been developed into a novel photo-anaerobic membrane bioreactor that can achieve single, complete wastewater treatment (carbon-nitrogen-phosphorous removal) in a single stage to effluent discharge limits, without extensive control, and through simple growth of phototrophic organisms. Release: Anaerobic digestion is a widely used process that utilises natural microbial processes to convert organic materials into the energy rich methane gas. At the same time, nitrogen and phosphorous are released as ammonia and phosphates respectively. Prior to being fed into the anaerobic digestion stage, the sludge is pre-concentrated to 5-6% solids, which is two orders of magnitude concentrated compared with its concentration in the original wastewater. Once it is digested, the nitrogen and phosphorous are released at the 0.1-1% level. This can be used directly as a liquid fertiliser, but is generally excessively bulky for long-range transport and application. The digestate is instead generally dewatered and sent to recovery. Recover: Final recovery is enabled by concentration from the 0.1%-1% range nitrogen, phosphorous, and postassium levels, up to the 10%-50% range found in commercial fertilisers. This can be done through a range of conventional processes, including stripping, electrodialysis, and precipitation.
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS The value of resources recovered from wastewater by the emerging options are on the order of $0.01-$0.02 per person per day, or approximately $5 per person per year. This can be compared to the $20-$50 per person per year that it costs to operate a treatment plant (data from23), meaning that the commodity of resources will not generally allow revenue neutral wastewater treatment (and certainly not profitable, given the $500-$2000 per person that it costs to build treatment plants). This could conceivably be achieved by some of the very novel biorefinery style processes, but these need market and process development, as previously noted. However, when the value of the resources to the city and local industry are taken into account, the picture can change substantially. An example is shown in Figure 2. A city of 100,000 persons will produce a wastewater stream of approximately 15 ML. This can be fully treated to recover approximately 1000 kgN/d and 200 kgP/d. It can be recovered as a liquid concentrate from the release stage (~1%N, 0.2% P), and a large proportion of the energy required to manufacture a mineral fertiliser avoided. However, this is a bulky product, and can only be used locally. If there is 100 m2/person available locally (e.g., <50 km), this can be economically used (for example) in horticulture, which would also take 10 ML/day of the treated effluent to irrigate. Horticultural products require 100-400 litres of irrigation per kg of product generated. 25gN and 5gP are required per kg of vegetable product24. Therefore, a city of 100,000 persons can conceivably generate 40T of horticultural products, requiring a land area of 1000 ha. This can completely fulfil the fresh vegetable requirements of the market, following the age weighted recommended daily intake25. Applying pricing of $0.5$1/kg produce, this results in a net economic value of $100/person/year, with substantial local employment due to the labour-intensive nature of horticulture farming and marketing. This provides an example of how, with existing or near-market technology, recovery and utilisation of materials in waste streams can be effectively utilised to achieve a positive present value to enhance city sustainability.
CONCLUSIONS A combination of factors are converging to enable renewal of wastewater treatment infrastructure, including the aging of existing infrastructure, new technologies, and the need to preserve, rather than dissipate the resources available in wastewater. If the elementary resources (energy, nitrogen and phosphorous) are costed, using emerging technologies, it is possible to achieve energy neutrality, very difficult to achieve generate income in excess of expenses, and impossible to achieve a profit including infrastructure costs. However, if the value to
Damien Batstone
the community of the resources is evaluated, it can enable substantial economic and liveability benefits in the form of local reuse of resources that enables the new resource sensitive city.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Some material in this article is drawn from Batstone, D.J., Hülsen, T., Mehta, C.M., Keller, J., Platforms for energy and nutrient recovery from domestic wastewater: A review. An extended form of the chapter appears as a CRC for Water Sensitive Cities published book chapter Batstone, Hülsen, Mehta, and Puyol “Mining resources from the urban sewerage system”.
12. Fertecon Potash Report: Weekly Review of the Potash Market; 3/1/2013, 2013. 13. Smil, V., Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, and the Transformation of World Food Production. Mit Press: 2001. 14. Frear, C.; Dvorak, S., Commercial demonstration of nutrient recovery of ammonium sulfate and phosphorus rich fines from AD effluent. In 2013. 15. Gruber, N.; Galloway, J. N., An Earth-system perspective of the global nitrogen cycle. Nature 2008, 451, (7176), 293-296.
REFERENCES 1. Staley, C.; Pierson, G. S., The Separate System of Sewerage: Its Theory and Construction. D. Van Nostrand: 1899. 2. Ardern, E.; Lockett, W. T., Experiments on the Oxidation of Sewage without the Aid of Filters. Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 1914, 33, 523. 3. Tchobanoglous, G.; Burton, F.; Stensel, H., Metcalf and Eddy Inc. Wastewater Engineering, Treatment and Reuse. McGraw-Hill.: New York, NY (US), 2003. 4. Jenkins, D.; Wanner, J., Activated Sludge - 100 Years and Counting. IWA Publishing: 2014. 5. Batstone, D. J.; Hülsen, T.; Mehta, C. M.; Keller, J., Platforms for energy and nutrient recovery from domestic wastewater: A review. Chemosphere 2015, 140, 2-11. 6. Foley, J.; de Haas, D.; Hartley, K.; Lant, P., Comprehensive life cycle inventories of alternative wastewater treatment systems. Water Research 2010, 44, (5), 1654-1666. 7. DOE/EIA-0484 U.S. Energy Information Administration International Energy Outlook 2010, July 2010. ; U.S. Energy Information Administration Office of Integrated Analysis and Forecasting: Washington, DC 20585, 2010. 8. FAO Current world fertilizer trends and outlook to 2011/12; Food and agriculture organization of the United Nations: Rome, 2008. 9. Cordell, D.; Drangert, J.-O.; White, S., The story of phosphorus: Global food security and food for thought. Global Environmental Change 2009, 19, (2), 292-305. 10. Fertecon Phosphate Report: Weekly Review of the Phosphate Market; 3/1/2013, 2013. 11. Jasinski, A. M. Potash, USGS Mineral Commodity Summary 2011; USGS: 2011.
16. Matassa, S.; Batstone, D. J.; Hülsen, T.; Schnoor, J.; Verstraete, W., Can direct conversion of used nitrogen to new feed and protein help feed the world? Environmental Science and Technology 2015, 49, (9), 5247-5254. 17. Tucker, R. W.; Mehta, C.; McGahan, E.; Batstone, D. J. Fertiliser from Waste: Phase 1 GRDC Project UQ00046: Output 1; Grains Research and Development Corporation: Canberra, 2010. 18. Verstraete, W.; Van de Caveye, P.; Diamantis, V., Maximum use of resources present in domestic “used water”. Bioresource Technology 2009, 100, (23), 5537-5545. 19. McCarty, P. L.; Bae, J.; Kim, J., Domestic wastewater treatment as a net energy producer – Can this be achieved? Environmental Science & Technology 2011, 45, (17), 7100-7106. 20. van Loosdrecht, M. C. M.; Brdjanovic, D., Anticipating the next century of wastewater treatment. Science 2014, 344, (6191), 1452-1453. 21. Zimmo, O. R.; van der Steen, N. P.; Gijzen, H. J., Nitrogen mass balance across pilot-scale algae and duckweed-based wastewater stabilisation ponds. Water Research 2004, 38, (4), 913-920. 22. Hülsen, T.; Batstone, D. J.; Keller, J., Purple nonsulfur bacteria for nutrient recovery from domestic wastewater. Water Research 2014, 50, 18-26. 23. Solley, D.; Hu, S.; Hertle, C.; Batstone, D. J.; Karastergiou-Hogan, T.; Rider, Q.; Keller, J., Identifying Novel Wastewater Treatment Options Through Optimal Technology Integration. In Ozwater 2015, Adelaide, 2015. 24. FAO Fertilizer use by crop Fertilizer and Plant Nutrition Bulletin 17; Food and Agriculture Organization: Rome, 2006.
Damien Batstone1,2, Tim Hülsen1,2, Chirag Mehta2, Jurg Keller1,2 & Daniel Puyol.1,2 1
CRC for Water Sensitive Cities, Melbourne.
2 Advanced Water Management Centre, The University of Queensland.
Damien Batstone is one of the leading researchers in the field of anaerobic biotechnology and anaerobic process modelling internationally. His team at the University of Queensland focuses on developing technology for nutrient recovery and enhanced application of anaerobic digestion across agroindustrial, industrial, and domestic sectors. International activities include chair of the IWA Anaerobic Digestion Specialist Group, Associate Editor of Water Research and Scientific Reports, Chair of the IWA Taskgroup for Physicochemical Modelling, principal author of the IWA Anaerobic Digestion Model No. 1 and contributor to a number of other taskgroups and working groups, including the IWA nutrient recovery cluster and WERF nutrient recovery focus area. He is also an active consultant, particularly in Australia, where he leads an average of 10 projects per year, mostly focusing on practical translation of biosolids and wastewater technologies. Damien teaches process modelling and statistics in the UQ undergraduate programme. This work is being funded through the CRC for Water Sensitive Cities via project 2.1. It aims at developing next generation wastewater treatment technologies that will enable resource recovery. The CRC brings together the inter-disciplinary research expertise and thought-leadership to undertake research that will revolutionise water management in Australia and overseas. In collaboration with over 80 research, industry and government partners, we deliver the socio-technical urban water management solutions, education and training programs, and industry engagement required to make towns and cities water sensitive. With a research budget in excess of AUD $100 million, our research is guiding capital investments of more than AUD $100 billion by the Australian water sector and more than AUD $550 billion of private sector investment in urban development.
25. NHMRC Australian Dietary Guidelines; Canberra, 2013.
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WASTEWATER
INNOVATION INSPIRED BY NATURE
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n a resource-constrained world, the recovery of resources from waste streams is big business. Each day two million tons of solid waste is discharged into the environment polluting soils, rivers, lakes and coastal areas (UN/WWAP, 2003).
Municipal water agencies, mining outfits, and oil companies regularly spend billions per annum to process their waste streams (GreenTech Media, 2010). The traditional method of using micro-organisms to break down effluent and delivering air to those micro-organisms is hugely energy-intensive, and consequently produces carbon dioxide (contributing to climate change). In any city, about 50% of the civic energy bill goes to providing water services; 15% of that consumed by aeration (Bluetech, 2015). But it need not be this way; a circular economy is about making the most of our products and infrastructure. The same approach can be applied to wastewater.
Solids compaction
A university start-up based in Adelaide, Baleen Filters Pty Limited, has been gaining widespread recognition both locally and abroad for its innovation inspired by nature – a self-cleaning ‘wastewater’ technology that simultaneously separates ‘waste’ and filters ‘water’. Baleen derives its name from the species of filter feeding whales with a unique whalebone to collect krill and other marine organisms during feeding. A sweeping tongue action creates a reverse water pulse which releases the collected feed for ingestion. An engineered adaptation of this natural technique resulted in commercialisation of a highly-efficient system which requires no chemicals, no vibration, no vacuum, and no pressure across the filter medium. Baleen’s value proposition is clear, it offers incremental savings on the one hand (existing operations), and ‘closed loop’ opportunity (circular economy) on the other, to realise holistic resource management (recovery not loss) and zero discharge potential (re-use not disposal).
BALEEN CAN DELIVER ROI WITHIN MONTHS Short and simple, Baleen can deliver return on investment measured in months. This revelation is explored through Baleen’s client revenue model, which calculates a tangible forecast on the rate of return based upon predetermined inputs of; compliance surcharge, resource recovery, operational savings, environmental-social benefits and land avoidance. To date, some 190 installations spanning eight countries lay testament to Baleen’s economic and environmental benefits. Baleen Filters is a two time winner of the Artemis Top50 Water Companies (USA) and also a two time winner of Frost & Sullivan’s Best
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Coal fines recovery
A Baleen filter installed for algae recovery
Sludge thickening
Before vs After water quality following two-stage inline Baleen micro-screening
Practice Technology Award (Asia Pacific), amongst other notable achievements.
The use of screenbowls, hydrocyclones and Jameson cells equates to lost ore and lost profits.
In meat processing, it is not uncommon that 1,0002,000 ppm of saleable by-product is lost as effluent sludge. One Baleen ‘120-Series plant will reclaim as much as 2 metric-tonne per hour. At AU$80 per Tonne (Net Profit) and 4,000 operating hours (Per Annum) Baleen delivers solid return on investment.
Baleen is readily integrated into existing operations via gravity-fed piping with oversize (clean product) dewatered by vacuum belt filter and undersize (gangue) gravity returned to thickener.
Similar opportunities exist in other market applications, including municipal works, where centrifuges, membranes and drying beds are in service, all of which lose product (whether water, or its constituency).
In fine ore circuits, it is not uncommon that 3-4% of saleable ore is lost to tailings. Conventional processes lose around 50% of clean ore at 325-mesh (45-microns). One Baleen ‘480-Series plant will reclaim as much as 24 metric-tonne per hour. At AU$100 per Tonne (Net Profit) and 7,000 operating hours (Per Annum) Baleen delivers solid return on investment.
ENHANCING BIOGAS PRODUCTION EFFICIENCY
RECOVERING LOSS IN FINE ORE CIRCUITS
RECOVERING LOSS IN FOOD PROCESSING The use of decanters, hydrocyclones, DAF and SaveAlls mean lost product and lost profits. Baleen is readily integrated into existing operations via gravity-fed piping with recovered screenings (clean product) made ready for offsite cartage and lean filtrate returned for further treatment.
In Biogas production there are several types of non and low biodegradable materials that must be removed prior to Anaerobic Digestion (AD) in order to improve efficiency (and eliminate build-up), such as; sand and grit, plastics and packaging, hair, fibre and rag. With these non-desirable materials removed, biogas volumes can be maximised by also thickening feedstock to a solids concentration of 8-12% DS. Direct benefits include reduced AD vessel volume requirement, increased energy recovery and onsite water re-use opportunity. n For more information visit www.baleen.com or contact Yuri Obst on (08) 8354 4511.
A new dimension dimension in in separation separationtechnology, technology,the theBaleen BaleenFilter Filteris isanan adaption of the the natural natural technique technique used usedby byfilter-feeding filter-feedingwhales. whales. Stand-alone mechanical-separation capability 20 micron, Stand-alone micro screening capability to 25 to microns and or Chemically-assisted fine as 13micron. chemically assisted filtration filtration to as less than microns. Baleen Filters reclamation. Baleen Filters are arethe thenatural naturalchoice choicefor forresource water reclamation.
byby Nature Water Recycling Recyclingmade madeSimple Simple Engineered Engineered Nature Designed && made madeininAustralia Australia Internationally InternationallyAwarded Awarded
www.baleen.com www.baleenfilters.com
IRRIGATION
YOU CAN’T MANAGE WHAT YOU DON’T MEASURE: THE ROLE OF SOIL WATER MONITORING IN WATER CONSERVATION PETER BUSS and MICHAEL DALTON explore the reasons why irrigators need to embrace and improve water management.
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n 2009, the most recent year for which global data are available from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 311 million hectares in the world were equipped for irrigation. As of 2010, the countries with the largest irrigated areas were: India (39 MHa), China (19 MHa) and the United States (17 MHa).
Irrigation can offer crop yields that are two to four times greater than that possible with rainfed farming, and it currently provides 40% of the world’s food from approximately 20% of all agricultural land (Ref: worldwatch.org).
Figure 1: Bird’s eye view of rice terraces in Yunnan, China. Source: Jialiang Gao, www.peace-on-earth.org
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However, the irrigation sector claims about 70% of the freshwater withdrawals worldwide. Why does irrigation need so much water? It is common knowledge that a person requires two to three litres of drinking water per day. What is less well-known is the amount of water needed to produce the world’s food. For example, it is estimated that 1700 litres of water is required to create 500g of rice. In the early 1990s the ‘water footprint’ concept was introduced, also referred to as ‘embedded water’ or ‘virtual water’. Virtual water is defined as the total volume of water needed to produce and process a commodity or service. It takes about 1000 times as much water as is consumed daily to produce the food we eat over the same time period (Ref: www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz). The headline projection in the Science study says the world’s population is likely to grow from 7.2 billion in 2015 to 9.6 billion by 2050. This means that 9.6 billion people will require 2000 litres per day for their food production, culminating in 19.2 trillion litres (or 19.2 cubic kilometres).
COUNTRY/REGION
CROP
Atherton Tablelands, QLD, Australia
Banana
Riverland, SA, Australia
Citrus
AGRONOMIC BENEFITS 50% yield increase Improved quality of fruit overall Yield increase totalling 28T/ha over four years Saved up to 40 hours per week on irrigation-related matters Saved 50 hours from pumping time compared to previous season
Darling Downs, QLD, Australia
Cotton
Reduction of Fusarium Wilt disease’s impact on crops
Agriculture is already experiencing water scarcity today. Figure 2 shows water stress by country expressed as the ratio of withdrawals to supply.
Alicante, Spain
Loquat
46% water savings in one year
SO WHAT CAN BE DONE?
Mareeba, QLD, Australia
Mango
100% yield increase
South East (SA), Australia
Potato
5-18% yield increase
Lismore, NSW, Australia
Nectarine
The need for irrigators to adopt on-farm water conservation techniques is increasing rapidly. Effective water conservation techniques include: • • • • • • • • •
Use of new drought-tolerant crop varieties; Improvements in cropping systems, planting bed construction and tillage practices; Use of mulches, plastic coverings, and soil conditioners; Matching irrigation practices to soil type and crop requirements; Measurement of irrigation system performance; Use of trickle (drip) irrigation; Use of on-farm water harvesting and reuse of waste water; Use of on-farm winter storage reservoirs; and, Soil water monitoring and on-farm irrigation scheduling.
The focus of this article will be on one aspect of water conservation: soil water monitoring to drive on-farm irrigation scheduling. On-farm water management can not only reduce water use, but at the same time it can save energy for pumping, reduce labour dedicated to irrigation tasks and save fertiliser inputs which are commonly leached below the rootzone through over-watering. Keeping the depth of wetting within the rootzone also helps with pesticide and herbicide degradation through microbial activity, which is much less pronounced in the sub-soil. At the same time, more efficient water management has shown that crop yield and quality can be increased while using less water. It is also much easier to produce consistent quality produce if inputs are monitored. This is most important when supplying supermarkets or corporate buyers, as they generally seek long-term contracts.
WHY DO IRRIGATORS NEED TO EMBRACE AND IMPROVE WATER MANAGEMENT? Apart from conserving water on a world scale for irrigation, it is about minimising production input costs (water, energy, labour and fertiliser) and maximising production outputs (crop yield and quality), while being environmentally responsible by allowing pesticides and herbicides to degrade within the rootzone instead of being washed into rivers and waterways. Economic profit and environmental responsibility must be satisfied in one stroke. Sentek Pty Ltd, an Adelaide-based company founded in 1991, has promoted more efficient water management for agriculture since its inception. In the last 24 years, the
Increased quality yielding an extra AUD$2000 per hectare 38% increase in gross return per hectare 22% saving in water applied over a three month period 76% increase in dollar return per ML of water applied Increase in average fruit size
Fassifern Valley, QLD, Australia
Sweetcorn
Yield increase totalling 43,500 cobs/ ha Increase distribution uniformity to 87%
Italy
Walnut
70% irrigation savings Improved yield quality through reduced shrivelling Improved yield which more than paid for the equipment in one season
Mareeba, QLD, Australia
Watermelon
Increased yields by up to 50% (when compared with district average)
McLaren Vale, SA, Australia
Wine grape
30% water saving Improved production quality, with increased profitability as grapes were then classified as ultra-premium Increased profitability with the on-sale of surplus water from their allocation
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IRRIGATION
Near-continuous data reflect the rate of change of the soil water reservoir through plant depletion and soil drainage, and through irrigation and rainfall replenishment. This means that irrigators can visualise and measure how fast their crops ‘drink’ the soil water, how many days a particular crop can utilise soil water until the onset of stress, and the depth of the active roots. The technology helps to provide answers to more questions: • How much water is being consumed from each depth of the soil profile? • When and how much irrigation needs to occur? • Was the irrigation too much, too little or just right? • How effective was a rainfall event in refilling the soil reservoir? • How many days was a crop waterlogged after a flood irrigation? • How much drainage was generated after an overirrigation event? • Where is the applied fertiliser within the rootzone? Did it get washed below the roots? • Where are the Full and Refill Points for optimal irrigation scheduling? • What was the seasonal crop water use? Together with crop yield, this will provide a measure of water productivity.
THE PLANT AS THE “SENSOR” So, how is this achieved? The answer is that we are using the plant as the “sensor”. How can the plant be the sensor? We can watch the speed of drinking until the ‘glass’ (soil storage of water) is empty. This principle is illustrated in Figures 5 and 6. Figure 5 shows a plant in a U-tube filled with water. The calibrated pipette shows the water lost from the tube and consumed by the plant. We are measuring each daily ‘sip’ made by the plant precisely. Next we need to transfer this measurement principle to a real field. Top: Figure 4; Middle: Figure 5; Bottom: Figure 6: Soil moisture graph generated with IrriMAX Software
company has developed a variety of profiling soil water monitoring solutions which are currently being exported to 80 countries around the world. The principal technology uses multiple soil water sensors on a probe rod that is located in a plastic access tube installed into the soil. Sensors are typically activated every 10 minutes and take a soil water reading. These readings are stored on the probe and are uploaded to the internet. Users can access these data anytime and anywhere where there is an Internet connection. The high-resolution data displayed in Sentek’s IrriMAX™ software gives valuable insight into water and solute movement under ever-changing soil, plant growth stage and weather conditions.
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Evapotranspiration (ET) is the water loss occurring from the processes of evaporation and transpiration. Evaporation occurs when water changes to vapour on either soil or plant surfaces. Transpiration refers to the water lost through the leaves of plants. Very frequent soil water recordings generate a picture of the plant’s ‘drinking speed’ or plant transpiration and soil evaporation. An example of this is illustrated in Figure 6. The trend line displays a ‘staircase effect’. The flat part of the line indicates no or little crop water consumption at night and the steep part (downward steps) is the crop water use during the daytime. The daily amount (‘sip’) of water use by the crop can be visualised and compared to the atmospheric demand that is acting on the crop. Where the trend line enters the red zone, we are seeing
Peter Buss is the Manager of Research & Development at Sentek Pty Ltd in South Australia, a company which he co-founded in 1991 to facilitate the commercialisation of the EnviroSCAN Soil Moisture Monitoring System. Today Sentek is exporting irrigation management technology (product and knowledge) into over 80 countries worldwide and is regarded as a world leader in its field. Peter established a commercial irrigation scheduling service for irrigators (ICMS) as part of a South Australian Department of Agriculture initiative in 1986. The Irrigation Association of Australia recognised the contribution to the irrigation community by the ICMS with an achievement award in 1996. Peter also co-founded Irrigation Management Technology Pty Ltd, an Adelaide-based consultancy company in 1989, which was designed to provide the complete integrated range of technical services to irrigators on a commercial basis to enhance water sustainability and irrigation farm productivity. Currently Peter Buss is managing Sentek’s Research & Development team to develop new water management technologies. He is also consulting to major agri-businesses worldwide and the IAEA/FAO on water management issues. Michael Dalton is a Research Scientist at Sentek with a career spanning 30 years. Prior to joining Sentek, his experience involved placements at CSIRO and The University of Adelaide where he contributed to projects including foetal growth retardation in sheep and humans, biochemical pathway investigation of plant polysaccharides, and genetic engineering of wheat and barley. His interests in plant physiology, soil water and salinity now focuses his research in the development of Sentek’s electronic sensors. This work involves the use of observable soil water dynamics throughout the root zone as an indicator for the application of optimum irrigation management strategies.
ABOVE: Figure 3: Average daily water consumption per person (sciencemediacentre.co.nz RIGHT: Figure 2: Water Stress by Country, ratio of withdrawals to supply ( World Resources Institute)
a marked slowdown in daily crop water use. The onset of plant water stress has been reached. The â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;drinking speedâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; of crops has been used by Sentek to set thresholds for irrigation scheduling. Irrigators can now use Full Points and Refill Points to conduct their daily irrigation scheduling decisions with great confidence. Soil water monitoring and irrigation scheduling is one important technique of water conservation which has gained rapid momentum in the past five years. What are some of the recorded outcomes when using this technology? The table below summarises the benefits observed in some case studies generated with Sentek collaborators and clients. Benefits are not limited to the irrigator themselves. Careful management of soil
moisture by irrigators has been used to reduce the demand on energy suppliers at times of peak demand, in turn allowing the provider to make savings by limiting the number of power stations they run or the amount of power they need to buy in from interstate. The same principle applies to shared water supply schemes, where the system simply could not handle every user taking water at the same time. If the irrigators look at weather forecasts and ensure their soil profile is ready, they time their irrigations to occur at off-peak times without affecting their crop/plants. In summary, water conservation techniques are a must if we are to safeguard our future world food production. To achieve this goal, we need to measure soil water usage by the plant so that it can be effectively managed.
Irrigators conserve water... ...by applying the right amount, at the right time.
Sentekâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s soil moisture monitoring equipment helps irrigators to reduce water inputs, reducing demand for irrigation water
Learn more at www.sentek.com.au AUS T RALI AN WAT E R M A N A G E M EN T R E VIE W | 2 7
INDUSTRY Q&A
USING WATER ANALYSIS AND DESIGN SOFTWARE TO CREATE EFFICIENT WATER DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS 2 8 | AU S TRA LIAN WATER MAN A GE ME NT RE V IE W
Infrastructure software provider Bentley Systems has been selected to provide 3D modelling technology on Western Australia’s Roy Hill project. It will facilitate the project team’s creation of hydraulic models used to design a mine water distribution system for the 55 million tonne per annum iron ore mining, rail and port operation being developed. Bentley’s water analysis and design software – WaterGEMS and HAMMER – were used because of the powerful ‘optioneering’ capabilities they enable. This optioneering lets the engineers quickly explore a variety of alternatives to help the teams make better decisions when designing the water infrastructure for this world-class mega project. Mal Sharkey, Senior Product Manager at Bentley Systems, spoke with Australian Water Management Review about how the team at Roy Hill is using optioneering and hydraulic analysis capabilities to help meet the mining industry’s often stringent engineering design standards.
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hat’s the importance of having efficient water infrastructure in operation on mine sites today?
Mining sites, particularly large projects like Roy Hill, use a lot of water. For starters, they need fairly large townships to house their staff and, as in any community, a water system is one of the crucial infrastructure requirements. In addition, they use water in their production processes and also need a sophisticated fire protection system that requires a reliable water supply. All these things mean that mining sites need to be efficient in their water use since this is one resource that often is scarce in mining areas – especially in remote parts of Western Australia. Moreover, it costs a lot of money to pump large quantities of water, through pipelines from bore fields or water sources, to the mine or the township location. Therefore, mine owner-operators also need to be efficient in how they pump the water to the site to minimise pumping costs.
HOW DOES BENTLEY’S SOFTWARE FACILITATE THAT PROCESS? Bentley’s water and wastewater solutions comprise several software products that work together to improve water distribution. Roy Hill is using our WaterGEMS and HAMMER products. WaterGEMS has also been used by Queensland Urban Utilities to model the Brisbane system and by SA Water to model the Adelaide Metropolitan Water Distribution Network. SA Water recently won a Global Water Award for improving the long-term performance of the Adelaide water supply network with an innovative predictive and operational analytical technology solution based on another Bentley product, Amulet. Through this water performance initiative, SA Water is saving millions of dollars per annum in network operating costs while improving customer service standards. WaterGEMS allows you to represent all the pipes in the city in a computer model and perform calculations. Data such as the pipe location, pipe diameters,
customer location, and pump control strategies is inputted and the software can determine if there are any pressure problems in the system, customers who aren’t going to get enough water, and so on. It’s really useful in a city for determining problems that might be happening in real-time or problems that may occur over the next five, 10 or even 20 years. Many of the challenges faced by cities are also faced by mine owner-operators. As I said earlier, the scale of these mining sites is similar to that of a large town, so they use WaterGEMS to lay out the pipe networks that they’re proposing. For example, Roy Hill is using this software for its process water supply. It is extracting water from multiple bore fields
The software helps with these really quite complex calculations that need to be performed to streamline the process of designing these large pipelines.
HOW HAS ROY HILL USED BENTLEY’S WATER ANALYSIS AND DESIGN SOFTWARE TO DEVELOP ITS MINE WATER DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM? As I just said, WaterGEMS has helped Roy Hill design a pipeline to supply water to its processing plant, ensuring the water meets its requirements. It allows its project teams to perform calculations that are either very difficult or practically impossible to perform manually. These are complicated networks with a lot branches, a lot of pumps, and a lot of ways to distribute water through the network. It is very difficult for an engineer to perform those calculations by hand. WaterGEMS allows them to spend more time on engineering and less time on calculations. ‘Optioneering’ is a term that comes up when we talk about WaterGEMS. It’s not a word that everyone’s familiar with but it’s starting to be used more and more. There are many ways mine engineers can operate and design the network. WaterGEMS allows these engineers to quickly compare those different options. Let’s say you’re not sure whether the pipeline should go north-south and then east-west, or east-west and then north-south. You can create these two different options in WaterGEMS, compute them, and compare the results. Then you can see if an alignment has to go over a large hill, which could
“Many of the challenges faced by cities are also faced by mine owneroperators…the scale of these mining sites is similar to that of a large town.” using WaterGEMS to design the pipelines that take the water from those fields through pumps to the processing site, where it is stored and eventually used in the processing. WaterGEMS has helped Roy Hill calculate what pumps and pipe sizes might be required, as well as the optimal combination of pumps that should be running to meet a certain demand at the plant. In addition it helps them guarantee that the water quality is within the limits they need it to be at the plant, as each bore has different water quality characteristics.
affect the hydraulic performance of the system. This could be detrimental, compared to your second option, which is relatively flat the whole way. With the latter option, there will be no problems with the additional energy required to pump water over a hill, or water hammer problems that might occur when you have an intermediate high point in the pipeline. The Roy Hill Project has really taken advantage of the optioneering abilities of WaterGEMS. The Roy Hill engineers have added dozens of design scenarios to their hydraulic model, which they can then compare. So
AUS T RALI AN WAT E R M A N A G E M EN T R E VIE W | 2 9
INDUSTRY Q&A
WHAT OTHER BENTLEY SOFTWARE IS HELPING MINE SITES, WATER UTILITIES AND LOCAL COUNCILS GET THE MOST EFFICIENCY OUT OF THEIR WATER INFRASTRUCTURE?
On the sewer side we have a product called SewerGEMS. With this software you also enter the pipe network data, and the customers who use it. The latter includes customers that are connected to the sewer system and their sewer loads. SewerGEMS will calculate the flow in the sewer pipes, the velocity, and so on. It will also determine if there are any capacity problems in the network and any areas in which the sewers are likely to overflow. That’s particularly important if you have problems with stormwater inflow and infiltration into your sewer system. Again, SewerGEMS is most often used for larger cities but can be applied right down to small-scale subdivisions. It, too, is applied at mining sites.
We have software called HAMMER for water hammer analysis. Water hammer can cause catastrophic damage to sections of a pipeline. Our software helps to identify problems caused by water hammer and helps
What challenges do you see evolving in Australian water management into the future and how do you think software and technology is likely to respond
the benefit is the ability to quickly set up new options, test them and either accept or reject them. Then the engineers can come up with new design options based on what was found.
DOES THE TECHNOLOGY ALSO WORK ON A SMALLER SCALE? It certainly can be used on a smaller scale. For example, we have users with smaller-scale projects, such as a subdivision development.
The Roy Hill Project has really taken advantage of the optioneering abilities of WaterGEMS. the engineers come up with strategies to protect the system against them. There’s a whole range of water hammer protection devices that we can include. We also have software similar to WaterGEMS for wastewater and stormwater analysis. Although we need to supply water to towns and cities, we also need to dispose of the wastewater and handle the stormwater. We also have CivilStorm, a product used for stormwater analysis. When it rains you get stormwater run-off that needs to be effectively handled to prevent flooding in the mine or township. This is done by funneling the run-off away in gutters and ditches. CivilStorm uses rainfall amounts and some of the properties of the catchment and ground surface as input. It will calculate how much water runs off that catchment, where it goes, and how much water will be in the gutters and the channels. If you have stormwater pipe networks, CivilStorm will calculate how much water is going into the pipe network, whether or not the network has enough capacity, or if it is likely to overflow and cause flooding.
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to the needs that are ever-changing in the water management environment? In terms of the software that we’ve been talking about, it’s primarily for managing urban water, wastewater and stormwater. There are a lot of challenges around the security of supplying water, which are handled by other software products. But one of the main challenges that our software can help with is the challenge of expanding populations, expanding cities, and the complexity of supplying potable water to those people, while at the same time removing wastewater. But as cities get larger that becomes very complicated. As budgets get tighter, water and wastewater authorities need to budget wisely for improvement and maintenance. Our software can really help project the amount of capacity a city or township will need in its water and wastewater systems in the future. It can also help maintain the system and determine what the key priorities are in terms of system upgrades and replacement. So there are many ways this software can help with the challenges emerging in water infrastructure. n
Mal Sharkey is a Senior Product Manager at Bentley Systems with global product management responsibilities for the Hydraulics and Hydrology product line, used for the analysis of water, sewer and stormwater distribution and collection systems. Mal has a Civil Engineering background with a Master’s degree in infrastructure engineering and management, and over 17 years of hydraulic modelling experience.
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HYDROPOWER
FLOOD FORECASTING MAKES HYDROPOWER A SAFER BUSINESS Flood forecasting can provide strategic operational benefits to water managers by providing enough warning of impending large flows to allow optimal preparation for capturing, storing and using the plentiful water. FIONA LING reports.
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The bypass valve at Rowallan Dam, critical to keeping lake levels lowered during refurbishment works
Rowallan Dam refurbishment works in the foreground, with Lake Rowallan at rear
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henever a large volume of water is stored or transferred under pressure, careful consideration and management of the safety of the public and downstream infrastructure is critical. Construction, operation and maintenance of water assets such as dams, pipelines and hydropower facilities regularly involve potential risks to the safety of both the general public and staff. Those risks become particularly serious when flooding is on the horizon. So, in the context of hydropower, flood forecasting and warning systems have obvious and important applications, such as enabling operation of a dam to minimise flood peaks downstream, informing the timing or method of dam construction to avoid inundation or breaching of the works, or helping determine the need for emergency evacuation. Another application of flood forecasting may be less immediately obvious — for owners of hydropower assets or water supply or irrigation storage facilities, flooding can offer a gift of abundant flows, meaning that flood flows can sometimes be opportunities, if managed carefully. In this context, flood forecasting can provide strategic operational benefits to water managers by providing enough warning of impending large flows to allow optimal preparation for capturing, storing and using the plentiful water.
The accuracy of flood forecasting depends on both the accuracy of the input data (rainfall, forecast rainfalls and flows) and the accuracy of the hydrologic modelling. There is a necessary trade-off between forecast times and accuracy. The most accurate forecasts are based on measured flow data, but this gives very little warning time if the flows are already in the river. Forecasts based on conversion of measured rainfall to runoff using models give longer warning times but greater uncertainty. The longest warning times are achieved using forecast rainfall data, but these forecasts are the least certain. Despite greater uncertainty, longer term forecasts can indicate that a water manager should keep watch for the possibility of a flood, and can offer more time to ensure that the correct procedures are in place to manage a potential flood risk, and to take actions such as optimum storage management to capture floods.
BEST PRACTICE FOR SUCCESSFUL FLOOD FORECASTING SYSTEMS Successful real-time flood forecasting relies on capturing and storing accurate input data, reliable modelling, easily interpreted results, and timely alerts and warnings. Best-practice flood forecasting systems should include: •
HOW FLOOD FORECASTING WORKS Flood forecasting systems combine measured rainfall data and rainfall forecasts from weather forecasting agencies into a hydrologic model of a catchment. This model converts the rainfall into runoff and flow in rivers, or inflows to storages. These flow forecasts can be corrected with measured flow data in real time where this is available.
•
•
For some applications, these flows provide inputs to a hydrodynamic model of the river and surrounding area to give forecast flood levels and inundation areas. The forecasts can then be displayed graphically or in another appropriate format for operators and water managers to use to manage flood risk.
•
Accurate data capture from field sensors and available forecasts; Safe storage of all information in a robust database, allowing analysis of the suitability of the input data for forecasting, analysis of the accuracy of forecasts, and comparison of forecast and actual data which can be used to adjust the models; Optimal and up-to-date modelling and analysis to forecast flows and levels at critical points in the system, such as an inflow to a storage, the water level in a reservoir, the water level along a river, or an inundation area in a town; Automated forecasting run on a schedule, with the ability to run more frequently in a flood situation if required;
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Photo of the Whangaehu River, North Island of New Zealand in flood, used in model calibration
FLOOD FORECASTING FOR DAM SAFETY AND RISK MITIGATION – THE MAJOR UPGRADE OF ROWALLAN DAM
renewable energy producer, specialist power and water consulting firm Entura provides real-time inflow and flood forecasting and data management solutions to help manage Hydro Tasmania’s own extensive catchments and a complex system including 55 major dams. Our most recent example of how flood forecasting can contribute to ensuring safety and mitigating risks involves a major dam upgrade project for Rowallan Dam, built in 1968, which included total refurbishment to bring the dam up to modern engineering standards and increase its capacity to withstand large floods.
For hydropower businesses, flood forecasting is a critical part of managing dam risk and public safety risks across a dam portfolio. As part of Hydro Tasmania, Australia’s largest water manager and
To complete the necessary works, Rowallan Dam had to be excavated from crest to foundation on both sides of the spillway walls, exposing the heart of the dam. What
•
•
Easily interpreted presentation of data and forecasts tailored for the individual user and including an indication of certainty; and, Timely, automated warnings and alarms to alert water managers of any forecast floods that may exceed critical thresholds, providing time to ensure appropriate preparation and action.
RIGHT: Lake Trevallyn in flood, Entura runs an inflow forecasting model for Lake Trevallyn which is used to manage dam and power station operations BELOW: Kuala Lumpur has experienced regular flooding through the city centre, resulting in significant economic losses from lost business, damage and clean-up activities. Six serious flood events occurred in the seven years before the SMART project was commissioned
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makes this work unprecedented in Australia is that it was done on a live dam, holding back Lake Rowallan – with a capacity of 130,000 megalitres. Rowallan’s needs for lake level and flood forecasts During the construction period the dam faced a higher than normal risk of exposure to floods. Overtopping of the temporarily lowered dam crest during construction would compromise dam safety. So to undertake this major excavation and refurbishment safely and guard against overtopping, the level of Lake Rowallan had to be lowered significantly by periodically opening a bypass valve to allow water to pour out of the lake at up to 40,000 litres per second. A forecast of lake levels was needed to guide valve openings necessary to keep Lake Rowallan at the appropriate target level – low
HYDROPOWER
enough for safe work, but not losing too much valuable water, and potential revenue, through the valve rather than through the power station. As well as the required forecast of lake levels, a flood forecast was needed to indicate when emergency backfilling of the dam crest may be needed. The sensitivity of when to trigger this kind of action provided a unique challenge. If backfilling was not carried out in time and a flood event breached the construction works, the dam would be at risk of failure, with serious consequences for the storage downstream and potential impacts on communities. On the other hand, triggering an emergency backfill would be likely to delay construction by a year, with large financial impacts. Backfilling is expensive and would risk extending the construction period into the wet season and the following summer, which would be very costly both in terms of construction and from losing water that could have been used to generate power. A robust, effective forecasting solution The solution to maintaining optimum lake levels and flood preparations during the Rowallan Dam upgrade was to use a hydrological model to forecast lake levels and the time it would take for water to reach critical levels that could jeopardise the dam, always ensuring sufficient time for emergency backfilling. The critical level varied depending on the depth of construction works, and maintained the same level of flood risk at all times.
FIONA LING Principal Consultant, Hydrology, Resource Management and Investigations at Entura
The entire modelling process ran automatically and provided an updated forecast every two hours during the construction period. Plots were developed showing the best-estimate forecast of inflow and lake level, high and low uncertainty bounds on these estimates, forecast valve opening required to keep the lake at the target level, and rainfall over the catchment. The operators and construction managers used these plots to guide valve operation and ensure emergency preparedness. Alerts were set to trigger if the high forecast exceeded the critical level. Plots were disseminated continually via email and a website. In an emergency, SMS and SCADA flood alerts would be sent out to relevant parties. If a flood alert was issued, the dam safety emergency plan would be activated. To assist in mitigating risks, the flood forecasting model for Rowallan Dam was revised to include the latest rainfall forecasts available from the Bureau of Meteorology, to give indications of uncertainty in forecasts. Measures of both rainfall forecast and model uncertainty were included in the forecast plots to give operators an indication of the certainty in the lake level forecast. The rainfall forecast uncertainty measures were developed by comparing forecast rainfall to rain-gauge data over a historical period. The model uncertainty was estimated by running the model over a historical period with historical rainfall as input, and comparing outputs with measured lake levels.
Fiona has more than 25 years’ experience in hydrologic analysis, working on both research and project engagements. She has led hydrology studies for a range of projects in countries including Australia, Malaysia, Fiji, Sri Lanka, Solomon Islands, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Laos, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada. Her areas of expertise include flood hydrology, hydrologic analysis for hydropower schemes, hydrologic studies and modelling, real-time flood and inflow forecasting, impacts of climate change on water availability, estimation of evaporation and optimisation modelling. Fiona graduated from the University of Melbourne with Honours in Agricultural Engineering. She completed a PhD on flood hydrology in 1996 with the Cooperative Research Centre for Catchment
A plan was put in place to ensure that critical rainfall and flow gauges for the modelling were operational and that any maintenance required was undertaken within strict timeframes. Routines were developed to automatically check all input data for errors or missing data, and send alerts if inconsistencies were detected. The system was made more robust by building in redundancies in the modelling and developing a stand-alone system at the dam site that did not require continuous connection to the database. This could be used in case of lost communications with the dam site. The Rowallan Dam flood forecasting system allowed operators to confidently manage the flood risk during construction works, ensuring the safety of construction workers and communities downstream, and protecting infrastructure and the environment from the major damage flooding can wreak.
FORECASTING FOR A FLOOD-PRONE FUTURE? With increasing severity and frequency of extreme weather events likely in the future under possible climate change scenarios, effective flood forecasting systems have a key role to play by providing accurate and timely warning of impending flood events to improve public safety and minimise flood-related damage and costs. Flood forecasting is a vital component of a total flood warning system and has applications for all water managers with responsibilities to protect assets and communities at risk. n
Hydrology at Monash University, and a postdoctoral fellowship at Melbourne University in 1997. Fiona is currently chair of Engineers Australia’s National Committee on Water Engineering. Entura is one of the world’s most experienced specialist power and water consulting firms. As part of Hydro Tasmania, Australia’s largest renewable energy producer and water manager, we are backed by more than 100 years of creating energy and maintaining power and water assets. Contributing to the development, operation and maintenance of water and renewable power schemes over their entire lifecycle has given us first-hand insights and a deep understanding of the real-life pressures of owning and operating assets, as has our experience in
working closely with other asset owners to manage theirs. Our strength comes from an ability to partner with clients to deliver practical and commercially sound solutions across the whole lifecycle of power and water assets, helping them to manage risks and achieve valuable outcomes. From strategy, planning, design and construction through to operation, maintenance, risk management and training, our full range of consulting services covers every aspect of major power and water projects. We support governments, funding agencies and corporate clients across the Asia-Pacific region and Africa from offices in Australia, India and South Africa. Visit entura.com.au for more information.
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BARRIERS TO CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION IN THE WATER INDUSTRY People, communities, business and industry across the world will face difficult times in dealing with the shift in climate, but none more so than the Australian water industry. CAROLINE TSIOULOS reports.
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CLIMATE ADAPTATION
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ater restrictions, conservation and desalination are just some of the words that spring to mind when people hear climate change and water in the same sentence. Though drought is not necessarily synonymous with climate change it is inextricably linked. Scientists working as a part of the Australian Climate Change Science Programme suggest climate change projections for Australia include: • A rise in average temperature; • Long periods of diminished rainfall particularly in southern Australia in winter and spring; • Increased evaporation; • Increased fire risk weather; and, • An increase in extreme rainfall events. The complexity of science behind climate and its variability, averages and extremes is dynamic and multidisciplinary. An enormous amount of time, money and resources has been spent worldwide trying to understand and predict the impact of anthropogenic influences on climate and its flow-on impacts on natural and human systems. Scientists and politicians continue to debate the extent and impacts of climate change, with a majority convinced by the science and mounting evidence that the inevitable change will lead to catastrophic consequences for the world if it is not addressed forthwith. There is still a small minority that continue to voice their opposing concern that climate change is a storm in tea cup; in that there has always been variation in climate and the changes we are experiencing are natural, not anthropogenic. The truth is, regardless of the source, the climate is changing and we need to adapt. People, communities, business and industry across the world will face difficult times in dealing with the shift in climate. None more so than the water industry; and none more so than the Australian water industry, in the driest continent on earth. In an ever changing political arena, continually advancing science and a community attitude that can wane between apathy and outrage; there are without doubt barriers to overcome in adapting to climate change. So it’s impressive and reassuring that as much has been achieved as it has by the water industry in Australia. Climate influenced impacts were all too apparent to those working in the water industry during the worst drought in recorded history in Australia – the Millennium Drought. In the midst of this devastating drought; managers, engineers and field operators at water authorities watched as storage levels dropped to record lows every day. Detailed calculations regularly revealed how few days the water supply would last
before water conservation or other drastic measures had to be taken further. Rural water authorities worked to make sure that the distribution of what little water existed was fairly shared between farmers in the agricultural industry and set about upgrading and modernising infrastructure to minimise losses and maximise efficiency. It wasn’t short sightedness that led to low water supplies. It was unprecedented continuous low rainfall. There was no waiting until the drought was over to take action. In fact, it was in 2005 that urban water authority, Melbourne Water, released a major study on the impacts of climate change on water, sewerage and drainage systems; the first of its kind in the world. In the same year, Water Corporation in Western Australia commenced a 12-year forest thinning trial in the Wungong Catchment to assess the potential increase in streamflows and water yields whilst restoring and maintaining natural biodiversity. Not long after this in 2008, the South East Queensland $6.9 billion Water Grid was completed to provide for the region’s water supply future. Every state was undergoing some form of strategic planning or construction phase for a project that was related to climate change. But it’s not just water supply that has been the focus of climate change projects. CSIRO has undertaken a great deal of work in trying to understand the impact of climate change on extreme storm event intensity, frequency and duration. Following this, there has also been work to understand the flow on effects on flooding. The multifaceted effects of climate change on sewerage systems due to drought, sea level rise, flooding and heatwaves are also being considered. Melbourne Water’s Sewerage Strategy used scenario planning to consider a number of different plausible future scenarios and time scales to predict the potential impacts on infrastructure, sewage concentration and treatment plants among other things. Collaboration became entrenched between water authorities and other agencies during the Millennium Drought. Sharing of ideas, approaches and information between different state water agencies broke down walls and helped enable innovation. Momentum for adaptation to change was gathering. But whilst it may seem that the Australian water industry forged ahead with climate change adaptation with confidence and without constraint, there were many hurdles to overcome that continue to slow the progress of effective adaptation today. The task of overcoming barriers is not a simple matter of checking the boxes for each singular problem. The complex interrelationships and interdependencies of barriers mean that in considering or addressing one obstacle, other barriers and their relationships must also be considered.
AUS T RALI AN WAT E R M A N A G E M EN T R E VIE W | 3 7
CLIMATE ADAPTATION
In 2012, the Productivity Commission’s Inquiry Report on Barriers to Effective Climate Change Adaptation classified barriers as either: Market Failure, Policy and Regulatory Barriers, Governance and Institutional Barriers, Behavioural Barriers, Adaptive Capacity and Path Dependency. This high-level list is not all encompassing, but covers the majority of issues faced. Within these classifications are a number of key topics that prove to be the biggest obstacles for the water industry. If we drill down to the key issues that affect climate adaptation in the water industry much of it is centred on buy-in, or its relationship to other barriers. Buy-in refers to the willingness of employees and management of the water industry, as well as the community, to accept climate change adaptation planning as necessary despite all barriers, to manage future risks. The reason for the importance and centrality of ‘buy-in’ is that if people don’t believe it is necessary or if they believe that the effort to adapt outweighs the reward, then adaptation will be more difficult. So many things influence buy-in. The ability to obtain commitment to adaptation relies on understanding from where reluctance stems and being able to address it.
BARRIERS TO ADAPTATION Weather and climate During of the Millennium Drought, water was high on the political agenda. Our precious natural resource, that had been taken for granted for so long, was in high demand and low supply. There was great pressure on water authorities and agencies to secure water supplies and plan for sustainable water futures from state and federal governments. But then the drought broke in many areas of the country. The collective breathe that had been held by the water industry across Australia was released. But what also broke at the same time as the drought was the level of concern around climate change. When there is an ongoing climate event such as a drought or extreme weather event such as flood or heatwave, level of concern is high. When the climate is stable for a period, level of concern decays over time and apathy can follow. The ‘apathy zone’ lies in between drought periods and short term extremes like floods, cyclones, storms, extraordinary tides and heatwaves. So when we have an extreme event or long event period, the priority for adaptation increases. The fluctuating levels of commitment or concern from the community and government can be a limiting barrier to ongoing climate change adaptation efforts because it interrupts the drive and momentum. This is where it is important for water industry leaders to continue to lead adaptation,
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regardless of current climate and public perception, using the science to inform risk management practices.
BUY-IN Management commitment The biggest barrier to climate change adaptation in the water industry is the level of commitment from the senior management across an organisation. Commitment cannot just be a verbal assurance, but be accompanied by demonstrable action on adaptation. Notwithstanding management commitment however, preparation for change must also be driven by the employees across the industry if adaptation is to be adopted as ongoing practice. Empowered employees Although it may be management that provides the leadership and strategic direction on adaptation, the reality is that the ‘real adaptation’ happens on the ground. The engineers and water supply operators that see the impacts in catchments and understand the risks associated with reduced water supply are usually responsible for implementing the many climate change adaptation actions. Floodplain and drainage officers work with local government and the community to manage changing levels of flood risk and its impact on development and communities. Sewerage treatment plant engineers and operators will continue manage and treat sewage with changing concentration, odour and corrosiveness. Communications and stakeholder engagement teams will continue to engage the public around water conservation, restrictions and recycling, no longer just when there is a long term drought but in an ongoing manner to change mindsets. Water industry employees – operators, engineers, scientists and officers – will see the impacts of climate change first hand and are likely to also have the most practical ideas about how to manage the risks. Therefore to enable adaptation, the solutions and actions must come from employees. Thus with inspiring leaders in the water industry and empowered employees, buy-in can be gained and effective adaptation is possible. Policy and politics Both the federal and state governments’ commitment and policies on climate change has an important influence on the public perception on the gravity of the issue. If the government’s commitment to mitigation is weak, the message being sent to the public is ‘climate change is not a serious issue’. This also has the subliminal message that climate change adaptation is not a priority. Maladaptation can be further exacerbated by changes in government leadership, where one government has a differing view and set of policies to its predecessor. Climate change projects that were a priority have
the potential to drop down or move up the list. This can be very confusing for the water industry (and the community) as they have to respond to changing goal posts. Unfortunately inconsistency, changing policy, flow of information and commitment associated with policy and politics are all barriers that are difficult to control and manage. Collaboration and cooperation is a key to overcoming these divisive constraints. Nevertheless, important decisions around climate change adaptation projects in the water industry are not made lightly by state government officials or senior management in the water industry. Especially without a reasonable understanding of public opinion. That is not to say that all big decisions regarding important adaptation projects such as desalination plants are popular or 100% supported by the public. In fact there is often a lot of controversy around such decisions that have wide ranging flow on impacts. If we look at the example of the construction of the ‘North-South Pipeline’ connecting the catchments north of the Great Dividing Range to Melbourne’s water supply south of the Great Dividing Range; this project was not short of issues. It was heavily politicised and public opinion was as divided as the bipartisan party politics. There was ongoing engagement that was unable to completely appease all parties and some community protests continued throughout the project. Ironically the project was completed in 2010, just in time for the drought to break. The point here is that rarely do all of the required elements of adaptation align. What it does highlight however, is that where there may sometimes be politics at play, it is usually because there is a public demand for, or opposition to, adaptation for differing reasons. Public opinion is an important barrier to climate change that cannot be underestimated. It may be that people support climate change adaptation in principle but not in a way that disadvantages them or changes things in a manner with which they are not accustomed or comfortable. Although it is suggested here that political positioning and influence can play a role and be a driver or barrier in major water projects, the hard work that goes in behind the scenes, regardless of public perception, must be acknowledged. Behind every project; the decision making, the modelling, the meetings, the community engagement, the construction and the commissioning, is a vast array of work and dedication by workers in the water industry. This type of work is not undertaken lightly and never with the intention to disadvantage one party over another. It is unfortunate that sometimes the needs of every stakeholder cannot be fully me and trade-offs will be necessary. Trade-offs such as irrigation versus potable water supply, or security of potable supply versus water
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CLIMATE ADAPTATION
Carolyn Tsioulos
pricing, or user pays versus sweeping taxes; will always unfortunately exist in climate change adaptation and heavily influence market failure as a result. Regulatory In undertaking planning for adaptation, the scrutiny of planning and investment horizons and asset life are paramount. Regulators generally have specific horizons, typically short, within which they consider justification for investment expenditure and pricing impacts. Very closely linked to market failure, there is continuing debate over whether:
Carolyn Tsioulos is owner of Elements Strategic and Risk Management, specialising in climate change adaptation and water management issues. Elements SRM works with businesses in the public and private sector to help manage the risks associated with the elements – floods, drought and storms, the climate and its variability. Providing guidance, strategies, decisionmaking tools and frameworks to assist in adapting to a changing climate or manage the risks of extreme events, we can help you out.
When coupling market failure with the limitations placed on the water industry by regulatory horizons, it provides a particularly difficult problem to overcome. This is where it becomes useful to use a risk management based approach to climate change adaptation. Water authorities need to understand and factor into decision making the risks of both:
The current generation should pay economically to protect future generations from climate change impacts by constructing or preparing for adaptation now; or,
•
Undertaking the cost of adaptation and perhaps overestimating the impacts or the cost of not undertaking adaptation; and,
Future generations should pay for our lack of adaptation planning; socially, environmentally and economically.
•
Being underprepared and possibly affecting the future life, health or property of the community.
Incidentally, this is the same quandary that plagues politicians, regulators and economists in relation to mitigation of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. Market failure One would imagine that the long term planning horizons for water infrastructure, whilst giving due consideration to regulatory planning horizons should be analogous with planning for climate change. Infrastructure is costly to build and therefore designed to last, so one would assume that incorporating allowance for the impacts of climate change into the design would be ideal. But unfortunately the shorter term regulatory horizons can lead to market failure. The sizing, treatment or complexity of infrastructure to allow for long term climate change impacts can significantly increase costs. For example the sizing of desalination plants, the construction of anti-corrosive sewers or the size of flood mitigation infrastructure is currently planned and designed based on a stationarity in climate variability. However in a climate with nonstationarity in variability, what is the end game? Is it the climate of 30 years, 50 years or 100 years’ time? Do water authorities pay large upfront costs now and minimise the ongoing maintenance, repair and renewal costs? Or do they pay minimal upfront costs and bear the costs in 30, 50 or 100 years? It is difficult to undertake a proper cost-benefit analysis for these scenarios when the design factors are changing over time. Whilst the quantifiable costs of such a projects can be relatively easy to account for, quantifying the future benefits as well as current trade-offs with any kind of certainty is far more difficult and inhibiting. Furthermore, although climate science is constantly improving, translating the science into numbers that water authorities can use with confidence
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creates a major impediment leading again to market failure. Justifying greater upfront infrastructure costs, which will inevitably be passed onto the public in some form, requires an amount of certainty, which climate change science cannot offer.
Adaptive capacity The capacity of those working in the water industry is often listed as a barrier to effective adaptation. In reality, the water industry is in the business of adaptation. High flow, low flow, seasonal variability in catchment runoff, flood events, droughts, peak demand, off-peak demand are some of the daily, monthly, annual and even decadal events that the industry must adapt to and manage. It is the extent and uncertainty of the change and variability that is testing the capacity of and ability of the water industry to adapt. Risk management is already used effectively and extensively across the industry to manage threats and hazards. Climate change influences the severity, timing, likelihood and consequences of existing risks. But there are very few new risks caused by climate change. New risks are likely to be existing risks which can be identified when a climate change lens is applied to a risk assessment. Those industry workers that see the effects and manage the existing risks are those that should be participating in or undertaking the risk assessments. But it essential that clear guidance is provided to employees around the data, impacts and scenarios to use in the risk management process Adaptation to manage the future impacts of climate change on the Australian water industry is complicated with uncertainty, complexity and a number of barriers. No barrier is mutually exclusive and the flow on effects to other barriers must also be mapped out and addressed. The adaptation projects already implemented and commissioned are evidence that any barrier can be overcome with the right approach, collaboration and commitment and as time progresses and the industry learns more about adaptation those barriers are more likely to become small hurdles. n
TRAINING
USING TRAINING TO STAY RELEVANT IN YOUR CHOSEN INDUSTRY In an environment of rapid change it is essential that we embrace life-long learning, and regularly update our knowledge and skills in order to maintain pace within our chosen fields, providing the best possible service to employers and clients.
busy professionals abreast of the latest trends, technologies and practices.
IWES is the largest and most successful continuing education program for professionals responsible for industry environmental performance in Australia.
IWES has grown rapidly over the last few years, establishing itself as a leading provider of short courses for environment professionals in Australia. We are incredibly proud that IWES is the training provider of choice with several large organisations, and we strive to keep our course offerings and their delivery innovative and market-leading.
Our mission is quite simple – to provide high-quality short course training for environment industry professionals. Courses are taught by leading industry practitioners and designed to keep
Courses include: • Principles of Wastewater Treatment • Trade Waste and industrial Wastewater Treatment • Biological Nutrient Removal
• Design of Biological and Advanced Wastewater Treatment Processes • Drinking Water Treatment: Principles, Practice and Applications • Recycled Water Management • Design and Operation of Membrane Systems in Municipal, Mining and Industrial Applications • Chemical Contaminants in Water: Significance, Monitoring and Interpretation • Corrosion and Odour Management in Sewers • Anaerobic Digestion: Sustainable Biosolids Management • Landfills: Planning, Design and Management • Principles of Hydraulic Engineering
and Open Channel Flow Plus, many more. Please visit iwes.com. au for the full list of courses. We look forward to connecting with you, and continuing to provide a key service for environment industry professionals. The Faculty of Engineering, at The University of Queensland, offers a number of professional educational courses, workshops and professional development seminars. All of our Executive Engineering courses are designed and presented by internationally-recognised industry leaders. The Faculty offers a wide array of professional development programs, encompassing all facets of engineering. www.eait.uq.edu.au/executiveeducation.
The leading provider of short courses for environment professionals in Australia Upcoming IWES events include: Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Dubai, Gold Coast For detailed course information go to www.iwes.com.au
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A Q U A C U LT U R E
NEW OXYGEN CONES PLAYING A VITAL ROLE IN NEW SOUTH WALES FISH FARM The stock levels that were previously limited to 50kg can now be increased to at least 80kg per 1000 litres
With aquaculture growing rapidly around the world, specially-designed oxygen cones are playing an integral role. A fish farm in the New South Wales region of Goulburn is using the cones to help increase fish quantities.
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quaculture or fish farming is developing, expanding and intensifying in almost all regions of the world. It continues to be the fastest growing animal food-producing sector. On a global scale, the growth in aquaculture outpaces population growth. In Australia alone, aquaculture has increased in volume at a rate of 12 per cent per annum over the last 20 years. The industry includes the farming of fish, molluscs, crustaceans and aquatic plants.
Marianvale Fish Farm is using Wateroâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s oxygen cones to help increase stock
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Australian cleantech company Sustainability Ventures has worked with Marianvale Murray Cod Fish Farm in a joint venture with the land owners
The New South Wales regional city of Goulburn, situated between Sydney and Canberra in the state’s Southern Tablelands, is considered Australia’s first inland city. And with the Wollondilly and Mulwaree Rivers close by, the region is known for its inland fishing. It’s also the location of a special fish producing business, Marianvale Murray Cod Fish Farm.
CREATING EFFICIENT WATER USE For two years, Australian cleantech company Sustainability Ventures has worked with Marianvale Murray Cod Fish Farm in a joint venture with the land owners and in its capacity as a specialist in the research, development and commercialisation of water technologies in industrial, municipal and agricultural sectors. “Our focus is to provide solutions for efficient water use,” Ayal Marek, Director of Sustainability Ventures, says. “For a farm to be profitable in any capacity, the ratio of stock level to area is an essential calculation.” The correct combination of fresh water, food and water oxygen levels is a careful balancing act for cod production. This critical equation can restrict any increased production intentions and therefore restrict higher income levels. “While still relatively new, we wanted to explore new opportunities of profitability for the fish farm,” Marek says. “The concept of an oxygen cone to increase quantities of fish was very desirable and we made inquiries about how it could be employed.” Aquasonic, an aquaculture manufacturer and distributer based at Wauchope near Port Macquarie, NSW, was employed to deliver the solution that would enable Marianvale Murray Cod Fish Farm to increase the number of fish per cubic metre and increase profitability. Company spokesperson Bruce Atkinson says because they were familiar with international manufacturer of water treatment solutions, Waterco, they were confident it could supply a solution to meet the needs of the Marianvale Murray Cod Fish Farm.
“We selected two Waterco oxygen cones that increase oxygen content by three or four times,” Atkinson says. “The stock levels that were previously limited to 50kg can now be increased to at least 80kg per 1000 litres.”
OPTIMISED OXYGEN SUPPLY An oxygen cone is shaped to optimise the saturation of gases in water – up to 100 per cent. Water and oxygen enter at the top of the cone at relatively high speed and the stream of water pushes the oxygen bubbles down until they completely dissolve. “For a long time fish farmers have been looking for a cost effective solution to manage the constant and essential ingredient of oxygen in their fish culture system,” Victor Quijada, Waterco’s water treatment product manager, says. “The oxygen cone significantly improves efficiency in fish farming with maximum control over the environment where fish are housed, making it a compelling component of the farming process.” The industry standard for most species of fish is up to 50kg of stock to 1000 litres of water. The oxygen cone enables stock levels to be increased by directly infusing pure oxygen into the water column. This involves pure oxygen being injected, under pressure inside the cone, into the water delivery line and into the fish culture tanks. “The design and shape of the oxygen cone ensures the water released from the cone with the oxygen solution are bubble free and no ‘gas bubble’ stress is inflicted on the fish,” Atkinson says.
INCREASED RETURN ON INVESTMENT With increased oxygen levels the Marianvale Murray Cod Fish Farm can increase stock levels of cod and increase return on investment. “The oxygen cone is a simple design with massive implications for individual businesses and this industry,” Quijada says. “The competitive advantage it provides make it a must-have for any fish farm.”
AERATION EQUIPMENT Improve water quality Increase yields
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T: 1300 304 634 W: www.proaqua.net.au E: admin@proaqua.net.au
Contact: www.waterco.com.au n
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ICT & BIG DATA
HYDROINFORMATICS:
HARNESSING BIG DATA FOR BIG CHANGES IN THE WATER INDUSTRY Schematic of the water end use disaggregation process
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Big data isn’t just about creating and storing large data sets, but also how we can use that information to make processes more efficient, sustainable and user-friendly.
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ssociate Professor Rodney Stewart from the Griffith School of Engineering is leading the charge in harnessing the power of big data to improve urban water supply.
“We are at the dawn of a new era of widespread smart water metering which, when combined with intelligent analysis and clever engineering, can deliver real benefits to water providers as well as householders’ budgets, and the environment too,” Associate Professor Stewart said. “This is the relatively new field of hydroinformatics; where engineers, scientists and IT researchers work together to utilise big data derived from the urban water network. As water becomes more expensive and with the recognition that it is not limitless, there is a growing need for consumers and the utilities to have this information so more efficient and sustainable water practices can be devised.” City-wide intelligent metering implementations have the potential to stream gigabytes of time-stamped water and other associated information (i.e. water temperature and pressure) from the pipe network right down into household appliances such as washing machines, as well as taps and toilets.
A POWERFUL TOOL These datasets are a powerful tool for a range of water planning, engineering and customer response decisions but only if processed, refined and reported in a way that is more intuitive and informative than current approaches. Associate Professor Stewart is providing engineering solutions and policy advice across Australia as well as Europe. “This is a big challenge,” Associate Professor Stewart said. “What we want to do is have a multi-level understanding of how our water infrastructure is working. This means understanding how an individual household is using water through to monitoring the entire grid, and looking for water leakage and better management plans. The data can be used in so many different ways. It is really exciting.” Associate Professor Stewart points out that this will not succeed if it helps only the utility companies; the technology needs to provide direct benefits to the consumer. “For example we could detect a post-meter leak in a home and text the householder, or provide comparisons of water usage across the year and
suggest ways in which water could be saved. There could even be guidance as to which appliances would best suit a consumer’s needs. “As has already been demonstrated in the power industry, providing information about how much water is being used, and in what way, does lead to sustainable choices.”
intelligence algorithms, stochastic models and probability functions, that were derived by the researchers. Figure 1 provides a simple illustration on how water flow data is disaggregated into water end use categories. n
All the data is collected from one cost-effective smart meter as the water enters the property. This measures water usage, pressure and temperature with extreme accuracy through millilitre measurements taken each second.
FORECASTING FOR EFFICIENCY GAINS Intelligent analysis of this information, using a variety of predictive algorithms, can then determine how the water is being used, for example if it’s for watering the lawn, or having a shower, or putting on the washing. Each of these records a distinctive pattern of water use (see accompanying diagram). This data can then be compared with usage patterns across an entire city and it is possible from a single sampling point to know if there are unusual deviations such as leaks in the system. With this level of data and associated predictive algorithms, planners and engineers can forecast water demand and achieve real-time efficiency gains in the water supply network. Perhaps most importantly, it will also be possible to have proactive water loss management rather than discovering large pipes have burst only after significant amounts of water have been lost. Understandably, large scale smart water metering is supported by water utility companies. Most recently three water suppliers in the Melbourne area; Yarra Valley Water, South East Water and City West Water have supported Dr. Khoi Nguyen and Associate Professor Hong Zhang, colleagues of Professor Stewart to develop a prototype model for autonomously measuring end user behaviour. “The present customer water information and billing approach is vastly inadequate. An intelligent water metering system supported by data analytics provides an impetus for us to change our behaviour and understanding of water usage. This, in turn will lead to more informed decisions that will positively impact on the consumer’s hip pocket as well as the environment,” concludes Associate Professor Stewart.
HOW THE DATA IS USED TO UNDERSTAND DOMESTIC WATER USAGE The implementation of smart water meters allows high-resolution domestic water consumption data to be captured and remotely transferred to servers housed at the water utility. This collected water consumption flow data can be disaggregated into a comprehensive data repository of end use events (e.g. shower, toilet, washing machine, etc.) using a combination of artificial
Associate Professor Rodney Stewart, Griffith School of Engineering Director, Centre for Infrastructure Engineering & Management Associate Professor Rodney Stewart is the Digital Utility Transformation Professor at Griffith School of Engineering, Griffith University, located in Queensland, Australia. Prof. Stewart conducts research in the applications of smart metering technology and big data informatics for re-engineering the water and energy utility sectors. In the water utility sector he has completed a number of high resolution smart water meter studies that provided the ‘big data’ to underpin detailed water end use studies, demand management strategies, bottom-up forecasting models, just-intime pipe network infrastructure planning, water-energy nexus studies, post-meter and network leakage studies, to name a few. His goal is to conduct the necessary evidence-based research to demonstrate the numerous applications and benefits of intelligent water and electricity networks in order to accelerate the rate of diffusion of these technologies in the utility sector.
AUS T RALI AN WAT E R M A N A G E M EN T R E VIE W | 4 5
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WATER TREATMENT
ENHANCING THE CAPTURE CAPACITY OF HYDROCARBONS FROM STORMWATER RUNOFF
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ith government agencies legislating more stringent standards for water discharge levels, Oleology saw the opportunity to incorporate its engineering expertise and MyCelx’s polymer-based oil removal technology into the Australian water treatment market.
SAVING WATER: RECYCLING DEPOT AND STREET SWEEPER WATER The major city council depot identified water use reduction and water harvesting. The system designed by Oleology will reduce water use immediately by nearly 4 ML treat water, reduce discharge to sewer of contaminated water and treat water from the workshop, and wash down areas to further harness available water at site. All this only commercially viable and technically possible by Oleology design incorporating the MyCelx Technology for oil and fuel removal, regardless of state “free”, “emulsified” or “soluble”, from water and finally clarifying and sanitising to Department of Health standards suitable for reuse. The project is further enhanced by harvesting stormwater to augment the top up of water due to evaporation and loss during operations.
Snippet bag below the grate, prepared for winter rainfall
PROTECTION OF WETLANDS
Inlet flow to wetland is protected by a Versimat to remove any oil sheen or hydrocarbons
Further enhancing the capture capacity of hydrocarbons from stormwater runoff is the installation of Terraguards and Versimats. This secondary stage of oil removal (deployment of the Versimat) will protect the body of water from contamination safeguarding the vegetation and wildlife in the area.
STORMWATER: PROTECTING THE RIVER AND OTHER WATER BODIES City councils are utilising snippet bags for the collection of contaminates before discharge to other water sources. City of Perth and Shire of Murray are examples of such councils who are capturing hydrocarbons from water runoff and preventing contamination of nearby water sources i.e. Swan River. MyCelx Snippets bags are the ultimate DIY “drop-in” stormwater system for a low cost and effective preventative measure.
WASTE GENERATION
WASTE GENERATION
Contaminated Water
Contaminated Waste (Tank Storage)
ONSITE TREATMENT
Benefit of either Terraguard or Versimat is the Oleophilic and Hydrophobic properties (ability to absorb oil and repel water). Capturing oil and fuel “sheen” from the flow of water, resulting in sheen-free lakes, creeks and rivers. n
Trucking off-site
RECYCLE
Discharge to Sewer
ABOVE: After effect of the Versimat, only oil is permanently captured to protect wildlife and vegetation
BELOW: Expenses of conventional treatment options compared to Oleology’s onsite cost saving solution
X ✔
X Trucked away for treatment X Increased contaminated loading to sewerage X increased carbon footprint
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Decreased water contamination Decreased carbon footprint Decreased water draw and water use Decreased sewer and water treatment energy expenditure
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MAJOR PROJECT
MALENY SEWAGE TREATMENT PLANT AND WETLANDS A project to upgrade the sewage treatment plant at picturesque Maleny, nestled in the lush hinterland of the Sunshine Coast, has become an award-winning role model, writes SIMON TAYLOR.
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hen Unitywater inherited the Maleny Sewage Treatment Plant in 2010 it had reached the end of its serviceable life, and was operating at the limit of its licence and beyond both its hydraulic and biological capacity. The plant is located within a water supply catchment that supplies potable water to the South East Queensland water grid. Discharge of treated effluent into the creek upstream of a drinking water supply was and always will be a sensitive issue. The Maleny community is well known for being passionate about their town and is represented by
numerous dedicated community groups, each wanting to maintain and enhance the town’s character and natural beauty. After assessing the options to upgrade the plant, Unitywater’s preference was to build a new membrane bioreactor as part of the new treatment facilities together with the development of an irrigated rainforest and wetland system to disperse and further remove nutrients from the treated effluent. Compared to other options, this innovative approach demonstrated considerable savings over the service life of the plant.
The successful delivery of the upgraded plant needed a partnership approach with the Sunshine Coast Council, the Maleny community and the traditional owners of the land, with close consultation and collaboration over several years.
FEATURES OF THE NEW PLANT Unitywater appointed Monadelphous to design and construct the plant adjacent to the old facility. The centrepiece of the new plant is a biological membrane bioreactor using GE’s LEAPmbr technology and ZeeWeed 500 membranes which filter out all matter larger than 0.4 microns. Designed to treat wet weather
A membrane bioreactor is the centrepiece of the new Maleny Sewage Treatment Plant
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LEFT: The upgraded plant is designed to service 5000 equivalent people, compared to 2000 for the original, and improves treated effluent from Class C at best to Class A BELOW: Simon Taylor, centre back row, with the upgrade project team and their UN World Environment Day Award, 2015
flows and hence minimise any overflows of untreated sewage, the system can treat up to five times average dry weather flow over a sustained period and up to eight times average dry weather flow for short term peak periods. To maximise the value of spare plant capacity during dry weather periods, in an Australian first the membrane bioreactor system also thickens waste sludge prior to off-site disposal, lowering its volume and hence cost of removal. The upgraded plant is designed to service 5000 equivalent people, compared to 2000 for the original, and improves treated effluent from Class C at best to Class A. After treatment, the effluent is pumped 1.4 kilometres from the sewage treatment plant and irrigated onto 13.8 hectares of revegetated native forest. The forest evapotranspires a proportion of the treated water, with the remainder seeping through the soil into a three hectare constructed wetland, where residual nutrients are treated before release to the Obi Obi Creek.
MALENY COMMUNITY PRECINCT In order to develop the rainforest and wetlands system, Unitywater negotiated the lease of 30 hectares of the Maleny Community Precinct from the Sunshine Coast Council. This precinct is a 128 hectare block of former dairy farm land being developed into a community asset incorporating a golf course, walking trails, revegetated forest, sporting fields and a number of other community uses. While the precinct is owned and administered by Council, its development and use is overseen by the Maleny Community Precinct Advisory Group, made up of representatives from various community groups. In order to build the upgraded sewage treatment plant and associated wetlands, Unitywater needed development approval from Sunshine Coast Council and referral agencies. The application was impact assessable, allowing the public to make submissions on the proposals. It was clear that Sunshine Coast Council would take notice of any concerns its constituents
might have, and therefore it was important for Unitywater to gain the support of the community if the development approval process was to run smoothly.
event provided an educational opportunity for everyone involved and reinforced Unitywater’s commitment to the community and the local environment.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
In September the same year, 350 students and mentors from the Sunshine Coast and Moreton Bay regions undertook a day of hands-on learning at the Unitywater Environmental Projects Day at the precinct. This initiative was part of Sunshine Coast Council’s Kids in Action Conference which aims to inspire and educate the next generation of environmental leaders. Unitywater was, and continues to be, a sponsor of Kids in Action.
Starting with a stakeholder engagement plan, Unitywater identified stakeholders and their potential concerns to inform an action plan and timeline for carrying out community engagement activities. These activities included meeting and discussing the project with individual community groups, putting on a project display at the annual Maleny Agricultural Show, arranging a community tree planting day at the Maleny Community Precinct, and providing regular project updates to the community, both in hard copy and via Unitywater’s website. Early in the planning and design stages, anticipated stakeholder concerns were considered and, where possible, mitigated by designing out the issues. Traditional owners of the land, the Jinibara people, played an active role, working hand-in-hand with Unitywater to ensure the heritage of the land was respected during construction and artefacts of cultural significance protected. The community reaction to Unitywater’s upgrade of the Maleny sewage treatment facilities was 100 percent positive. Only one public submission was made in relation to Unitywater’s development application, which was from a local environmental group fully supporting Unitywater’s proposal. After presenting the final proposal at a community meeting, the project team was applauded by a hall full of locals pleased to have been listened to, and who saw great benefit in the proposal. On World Environment Day in 2013 while the plant was under construction, Unitywater staff joined Sunshine Coast Council, Maleny District Green Hills, Barung Landcare, Lake Baroon Catchment Care and the Maleny River School students, bushcare volunteers and community members to plant 2000 trees in the Maleny Community Precinct. The
The Environmental Projects Day gave Unitywater a prime opportunity to work side by side with the Maleny bushcare groups, indigenous elders and community organisations, guiding and inspiring the students as they planted 1000 native seedlings, explored the precinct and undertook water testing within Unitywater’s wetlands. After completing the upgrade on schedule, Unitywater officially launched the Maleny Sewage Treatment Plant and wetlands to the public and media on World Environment Day 2014. An open invitation was issued for a guided tour of the plant and the wetlands, with very positive responses from the community and media.
MONITORING PROGRAM In order to measure the success of the newly established wetlands, early this year Unitywater joined forces with the University of the Sunshine Coast to monitor the wildlife attracted to them. A jointly funded four-year research project includes ecological and animal surveys focusing on frogs, birds, bats and small mammals. University students will assess the new wetlands at Maleny against several locations with comparable landscape characteristics in the vicinity. Regular progress reports will be shared by the University with the Maleny community and other interested groups. Measuring and monitoring how that increase in natural diversity progresses will also provide Unitywater with valuable knowledge to inform both the sensitive adaptation of its maintenance programs as wildlife returns, and operational costs for future projects.
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MAJOR PROJECT
UN WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY AWARD On World Environment Day this year, the Maleny Sewage Treatment Plant and Wetlands won the business award for Best Specific Environmental Initiative at the United Nations World Environment Day Awards. The UN World Environment Day Awards recognise innovative and outstanding environmental programs and initiatives from across Australia and the important work of Australian environmental leaders. It was a fitting close to World Environment Day – that morning Unitywater staff had again teamed up with community members to continue planting the Maleny Community Precinct forest. Their activities focussed on re-establishing the once-abundant vines that are habitat for the threatened Richmond Birdwing butterfly.
CONCLUSION Unitywater’s $17 million upgrade of the Maleny Sewage Treatment Plant addressed a number of recurring themes faced by contemporary sewerage utilities:
• The tightening of licence requirements by government regulators; • Increasing community expectations and sensitivities about their local environment; and, • Pressures to keep operating costs, and hence customer bills, as low as possible. The path adopted by Unitywater in upgrading the plant managed all these issues while modelling a sensitive and well-planned community consultation process. Next year the Maleny Community Precinct will open to the public and the people of Maleny will enjoy walking trails through their new irrigated forest and wetlands. Beyond the precinct, community groups including Maleny Golf Club already receive recycled water from the plant, adding to the benefits the upgraded Maleny Sewage Treatment Plant provides to this beautiful town. n
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Simon Taylor is Executive Manager, Infrastructure Planning and Capital Delivery at Unitywater. He has extensive experience in achieving beneficial water and wastewater outcomes in the South East Queensland water industry, and has held senior management positions in water utilities and water industry regulators, led strategic planning investigations and managed teams and a wide range of projects covering most aspects of the water cycle. As a statutory authority servicing the south-east Queensland regions of Moreton Bay, Sunshine Coast and Noosa, Unitywater provides water and sewerage services to residential and business customers across an operating area of 5,223 square kilometres.
Corrosion Inhibitors • Cortec patented MCI (Migrating Corrosion Inhibitors) inhibit corrosion through formation of a monomolecular layer protective layer. • MCI can be used to maintain structural integrity, integrity rehabilitate vulnerable structures, and alleviate environmental concerns. • Used during construction MCI can greatly extend the service life of concrete structures by delaying the onset of corrosion. • When applied to existing structures, MCI is able to penetrate the structure and reduce the corrosion rate (up to 80%).
ASSET MANAGEMENT
COST OF URBAN WATER INFRASTRUCTURE FAILURE The Australian water industry faces many challenges, particularly in the areas of asset management of ageing infrastructure and the required training to support the prevention and remediation of corrosion, writes WESLEY FAWAZ.
T
he economic impact of corrosion and its degradation of infrastructure and assets is estimated to be three to five percent of GDP each year. This represents an annual cost of many billions of dollars to the Australian and New Zealand economies. The cost of corrosion to the water industry is one area that has been quantified. The effects on water distribution and sewerage collection pipework and infrastructure impacts many areas of the economy and covers a wide ranging list of assets owned and operated by urban and rural water utilities, industry, agricultural and domestic environments. During a pipeline failure event, there are also intangible costs that can have a significant effect upon the wider community. These can include disruptions due to
flooding, road closures and loss of trade. These costs have been estimated at $91 million per annum to the Australian urban water industry. The total estimated annual cost of corrosion to the industry and the wider community in Australia is $982 million which equates to an approximate annual cost of $60 for every adult in the country. The water industry corrosion cost figures are contained in a report entitled Corrosion Challenges â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Urban Water Industry by Greg Moore and commissioned by the Australasian Corrosion Association (ACA). The report estimated the corrosion failure costs and identified which might be attributable to industry practices, industry skilling and regulatory frameworks. The report also looked at some potential cost reduction strategies that could be implemented.
Corrosion in a settlement tank of a water treatment plant
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ASSET MANAGEMENT
Highly corroded water pipeline
The main infrastructure assets owned and operated by water authorities are the pipelines and treatment plants. Mooreâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s report showed that the Australian water industry faces many challenges, particularly in the areas of asset management of ageing infrastructure and the required training to support the prevention and remediation of corrosion. The cost attributable to the maintenance and repair of sewage treatment plants is also considerable. The failure of a major pipeline or reservoir could have far reaching consequences. Not only could such an event have immediate catastrophic impacts to the surrounding area, there would also be long term economic impact on water, and possibly power, supplies to cities and towns. Repair and rebuilding costs would also be high. As most pipelines are buried â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;out of sight and mindâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; the water industry has had a reactive approach to maintenance whereby the pipes are run to failure, with individual pipe failures repaired until the failure rate reaches a predetermined level, at which point the entire section of pipeline is replaced. For smaller pipes this is
Water outfall pipes from a reservoir
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still considered ‘best practice’ or the industry, but for larger critical pipelines a more proactive approach is being adopted.
approximately 75 percent of population. The water utilities are required to report costs and performance to the WSAA each year.
PREDICTING FAILURES
Major urban water utilities also operate 260 water treatment plants and 442 sewage treatment plants. While some water supplies are only disinfected, the majority of supplies are also filtered and treated to remove impurities so to ensure the water quality meets the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines (ADWG). The consequences of failure of a water treatment plant are usually not as serious as a pipeline failure, but the facilities still require ongoing maintenance and repair.
One recommendation of the report was for water authorities to increase pipeline condition assessment to predict when failures might occur. Pipe materials such as grey cast iron and asbestos cement make up a large proportion of reticulation pipes in Australia and many of these are reaching a time where replacement will be required. In some cases, where the consequence of failure is very high, condition assessment is used to evaluate replacing the pipeline before any failures occur.
SEWAGE TREATMENT However, there will always be difficulties in any proactive approach to manage buried assets where there is limited technology to carry out condition assessments. Most water utilities have active CCTV inspection programs where internal corrosion of non-pressure sewer pipes can be assessed and repairs, renovations or replacements of these sewers implemented before major collapses occur. Almost immediately after the establishment of European colonies in Australia during the mid-1800s, a water industry started to evolve. Construction of the infrastructure to deliver fresh water for domestic and commercial consumption, and to remove and treat waste water and sewage, slowly developed up to the end of World War I. In the years following both world wars there were periods of rapid development, but the greatest expansion occurred during the 1970s, when approximately 5000 kilometres of pipeline was installed. Pipelines are the largest group of assets and consist of pressure pipes used for the conveyance of water and sewage, and non-pressure pipes for the conveyance of sewage. Pipelines are made of a variety of materials. Plastic pipes are not subjected to corrosion but the other pressure pipe materials such as cast iron, ductile iron, steel, concrete and asbestos cement, are all susceptible to both internal and external corrosion to varying degrees. The performance of all pressure pipes is reported in the Water Services Association of Australia (WSAA) National Performance report as the number of water main breaks per 100km per year. The average reported number of 19 per 100km, which, over the more than 139,000km of water mains in Australia, is approximately 26,700 breaks per year. This is an enormous problem for the water companies, even though a reported ‘break’ might be a major pipe failure or a minor leak. The WSAA is the peak body representing the Australian urban water industry which provides innovative, sustainable and cost effective delivery of water services. Some activities undertaken are the facilitation of strategic standardisation, industry performance monitoring for 73 water utilities across Australia serving
Sewage treatment plants deal with raw sewage and are subjected in most cases to more aggressive environments than water treatment plants, primarily due to the presence and corrosive effects of hydrogen sulphide. In addition to the pipelines and treatment facilities, there are many other assets such as manholes, sewer vents, tanks, reservoirs, and pumping stations associated with water and sewerage systems which also have costs associated with corrosion. These costs can be high, especially where repairs and recoating of steel water tanks and other complex steel structures are required. Civil assets comprised approximately 87 percent of the reported depreciation costs for the water treatment plants discussed in Moore’s study. Using this data and the premise that all of the civil depreciation was due to corrosion, an average annual depreciation figure of $600,000 per plant was estimated. In all treatment facilities there is an ongoing programme of replacement and repair to the infrastructure of the plant. It can be assumed, therefore, that this figure, or a proportion of it, could be used as a representative annual cost of corrosion. Sewage treatment plants are considered to be exposed to a more corrosive environment than water treatment plants due to the presence of hydrogen sulphide gas. Many sewage treatment plants are also coastal, or close to the coast, so the marine environment adds to the increased corrosiveness of the sewage treatment plant environment. Both these factors are aggressive to concrete structures. Studies conducted in the US show similar percentages but the actual amounts are higher due to the fact the much larger population lives in a wider range of geographies and infrastructure has been built to suit the climatic conditions. Many pipelines are buried much deeper to minimise the impact of freezing and other extremes. The water industry utilises the skills of a wide range of staff to manage, operate and design water and
Wesley Fawaz is the Chief Executive Officer of the Australasian Corrosion Association. He is responsible for the implementation of the strategic direction and management of daily operations of the organisation. Wes holds a Bachelor of Business majoring in management, marketing and HR. An Association Management Professional, Wes provides support and advice to the ACA Board, fostering strong links between the Association, its members and industry to ensure that they continue to minimise the impact of corrosion in the wider community. The Australasian Corrosion Association (ACA) is a not-for-profit, membership Association which disseminates information on corrosion and its prevention or control, by providing training, seminars, conferences, publications and other activities. The industry association was formed in 1955 and represents companies, organisations and individuals involved in the fight against corrosion and promotes cooperation between academic, industrial, commercial and governmental organisations.
sewerage systems but there are very few training courses available to teach corrosion and its impact on the water industry. The remit of the ACA includes educational activities such as seminars and training courses to inform and guide organisations and practitioners about topics including the latest protective technologies and processes. A recommendation in Moore’s report was to implement accredited training courses designed for water industry personnel. Such courses would cover topics such as corrosion basics for the water industry; materials and corrosion control for use in conjunction with the Water Supply Code of Australia and the Sewerage Code of Australia; and identification and assessment of pipeline failures in the water industry. In particular, there should also be increased training in cathodic protection technologies, especially as applied to aging steel water mains, tanks and other structures. n
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STORMWATER MANAGEMENT
USING URBAN STORMWATER AND AQUIFERS OR RESERVOIRS FOR NON-POTABLE AND POTABLE SUPPLIES Key outcomes from the MARSUO research project by P Dillon, D Page, G Dandy, R Leonard, G Tjandraatmadja, J Vanderzalm, K Barry, D Gonzalez and B Myers.
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project, called ‘Managed Aquifer Recharge for Stormwater Use Options’ (MARSUO), has investigated the public health, economic and public acceptance aspects of a number of different options for using stormwater via managed aquifer recharge and/or via reservoirs. This evaluated the quality of stormwater generated in the City of Salisbury, the treatment requirements and risk management measures necessary to assure safe water quality for public open space irrigation, third pipe reticulation to homes and for potential drinking water supplies. The project also assessed biofilms and water quality impacts in distribution systems, public acceptance and the economics and environmental impacts of options. An existing stormwater harvesting facility at Parafield in the City of Salisbury, South Australia, was chosen as the primary site for evaluation. Data from harvesting operations enabled assessment of their performance for non-potable uses and determine additional treatments, preventive measures and their costs in order to produce drinking water supplies. Studies of satellite sites in Australia, Singapore, China and India were undertaken to compare stormwater quality and treatment requirements for potable use and allow interpretation of the relevance of results from Salisbury. This paper provides an overview with samples of results to give the Australian water industry a taste of what is now publically available for use.
INTRODUCTION Between 2011 and 2014, CSIRO partnered with the National Water Commission and the Goyder Institute for Water Research in South Australia together with
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the City of Salisbury, Mount Lofty Ranges Natural Resources Management Board, the former United Water International, SA Water Corporation, University of Adelaide and University of South Australia in work that has concluded with several reports and journal papers. The outputs include a series of pioneering documents on use of stormwater including the first published; risk assessment for potable use of stormwater in accordance with the Australian Guidelines for Water Recycling (Page et al 2013a); risk management plans for non-potable and potable use (Page et al 2013a; Vanderzalm et al 2014a); stormwater harvesting audit (Stevens 2014 ); economic assessment of stormwater use options including assessment of greenhouse gas emissions and an ecosystems framework method to evaluate environmental benefits and costs of stormwater harvesting (Dandy et al 2014); surveys of public acceptance of use of stormwater for potable as well as non-potable supplies (Mankad et al 2013); studies of the effect of harvested stormwater quality on pipe biofilms and corrosion in distribution systems and consequent impacts on reticulated water quality (Tjandraatmadja et al 2014); and international review of stormwater quality and treatment requirements for achieving potable supplies (Vanderzalm et al 2014b).
LAND USE AND STORMWATER QUALITY The City of Salisbury, a local government authority in the northern suburbs of Adelaide, is acknowledged as a leader in stormwater harvesting using wetlands and aquifer storage and recovery (ASR). Recovered water from the aquifer is fed into a ring main and used for public open space irrigation, industrial water supplies and to dilute salinity of recycled water in a non-potable supply to households throughout the suburb of Mawson Lakes. The locations and land uses of the catchments
for the Salisbury stormwater harvesting systems are shown in Figure 1. The Parafield stormwater harvesting facility located at Parafield Airport collects primarily from the Parafield stormwater catchment and is supplemented by pumping stormwater from the Cobbler Creek catchment. Parafield Airport has a mean annual rainfall of 438mm (1972-2009). The Parafield catchment has an area of 1,590Ha, 73% of which is urban, and produces a mean annual runoff of approximately 1300ML/yr. It contains residential, industrial and commercial areas, major rail and road routes, and small horticultural and livestock grazing properties. The eastern-most catchment on Figure 1 is an open catchment in the lower Mount Lofty Ranges that supplies the Little Para Reservoir and water treatment plant that feed into Adelaide’s drinking water mains. The reservoir is less than 12km by road from the Parafield harvesting facility, and is 35m higher in elevation. Each catchment in Figure 1 was assessed for potential sources of stormwater quality hazards. This risk assessment was conducted based on the key water quality hazards as defined by the MAR guidelines (NRMMC-EPHC–NHMRC, 2009a): (1) pathogens (viruses, protozoa and bacteria), (2) inorganic chemicals, (3) salinity and sodicity, (4) nutrients, (5) organic chemicals, (6) turbidity and particulates, and (7) radionuclides. Myers et al (2013) found through modelling and measurement that flow times of solutes in the catchment were too short to depend on catchment protective measures alone so water treatment must be relied on to assure water is fit for its intended uses. Endpoints considered were human health, the environment (including the storage aquifer and irrigated areas) and operational infrastructure (harvesting, distribution and irrigation systems). The most significant hazard expected and found was pathogenic microorganisms. Human pathogens generally enter stormwater through sewage overflows and leakages. Within the Parafield and Cobbler Creek catchments, the five-year average annual (from 2006 to 2010) number of sewer overflows per 100km of sewer main per year was 16.5 and 17.5 respectively (United Water). This may be compared with 7 to 9.8 for the Adelaide metropolitan area from 2003 to 2007 (NWC, 2008) and 14.5 to 50 which is considered moderate to high for Australian water utilities (NRMMC-EPHC-NHMRC, 2009a). Other pathogen sources are on land grazed by livestock.
RISK ASSESSMENT The water quality evaluation of pathogens was the most comprehensive of any found on urban stormwater in Australia or internationally and allowed quantitative microbial risk assessment of the log removals required for uses of harvested stormwater with different levels
Figure 1: Catchment land uses related to stormwater harvesting and reuse schemes. Land use data sourced from DPLG (2011) and ABARES (2012) (from Page et al. 2013a)
of human exposure (Figure 2, adapted from Page et al 2013a). The data requirements and resulting values were determined and affirmed by the MARSUO Water Safety Expert Panel (Chaired by David Cunliffe, SA Health). Based on Australian Guidelines for Water Recycling (NRMMC-EPHC-AHMC 2006) for public open space irrigation, exposure controls alone are sufficient to meet health based targets. For 3rd pipe systems, treatments such as chlorination and ultraviolet light (UV) (for Cryptosporidium) are necessary to meet these targets. Ozone, membranes or other technologies are equally applicable. For drinking water supplies, this would require aquifer treatment, if validated at 4-log removal, then disinfection with UV and chlorination. In the absence of validation of aquifer treatment ultrafiltration or other technologies with similar pathogen removals would also be required. Log removals required for pathogens in stormwater are 3 to 4 logs less than required for secondary treated sewage effluent (Figure 2). Monitoring of water leaving the wetland revealed that all detected physical and chemical parameters met drinking water quality criteria, with the occasional exception of iron, turbidity, and colour. Following recovery from the aquifer in aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) wells the 95th percentile of these parameters exceeded the drinking water guidelines (NHMRC-NRMMC 2004). There was also one isolated unexplained detection of Campylobacter in recovered water after the standard initial purging of an ASR well. Median iron levels were
in excess of drinking guidelines for ASR recovered water at Parafield, Kaurna Park, Paddocks and Unity Park. In addition to the proposed disinfection (UV and chlorination) iron, turbidity and colour removal would be achieved either through media filtration or microfiltration to achieve drinking water guidelines. In the event of direct recovery to the mains distribution system,
microfiltration, pH adjustment and fluoridation would be required in addition to chlorination and UV.
STORMWATER QUALITY AT SATELLITE SITES Stormwater quality was also assessed where data were available to allow interstate and international comparisons at a series of sites: • City of Orange, NSW • City of Mount Gambier, SA • Fitzgibbon research site, Brisbane, Qld (within Urban Water Security Research Alliance) • City of Singapore, Singapore (following storage in a reservoir) • City of Jinan, China • City of Haridwar, India • International Stormwater Best Management Practices (BMP) Database including data from various locations within the USA, New Zealand and Taiwan (http://www.bmpdatabase.org/, WERF). Considering the variety of climates and catchments embraced in the study the evaluated stormwater quality data from all catchments, although variable, were surprisingly similar from a risk assessment perspective. Hazards with 95th percentile values exceeding the drinking water guideline values at Parafield (iron, turbidity, colour and faecal indicators) also exceeded guidelines at all other sites for which data were available. Similarly hazards with 95th percentile concentrations below the drinking water guidelines at Parafield (other metals (e.g. zinc), salinity (electrical conductivity) and nutrients including nitrate) were also below the guidelines at all sites.
Figure 2: Log removals required for safe use of stormwater for three types of uses based on pathogen data from this study and default values from Australian Guidelines for Water Recycling for stormwater and sewage (adapted from Page et al 2013a). (Each log removal reduces pathogen numbers by 90%, e.g. 2 logs reduces numbers by 99%)
The Parafield stormwater quality data were not atypical of stormwater quality for the parameters that could be
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two web-surveys (Mankad et al 2013a,b). Potable and non-potable stormwater use options were presented to focus groups and in web surveys and participants indicated that both proposed schemes were acceptable. When taking into account all relevant information, the use of treated stormwater for drinking does emerge as an acceptable stormwater option. Participants also indicated a preference for stormwater over alternative water options, namely desalination and purchasing more water from the River Murray, for future water supply augmentation of Adelaideâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s water supply (Table 1). However, participants were not willing to pay more for stormwater, particularly if it was of non-potable quality.
Figure 3: Total iron in stormwater from various catchments (from Vanderzalm et al 2014b). The drinking water guideline (NHMRCNRMMC 2011) and long term (LTV) and short term (STV) irrigation values (ANZECC-ARMCANZ 2000) are shown for comparison
assessed. Figure 3 is an example illustrating total iron concentrations in stormwater from various catchments. In this box plot, upper (and lower) dots are 95th (and 5th) percentiles, end bars are 90th and 10th percentiles and boxes show 75th, 50th (median) and 25th percentiles, where detections allow. Only one organic chemical, benzo(a)pyrene, was found at concentrations exceeding drinking water guideline values in stormwater at sites where the limit of detection was sufficiently low. However this polyaromatic hydrocarbon is strongly sorbed and is expected to be removed by either aquifer passage or filtration.
RISK MANAGEMENT Based on the risk assessment a risk management plan was developed in consultation with City of Salisbury, SA Water and the MARSUO Water Safety Expert Panel for the existing non-potable uses of stormwater (Page et al 2013b). This provides a template that could be considered by organisations elsewhere intending to harvest stormwater. A potable use risk management plan was developed (by Vanderzalm et al 2014a) for the city of Mount Gambier, one of the satellite sites evaluated in the project. There urban stormwater is intentionally recharged through drainage wells to an aquifer which replenishes Blue Lake, the source of drinking water supply. An audit of the Salisbury stormwater harvesting operations with respect to the risk management plan has since been undertaken and is publicly available (Stevens 2014).
IMPACTS ON DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM A study on pipe biofilms and water quality was also undertaken to assess the likelihood of water quality
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changes and impacts on infrastructure maintenance. Two identical experimental buried pipe rigs were operated for 10 months, each containing coupons of copper, cement lining and PVC pipe (Tjandraatmadja et al 2014). Wetland and aquifer treated stormwater was run in one rig and the other contained a reference water of dechlorinated mains water. Water quality in the stormwater rig had greater variability than the baseline water. Yet, there was no statistically significant difference in the sediment deposited (as dry mass) on coupons in the two rigs. Biofilm abundance and diversity was studied on coupons in both rigs. There were indications of slough off of biofilm from both rigs. Presence of potential pathogens within biofilm was found in both rigs, suggesting that a disinfectant residual would be required in both water types to reduce the risk of water supply contamination from dislodged biofilms.
PUBLIC ACCEPTANCE An assessment of public acceptance of treated stormwater for 3rd pipe systems and drinking water supplies was conducted through focus groups and for
There was a preference that government owned water utilities undertake such projects if treated stormwater is to be used for drinking water systems, due to the trust the community holds for water suppliers and regulators to provide safe water over the long term. Knowledge of more common stormwater terms appeared to contribute to acceptance of stormwater via managed aquifer recharge. This suggests familiarity with certain basic concepts may contribute to increased acceptance but a high degree of technical knowledge is not needed. If stormwater is intended to be harvested for potable use or for residential non-potable use for any project an appropriate public information and consultation process would be needed.
ECONOMIC ASSESSMENT The net benefits of each of twelve options (Figure 4) were evaluated for the Parafield site by Dandy et al (2014). The levelised costs in 2012/13 (accounting for capital and operating cost) of each option are shown in Figure 5. Costs include estimates of water treatment and management costs (determined from the risk assessment), account for direct costs of salinity but exclude environmental costs and benefits. Levelised costs including existing infrastructure are thought to be a better general indication of stormwater harvesting elsewhere, but costs will be site-specific. Excluding the existing infrastructure (as sunk costs) gives a better picture for local decision makers. The benefits however differ among relevant entities. The existing water utility sees least benefit in new supplies of all types having recently invested in seawater desalination for water security and sees its benefits constrained to the operating costs of
Table 1: Most preferred option for increasing Adelaideâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s future water supply (from Mankad et al, 2013).
Taking more River Murray water
Desalination
Treated Stormwater
Non-potable use
22.2%
17.7%
60.1%
Potable use
23.1%
10.7%
66.1%
Total
22.7%
14.2%
63.1%
Treated stormwater use
Note: Non-potable use n = 604, Potable use n = 614, Total N = 1218
Figure 4: Twelve options were considered at one site for the harvesting treatment, storage of stormwater via aquifers and or dams. Uses include public open space irrigation, 3rd pipe systems and drinking water supplies, and include blending with recycled water for non-drinking uses. Each option is shown as a string with dots indicating the water quality modifying components present in that option. The treatments selected in each option are tailored to meet the water quality requirements for the relevant uses
the mix of alternative supplies. The benefits for the state are normally regarded as the long run marginal cost, but also depend on environmental benefits of stormwater harvesting that are yet to be fully quantified. The benefits for local government are highest for all entities reflecting savings on the price of existing retail supplies. At the study site, for the options considered, at a scale between 370 and 1100 ML/yr stormwater used, including costs of existing infrastructure, the least costs were found to be those for public open space irrigation, followed by drinking water supply augmentation. The most costly were 3rd pipe residential supplies, especially for retrofitting existing residential areas. Public open space irrigation and industrial use had the lowest costs, ranging from $1.31/KL (option 4), involving blending with recycled water from the Bolivar Sewage Treatment Plant to $1.57/KL (option 2), without blending. Drinking water supply augmentation costs ranged from option 10, $1.47/KL (pumping stormwater to the Little Para Reservoir (without aquifer) for storage, treatment and reticulation through mains) to $2.51/ KL, option 9 (supply to mains via a localised treatment plant with comprehensive risk management systems at). Residential 3rd pipe options started at $2.74/KL (option 8G) where stormwater is blended with recycled water from Bolivar STP. That is, the treatment costs for producing potable water from stormwater are less than the costs of constructing a separate non-potable water distribution system. When costs of existing infrastructure were excluded from the analysis levelised costs were substantially lower, e.g. as low as $0.42/KL for public open space irrigation (option 2). Environmental costs and benefits were evaluated using an ecosystems services framework, in categories of provisioning services (e.g. marine biodiversity and recreation), amenity (wetlands and coastal water clarity) and regulation services (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions and flood mitigation). Where data were available items were estimated quantitatively, otherwise qualitatively. At the Parafield study site the benefits were similar for all options, and did not help to discriminate between options. Due to lack of information on some items, and to specific conditions relevant to this site, the magnitude of quantitatively enumerated impacts was relatively small in comparison with estimated costs. With more information, and for other water harvesting designs or in other locations it is expected that environmental benefits could be considerable (Kandulu et al in press). The outcomes of the net benefits analysis at Parafield are generalised in Table 2. Demand relates to that in the area that can be met most economically by a distribution system. Local factors may result in different relative costs and demands in other locations.
Figure 5: Bars allow comparison of the levelised cost of the various options, including and excluding the capital costs of existing infrastructure. Options 5 to 8 cover new suburbs (Greenfield, G) as well as retrofit to existing suburbs (brownfield, B). Perspectives of various entities on benefit per kL supplied are shown as dotted horizontal lines. LRMC is Long Run Marginal Cost. (Figure is adapted from Dandy et al. 2014.)
CONCLUSIONS The MARSUO project was designed to assess risks and determine how they can be managed, to determine the net public benefits of potable and non-potable options, and to determine the level of community support for reuse options. This information was used to brief the SA government on all these matters in late 2013. Each aspect of the project has developed methods that are transferable to other catchments and this is demonstrated at satellite sites where there are suitable data. From a national perspective the MARSUO project demonstrates the utility of stormwater for a wide range of future uses. It suggests that drinking water uses be considered in addition to public open space irrigation, industrial use and 3rd pipe supplies. The study shows through an example that treatment costs to augment drinking water supplies can be cheaper than the costs of establishing separate non-potable water distribution systems to households. The project demonstrates the value of aquifer storage to increase the capturable volume and its potential
for water treatment, and alone or in combination with reservoirs, reducing the unit costs of supply. It was also found that drivers for sectors of the water industry can be quite different and the best commercial stormwater use options for any utility are not necessarily the optimal use for the city as a whole, and may therefore invoke loss of opportunity benefits and creation of stranded assets unless such benefits are identified. Policies are necessary to align commercial opportunities with best and most efficient use of the resource. Capitalising on the water supply opportunities for stormwater use options may require a more unified form of water governance than exists in most States. Governance that recognises the integration of existing stormwater drainage and mains distribution infrastructure with different ownership and different established financial arrangements may be required. The MARSUO project shows that the technical difficulties and water safety aspects are manageable using established processes under the National Water Quality Management Strategy,
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STORMWATER MANAGEMENT
NRMMC, EPHC and AHMC. (2006). Australian Guidelines for Water Recycling: Managing Health and Environmental Risks. National Water Quality Management Strategy Document No 21. http://www. ephc.gov.au/taxonomy/term/39.
Table 2: Relative costs and demands of different stormwater use options for the Parafield stormwater harvesting system
and the next step is to build processes that enable timely financial integration so that the highest valued projects are supported. It is intended that the project will inform stormwater policy in Australia, will allow the best uses of stormwater to be identified for projects of different types and scales, and the methods and results will provide tools, templates and examples to simplify the safe and efficient uptake of this resource. A summary report (Dillon et al 2014) contains a more detailed overview and all reports are available at the Goyder Institute website.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This paper was produced as part of the Managed Aquifer Recharge and Stormwater Use Options (MARSUO) project. This national project is supported by the (now defunct) National Water Commission, the Goyder Institute for Water Research, CSIRO Water for a Healthy Country Flagship Research Program, City of Salisbury, Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges Natural Resources Management Board and (formerly) United Water International. The authors are grateful to Chris Davis, Chair of the Steering Committee and its members, and members of the Water Safety Expert Panel, David Cunliffe, Don Bursill, John Radcliffe and Tavis Kleinig for their review and advice. We also thank all members of the research team and the many people who have assisted the research through the Technical Committee.
REFERENCES ANZECC and ARMCANZ (2000). Australian and New Zealand Guidelines for Fresh and Marine Water Quality: Volume 1 - The Guidelines, National Water Quality Management Strategy Document 4. Australian and New Zealand Environment and Conservation Council and Agriculture and Resource Management Council of Australia and New Zealand, Canberra. http://www. environment.gov.au/system/files/resources/53cda9ea7ec2-49d4-af29-d1dde09e96ef/files/nwqmsguidelines-4-vol1.pdf. Atura. (2014) Auditing of the stormwater managed aquifer recharge risk-based management plan for the
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Parafield stormwater harvesting system for non-potable use. Atura, Melbourne. Dandy, G., Ganji, A., Kandulu, J., Hatton MacDonald, D., Marchi, A., Maier, H., Mankad, A. and Schmidt, C.E. (2014). Managed Aquifer Recharge and Stormwater Use Options: Net Benefits Report. Goyder Institute for Water Research Technical Report 14/1, 179p. http:// goyderinstitute.org/index.php?id=20
Page, D., Gonzalez, D., Dillon P., Vanderzalm, J., Miotlinski, K., Vadakattu, G., Toze, S., Sidhu J., Torkzaban, S. and Barry, K. (2013a). Managed Aquifer Recharge and Stormwater Use Options: Public Health and Environmental Risk Assessment Final Report. Goyder Institute for Water Research Technical Report No 13/17, 214p. http://goyderinstitute.org/index.php?id=20 Page, D., Gonzalez, D., Naumann, B., Dillon, P., Vanderzalm, J., and Barry, K. (2013b). Stormwater managed aquifer recharge risk-based management plan, Parafield Stormwater Harvesting System, Stormwater supply to the Mawson Lakes Recycled water Scheme for dual reticulation and unrestricted municipal irrigation, and stormwater supply for industrial uses and restricted municipal irrigation. Goyder Institute for Water Research Tech Report 13/18, 106p. http://goyderinstitute.org/index.php?id=20
Dillon P., Page, D., Dandy, G., Leonard, R., Tjandraatmadja, G., Vanderzalm, J., Barry, K., Gonzalez, D. and Meyers, B. (2014). Managed Aquifer Recharge and Stormwater Use Options: Summary of Research Findings. Goyder Institute for Water Research, Technical Report.
SA Department of Environment Water and Natural Resources (2009) Water for Good. http://www. environment.sa.gov.au/about-us/our-plans
Kandulu, J., Hatton-Macdonald, D., and Connor, J. (in press). Ecosystem services in urban water investment evaluation. J. Env. Management.
Tjandraatmadja, G, Gonzalez, D., Barry, K., Kaksonen, A.H., Vanderzalm, J.V., Puzon, G., Sidhu, J., Wylie, J., and Goodman, N. (2014). Investigation of stormwater impact on water quality and distribution infrastructure, Goyder Institute for Water Research Technical Report.
Mankad, A., Walton, A., Alexander, K. and Leonard, R. (2013a). Dimensions of public acceptance for stormwater and managed aquifer recharge. Proc. AWA Conf. OzWaterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;13, Perth, May 2013. Mankad, A., Walton, A., & Leonard, R. (2013b). Public Attitudes towards Managed Aquifer Recharge and Stormwater Use in Adelaide, 2013, Goyder Institute for Water Research. Goyder Institute for Water Research Technical Report 13/10, 87p. http://goyderinstitute.org/ index.php?id=20 Myers, B., Pezzaniti, D. & Gonzalez, D. (2013). Hydrological modelling of the Parafield and Cobbler Creek catchment for hazard analysis planning, MARSUO Milestone Report 2.2. Goyder Institute for Water Research Technical Report 13/3, 130p. http:// goyderinstitute.org/index.php?id=20 NHMRC and NRMMC. (2011). Australian Drinking Water Guidelines. National Water Quality Management Strategy Document No 6. National Health and Medical Research Council, National Resource Management Ministerial Council, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra. https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/guidelines/ publications/eh52
Vanderzalm, J., Page, D., Dillon P., Lawson, J., Grey, N., Sexton, D. and Williamson, D. (2014a). A Risk-Based Management Plan for Mount Gambier Stormwater Recharge System: Stormwater recharge to the Gambier Limestone aquifer. Goyder Institute for Water Research Technical Report. Vanderzalm, J., Page, D, Gonzalez, D, Barry, K, Toze, S, Bartak, R, Qu Shisong, Weiping, W., Dillon, P. and Lim, M. H. (2014b). Managed Aquifer Recharge and Stormwater Use Options: Satellite Sites Stormwater Quality Monitoring and Treatment Requirements. Goyder Institute for Water Research Technical Report. Peter Dillon1, Declan Page1, Graeme Dandy2, Rosemary Leonard1, Grace Tjandraatmadja1, Joanne Vanderzalm1, Karen Barry1, Dennis Gonzalez1, Baden Myers3. 1. CSIRO Land and Water Flagship, Australia 2. University of Adelaide, Dept Civil and Environmental Engineering, Adelaide, SA 3. Centre for Water Management and Reuse, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, SA
WATER TREATMENT
CHILLAGOE ARSENIC FILTRATION PLANT Mareeba Shire Council engaged Amiad Water Systems to design, construct and commission a 6-10 L/s Arsenic Filtration Plant for the township of Chillagoe in far North Queensland. The town sources its water from a local bore field which suffers from Arsenic levels in the range of 0.010 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 0.020 mg/L; exceeding the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines. The contract specified that the plant must achieve a target level of Arsenic of less than 0.005 mg/L in the product water. To achieve the target Amiad proposed a system of Chlorination, Ferric Chloride Dosing, DMI65 Catalytic Media Filtration and Cartridge Filter Polishing. The supplied plant is fully automatic and controlled by an Allen Bradley PLC with a Schneider PC / Touch Screen loaded with Citect Software, for local and remote operation.
TREATMENT PROCESS
Chlorination: In ground water, Arsenic occurs predominantly as arsenite As (III), and requires conversion to arsenate As (V) by chlorination to enhance the effectiveness of the filtration process. Chlorine also acts as catalyst for the DMI-65 media, and is required for its regeneration to re-establish the oxidizing environment on the surface of the media. Ferric Chloride Dosing: Arsenic can bond with iron salts in the water and with metal based coagulants such as Ferric Chloride. Ferric Chloride is dosed such that there is a sufficient reservoir of iron for arsenic to form complexes and precipitants with the iron salts via the chemical processes of precipitation, coprecipitation and adsorption, which can then be filtered.
DMI65 Catalytic Media Filtration: DMI-65 is a manganese dioxide (MnO2) coated media whose surface acts as a good oxidant and is effective in removing both arsenite and arsenate, as well as iron/ arsenic complexes and precipitants. The DMI-65 Media Filters are periodically backwashed and rinsed based on either pressure differential across the media filters or on time, whichever occurs first. Cartridge Filters: 1 micron cartridge filters were installed to polish the product water and provide a final barrier to the precipitated arsenic.
CONCLUSION The Arsenic Filtration Plant has been successfully reducing the Arsenic to 0.001 mg/L, making it suitable for consumption. n
AMIAD WATER SYSTEMS USING DMI-65 EXCLUSIVE INFUSION TECHNOLOGY DMI-65 is a manganese dioxide infused media whose surface acts as a good oxidant and is eďŹ&#x20AC;ective in removing both arsenite and arsenate, as well as iron/arsenic complexes and precipitants.
The Arsenic Filtration Plant, designed and constructed by Amiad utilizing DMI65 Media, was commissioned in March, 2015, and has been successfully reducing the Arsenic to 0.001 mg/L, making it suitable for consumption by the community of Chillagoe, Queensland. RUSSELL FISHER Process Engineer
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LIVEABLE CITIES
THE ROLE OF THE URBAN WATER INDUSTRY IN CONTRIBUTING TO LIVEABILITY Water in the urban environment is about supporting the amenity, sustainability and productivity of our urban environments. It’s about supporting our cities’ resilience to shocks and change and the ability of water resource management to support our cities’ growth. KAIA HODGE reports.
Playground at the Prospect Reservoir.
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W
ater is the lifestream of Sydney and all major cities.
In fact Sydney is located where it is today based on the location of the Tank Stream and the need for a viable drinking water source for the First Fleet in 1788. Sydney Water continues to manage the Tank Stream, which sadly has long since disappeared under streets and high rise buildings before draining to Circular Quay. We take for granted our ability to drink water straight from the tap, have a shower and flush the toilet. When you travel overseas, you realise that this foundation of water management is yet to be achieved in many major international cities. We tend not to notice the role that water plays in day to day living – Sydney Water’s, traditional water and wastewater services are performing at their best when they are invisible. The role that water plays in a truly great city is more than just the plumbing. It is also how water contributes to the liveability of our cities, now and into the future. We want our customers to have the water services that they love – to enhance their experience of water in their day to day life. Not just in their homes, but in their outdoor environment and we want to ensure water services remain accessible and affordable. Water in the urban environment is about supporting the amenity, sustainability and productivity of our urban environments. It’s about supporting our cities’ resilience to shocks and change and the ability of water resource management to support our city’s growth.
MEETING GROWTH The development industry (both public and private sector) faces enormous challenges in meeting the demands of growth. Over the next 20 years an additional 1.3 million people will settle in Sydney. This will require an additional 500,000 dwellings to be built, and an additional 625,000 jobs to be established. The majority of this growth will be within established urban areas, and achieved by increasing urban density – going up, and also by infilling low density and old industrial areas. Development in greenfield areas will also be important in creating housing and jobs. This poses a significant challenge for the provision and financing of urban infrastructure. For Sydney’s water infrastructure, this is particularly the case for greenfield areas which will demand 80% of the capital investment in water infrastructure required to service 20-30% of Sydney’s growth.
Traditionally the development industry must cope with a plethora of process steps to get development from metro strategy to occupation, often involving multiple agencies, regulators and councils. Each have their own processes which themselves may be complex and time consuming. The traditional approach, with growth following the roll out of water and wastewater networks, is now a thing of the past. Urban and water management strategies need to anticipate and be capable of responding to the progression of growth on multiple fronts. Co-ordination is required between utilities and infrastructure providers so that planning, development approval and the actual delivery of projects are co-ordinated in a timely and efficient manner. To improve the development process there is also the need to accelerate the ability of water service providers to meet demand. Transparent processes, commercial and regulatory arrangements need to be established which support the acceleration of actual development works, without investment cost blow-outs in order to avoid inequitable impacts on the costs borne by existing customers.
IMPROVING RESILIENCE AND LIVEABILITY Greater integration of strategic land use planning and urban water planning is essential to achieve resilience, liveability and good urban design for our cities and regions. Understanding water infrastructure constraints, opportunities, and interactions with other sectors is critical to good urban planning, and cost effective investment in public infrastructure. Equally important is the direction and objectives provided to the water industry by good urban strategies. Emphasis is needed to ensure that the water services provided are valued by customers and affordable to them, both at the time of purchase and as part of their ongoing household running costs. Catering to the specific needs and wants of different customer segments, both within the home and as part of the broader precinct and community, may be in the form of urban greening, open space, waterways and playing fields. This is quite a different service offering to that of traditional water and wastewater services. The increasing population, urban density and the redevelopment of lower value land as part of urban infill also presents some broader challenges for maintaining Sydney’s liveability.
CONTINUITY AND RELIABILITY OF WATER SUPPLY A diversified water portfolio through the Sydney Metropolitan Water Plan ensures Sydney’s resilience in the face of drought and climate change. It ensures the continuity and reliability of water supply into the
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LIVEABLE CITIES
waterplay areas induce evaporative cooling. As Sydney’s population moves west and the west becomes more urbanised, the impact of more frequent and severe heatwaves is expected to become a pressing issue for the health and wellbeing of Sydneysiders – we are seeing this now in Melbourne and Adelaide. Cool, green urban environments present a value proposition for home buyers, and can reduce their future running costs. Having water available to maintain parks and playing fields through dry times is increasingly recognised as supporting the mental and physical health of our urban communities.
MITIGATING URBAN FLOODING
Naturalised stormwater filtration project.
medium and long term future, thereby supporting Sydney’s productivity and economic growth.
of existing water supply and sewerage networks to accommodate infill growth.
Sydneysiders have reduced their water consumption and maintained water efficiency behaviours following the last drought. Current total water consumption levels for Sydney are at the same levels experienced in the 1970s despite an over 50% increase in population since then.
We believe it important to protect the savings that Sydneysiders have achieved, and will continue to actively pursue water efficiency and recycling initiatives where they present a cost effective and commercially viable means of meeting demand and avoiding the need for augmentation.
Water efficiency has been embedded into our city and this has done more than avoid the need to further augment bulk water supplies. It has also significantly reduced investment required for major augmentation
WATER FOR NATURAL COOLING
From the perspective of urban water management, we also need to bear in mind that many of the areas now earmarked for infill development have been constrained by urban flooding – that’s often why they haven’t been developed for higher value purposes in the past. An early understanding of how urban flooding impacts on planned development sites provides the very best opportunity to identify affordable solutions that support broader urban development outcomes – such as provision of green space, local water harvesting, public safety and amenity.
ENERGY FROM WATER
Cup and Saucer Creek, an urban watercourse of the Cooks River catchment, Sydney.
Water has a critical role to play in supporting urban greening and mitigating urban heat through its use in urban design – waterbodies, water features, and
Urban water management also presents us with some much broader opportunities for sustainable and economic resource management in our future city. It is important that Sydney as a community considers the amount of energy used by different water management solutions. There is often a balance to be struck between the efficient management of water and the efficient use of energy, and whether energy costs are borne by the water utility through its broader customer base, or directly by individual householders. Already at Sydney Water we are generating approximately 17% of our energy needs by using biogas from wastewater treatment and hydro power, as well as a small amount of solar power. The installed capacity of our cogeneration plants can generate over 60,000 MWh of electricity per year, reducing over 60,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. This is the equivalent greenhouse gas saving of removing 15,000 cars from the road. It is also anticipated that Sydney Water’s Bondi and Malabar wastewater treatment plants will be energy neutral in the near future, based on co digestion trials that are currently being conducted. They are already respectively 90% and 70% self-sufficient in meeting their electricity needs. As the cost of energy technologies come down, and the price of energy once again starts to increase, significant opportunities are anticipated to cost effectively increase energy production. Exploration of opportunities to collaborate, and maybe even co locate, with industries where there is mutual
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benefit in converting organic waste to energy, through co digestion is taking place.
COMMUNITY USE OF LAND With increasing urban density, land used for infrastructure is too valuable to lock up and not allow the community to use. There are also opportunities to contribute to local communities through the use of infrastructure land for multiple purposes – cycleways, community gardens, open space, open air environmental education. This contributes to health, wellness and the overall sense of community belonging.
CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT Greater engagement is fostering conversations about the role of the urban water industry beyond traditional water servicing. This includes consideration of water utilities’ role in supporting community wellbeing. Innovative design of public places, commercial and residential developments also demonstrate the role of water in creating places where people choose to live, work and play. Sydney Water’s approach is to engage with our customers and communities to understand from their perspective what contributes to the liveability of their neighbourhood. We collaborate with others – agencies, councils, community groups, developers – anyone that can work with us to realise the broader benefits that water management can bring to our city. And we innovate – we are always on the lookout for ways to do things differently and better – for both today’s society and our city of the future. In April 2014 Sydney Water completed the first phase of customer research designed to better understand customers’ liveability values and preferences. This research explored what customers understand liveability to be, and what aspects are important to them. Analysis of these findings will provide a common basis for Sydney Water’s ongoing role in contributing to liveability in the Sydney region. Opportunities that water utilities may provide for greening, cooling, placemaking, connectivity and shared use of land support the physical and mental health of our communities. These demonstrate the breadth of the role that urban water services could play in supporting the liveability of our cities and regions. By understanding these opportunities, water services can help to make our cities less susceptible to stresses, shocks and extreme events. This in turn makes our cities better places to live and makes our communities more resilient. Whether explicit or implied, expectations and aspirations for the role that water plays in contributing to liveability are likely to be different from place to place, community to community, and likely to change over time. These expectations will also reflect the needs and preferences of people within communities who
have already made a choice about where they live and work. Such choices may be on the basis of affordability, access to employment and services, natural features (beaches, bushland), and/or social infrastructure. A tenet for understanding communities’ preferences for liveability is that their basic and essential needs are (at least capable of being) met before higher order aspirations for liveability become relevant to those communities. In regions and towns that still struggle to ensure water supply security, or to protect their waterways from pollution, the role of water utilities in liveability is still about providing reliable services to satisfy these fundamental needs.
AN URBAN WATER PLANNING FRAMEWORK Sydney Water has contributed to the development of a national framework for urban water planning as part of the Water Services Association of Australia. Of most importance in creating this framework, particularly in the context of resilience and liveability, is the need for water utilities to inform and influence the external strategic environment. Influencing trends in the strategic environment at the front end of the planning process provides opportunities for better outcomes. As time and urban planning processes progress, fewer opportunities exist to deliver the most efficient, productive, reliable and resilient services for the community. Water service providers need to move from simply monitoring and understanding the external environment, to actively influencing it, noting both long and short term trends, as well as identifying potential for disruptive events. Water service providers are encouraged to contemplate opportunities to leverage their technical and community knowledge to support effective outcomes in the public interest. The need for the water industry to inform and influence is also of critical importance, particularly in the context of achieving resilience and contributing to liveability. Without this type of two way engagement a ‘technically correct’ solution can become rejected by the community and government. Recent examples of this include a number of water supply solutions, such as dams, desalination plants and the use of indirect potable reuse. A more outwardly focused approach to urban water planning is required to reflect customer and community needs and preferences. This requires urban water utilities to broaden their vision beyond meeting regulatory requirements to embrace new expectations, particularly with regard to customer value. A better understanding of customers’ values and willingness to pay for services, as well as housing and service affordability, is expected to drive the industry to provide a greater range of services and more choices
KAIA HODGE, MANAGER, LIVEABLE CITY PROGRAMS, SYDNEY WATER Kaia Hodge is the Manager, Liveable City Programs, and responsible for developing and implementing Sydney Water’s Liveable City Strategy across the organisation. Kaia’s teams set long-term direction and implement programs for land and waterway management, energy and eco efficiency, integrated water resources management, and heritage. Her team is also leading Sydney Water’s collaboration with local government on projects to enhance liveability. Kaia is an active committee member of the Water Services Association of Australia and has contributed to their publications on liveability and urban water planning.
for customers. The framework emphasises the need for community and stakeholder engagement throughout all phases of the urban water planning process. In this way, the framework acknowledges that there is a need to address community values and expectations and consider different economic and political perspectives. The framework encourages water businesses to work with customers to determine what they value and why, and to consider what benefits, if any, may come from customer segmentation work. Also critical engagement with the broader urban planning sector is required to ensure integration between strategic land use planning and urban water planning.
THE FUTURE As the Australian water industry underpins the liveability of our cities, towns and regions, it must have a greater role in urban planning, design and management. The Australian water industry needs to play a key role in influencing public policy debate on the form and function of growing cities, towns and regions. It also has a role in considering how best to service water needs in the short and long term. Greater integration of planning and providing urban water services with strategic land use planning will result in the best long-term benefits for residents in the most costeffective way. This integrated approach is also essential to deliver services that meet multiple objectives including resilience, liveability and good urban design. n
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A Q U A C U LT U R E
USING ZEOLITE IN FISH FARMING The production facility at Werris Creek
Zeolite Australia’s operation in Werris Creek near Tamworth in New South Wales mines zeolite that is used for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of water filtration, fertilisers, wetting agents, stock feeds, adsorbents, flocculants, and more increasingly in aquaculture.
Z
eolite is sometimes called “nature’s blotter” because of its extraordinary ability to absorb, hold, release and exchange different chemicals, nutrients, toxins and ions according to need.
Zeolite Australia was founded by the Stephen family and is run by Greg Stephen who was present at the discovery of zeolite at Werris Creek. He pioneered the use of zeolite with leading companies in key industries providing a solid footing for production. Today, the zeolite mined at Werris Creek is used for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of water filtration, fertilisers, wetting agents, stock feeds, adsorbents, flocculants and many other applications.
There’s zeolite in them hills – 300 million tonnes, actually
Peter Rabbidge inspects part of the cleansing system
The Werris Creek mine manager is Kim May, who has a lifetime of experience in operating and managing mining and processing facilities, with wide experience in varied metals and minerals including tin mining.
THE FORMATION OF ZEOLITE Zeolite is a volcanic substance, but unlike many other volcanic substances it is not formed by the expulsion of lava from the volcano, but rather the settling of the ash. When volcanic ash settles over a freshwater lake it absorbs the water and sinks to the bottom. Then over millions of years it becomes compressed, forming a layer of zeolite. The volcano in question was possibly in Mudgee about 300 million years ago during the peak of the Carboniferous Period, when most coal deposits were also formed. When the Great Dividing Range was formed it pushed the zeolite layer up, so it is now tending toward vertical, leaving a seam 40 metres wide. Zeolite Australia’s Peter Rabbidge says that while zeolites are found all over the world, the mineral found in Werris Creek is much harder than anywhere else – as evidenced by the fact they have to blast
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the rock out, while other sites can extract it through simple digging. They supply zeolite for water treatment plants and swimming pool filtration. Rabbidge says the beauty of it is that it will last twice as long as sand media, and that because of its hardness, their zeolite will last a lot longer than others. He says they’ve had tests conducted that show it has a wear rate of 10 per cent over 10 years.
APPLICATIONS “It’s quite a unique filter media,” says Rabbidge.
– two of the real nasties, especially in commercial applications. Another benefit is it pulls out ammonia, and will also pull out other heavy metals. This is quite unique as there is no other filter media on the market that will do the same.” Besides water filtration, zeolite is also used for pollution control; in remediation of mines through absorption and retention of dangerous heavy metals and other metallurgical wastes; in farming, horticulture and turfing by making fertilisers more effective by preventing leeching and holding valuable nutrients; in vermiculture making worm farms more efficient and in aquaculture as it decreases ammonia levels in ponds and tanks, and filtrates water for cleaner tanks. Different grades of zeolite can also be powdered and used in cosmetics.
“Tests show it can filter down as small as two microns. We went to the Australian water quality centre run by Paul Monas for the tests, and initially we’d hoped to come down as small as five microns, but the tests came back saying two microns.
ZEOLITE IN AQUACULTURE
“At that level it filters out Giardia and Cryptosporidium
Some fish farms use similar preparation methods to prawn farms, i.e. prepared sand and limestone beds,
Crushing ore down to a size where it can be further refined
NUCLEAR GRADE CLEANSING Zeolite’s micro-porous ability to capture some ions while allowing others to pass freely allows many fission products to be efficiently removed from nuclear waste and permanently trapped.
The ore in various stages of production
Packaged up and ready to go
Additionally, zeolite’s alumino-silicate construction is extremely durable and resistant to radiation even in porous form. Once the zeolite is loaded with trapped fission products, the zeolite-waste combination can be hot pressed into an extremely durable ceramic form, closing the pores and trapping the waste in a solid stone block. Zeolite was used in the management of radioactive leaks in Chernyobyl, and more recently in the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster where sandbags of zeolite were dropped into the seawater near the power plant to adsorb radioactive caesium which was present in high levels.
particularly if they are batch breeding. However, most tend to use concrete or polyethylene tanks or unlined ponds. When tank storage methods are used all nutrient removal becomes costly as it must be done externally. When maintaining a fish ponds or aquaria, ammonias have to be oxidized to nitrite – nitrate but if nitrite levels exceed 0.1-0.5 mg/L the pond environment starts to become toxic to fish and other aquatic life. The nitrification cycle can stall if there is insufficient free O2 throughout the cycle; this is because nitrification requires 4.2 O2 molecules per ammonia molecule. This is not so critical in open pond situations where the surface aeration factor is high but is critical in tank situations where surface aeration is negligible.
ZEOLITE IN FISH FARMS Presently the approach of many aquaculture institutions
is to use biological filters to facilitate removal of ammonia by complete nitrification. This requires a high energy input to simply transport on many passes sufficient ammonia rich water to accommodate full nitrification. In the process of nitrification the water becomes acidic (through loss of ions) which requires costly pH adjustment. Using Zeolite in static beds, either in ponds or in shallow submerged filtration systems, allows ammonia to be removed without conversion to nitrate. Energy requirements are substantially lowered – little or no pH correction is required. Subsequent ammonia charged zeolite is available for horticultural use and production of a waste with high value.
When zeolite is implemented in situations where high stocking rates are used the critical nature of overfeeding, which otherwise can lead to fish death and loss of production, is reduced. In extreme stocking situations there still may be a need for the use of some biofilters. These can incorporate large grain zeolites, which with their much greater surface area allow smaller filtration units to be used particularly where space is limited. Zeolites in biofilters will still take up ammonia but at a lower rate due to the surface area differences between particle sizes. This provides a sink for ammonia-loving bacteria thus averting boom and bust cycles and allowing a much higher bacteria level (nitromonus and nitrobacta). Contact: www.zeolite.com.au n
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RIVER & ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT
PROTECTING AND IMPROVING OUR FRESHWATER ENVIRONMENT Arcitecta’s Mediaflux data management platform is being used to capture and analyse crucial pollution data from the Edgars Creek catchment in the City of Whittlesea in Victoria.
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S
tormwater is the major source of pollution in urban waterways1 and poor stormwater management practices in industrial catchments are thought to be an important factor2. Previous studies of heavy metal and hydrocarbon contamination in the stormwater drainage network have found industrial estates produce more than their share of pollution, but also that targeted education and enforcement programs can substantially reduce this pollution3.
As part of their commitment to reducing water pollution, the City of Whittlesea wanted to target their stormwater education program at the catchments responsible for the most pollution. The Centre for Aquatic Pollution Identification and Management (CAPIM)4 were commissioned to identify the dirtiest catchments. CAPIM used a combination of approaches to measure the relative contribution of small industrial catchments to non-point source pollution, including passive samplers, bioassays, and surveys of stream ecology5.
CAPIM SURVEYS The Victorian Centre for Aquatic Pollution Identification and Management conducted the stormwater assessment in several stages. 1. CAPIM first reviewed existing sediment quality data along Darebin and Edgars Creek to identify pollution hotspots (Melbourne Water, 2007). a) To improve the spatial resolution of pollution transects, CAPIM repeated the 2008 sediment quality survey of Edgars Creek in 2010 with the addition of two more sites on Central Creek and the Thomastown East Drain. 2. CAPIM then conducted a five-week pilot survey of pollutant loads in the stormwater drainage system immediately upstream of these hotspots. Researchers estimated pollutant loads using in-drain passive samplers. These samplers were developed by CAPIM to provide a time-integrated measurement of heavy metal and hydrocarbon concentrations in underground stormwater drains3. a) After five weeks of sampling, CAPIM compared pollutant concentrations between catchments to identify areas associated with consistently high contaminant concentrations. b) In the three most contaminated catchments where, CAPIM divided the catchment into smaller subcatchments to locate contaminant source at finer spatial resolution.
Figure 1: Sediment quality transect collection locations. Darebin Creek sites D1-D9 were surveyed in Spring 2006 and Autumn 2007. Edgars Creek sites were surveyed in Spring 2008 and Spring 2010. Central Creek (CC1) and Thomastown East Drain (TE1) were surveyed in Spring 2010 only. Figure 2: Spatial distribution of copper concentrations and variation between catchments. Catchments which differ significantly from 1 (p<0.05) indicated by an asterisk.
3. CAPIM followed up the pilot survey with a further five-week study of all catchments, plus the additional sub-catchments identified in the second stage of this project. 4. A key question in urban stormwater management is the environmental relevance of pollution. To measure
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RIVER & ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT
The Centre for Aquatic Pollution Identification and Management (CAPIM) is a scientific research organisation, established to identify and address the impact of pollution in water environments. CAPIM’s goal is to improve aquatic ecosystem health by developing innovative approaches to pollution detection for inland waters and estuaries, and working with environmental managers to reduce pollution impacts. CAPIM achieves this aim by applying multidisciplinary and collaborative science between environmental management agencies and other research institutes, engage forensic science to identify pollution impacts, developing novel pollution identification technologies for inland waters and estuaries and by developing costeffective, integrated water monitoring tools. CAPIM is also actively involved in creating opportunities and forums for the transfer of integrated water pollutant information and knowledge between agencies. Since commencing in January 2010, CAPIM has developed pollution detection technologies to detect acute pollution events, especially in storm water drains, detect pesticides and endocrine disrupting chemicals, and monitor water sediment quality.
the impact of the dirtiest catchment on the ecology of the creek, CAPIM also performed a survey of stream macroinvertebrate community composition, and measured the toxicity of sediment using laboratory bioassays.
STUDY CHALLENGES These studies involve multiple teams from different scientific disciplines and catchment management roles working together to identify the major trends in pollutant concentrations in each catchment. Although the work was primarily funded by the council, CAPIM and EPA Victoria collaborated on the chemistry, ecotoxicology and stream ecology aspects of the project and contributed significant in-kind resources. One of the challenges of bringing such diverse teams together is to agree on a common vocabulary for the metadata associated with the samples collected. It is common for different disciplines to use conflicting conventions for sample descriptions. Added to this potential for confusion is the diversity of data types generated both in the field and later in the lab. Data from the field includes measurements from in-situ water quality meters, the results and observations from onsite tests and details of the spatial distribution of heavy metals, hydrocarbons and silver. Data from the lab includes toxicity tests, chemical assays, biomarkers and metabolomics. These data are in the form of binary data, plain text, word documents, spread sheets, scanned images or PDF documents.
DATA MANAGEMENT AND ANALYSIS Arcitecta is an Australian-based company that specialises in data management systems for large-scale distributed data. Its core product, Mediaflux® is a flexible data management solution that virtualises otherwise incompatible data into a secure distributed collaboration environment. Designed for extreme scale and flexibility, Mediaflux provides automated indexing of content and metadata to enable management of any type of structured and unstructured data on any storage system across multiple locations. Arcitecta was founded in 1998, is a privately held company headquartered in Melbourne, Australia. The company exports its products globally via direct sales, resellers and OEM arrangements. Arcitecta recently established its US operations headquartered in California.
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Mediaflux helps CAPIM to capture and manage the range of data collected by allowing a wide range of data types and formats, while enforcing minimum standards of metadata. For example, CAPIM can easily associate photos (JPG) and site notes (text documents and scanned images) with a site location, and link these unambiguously with analytical results (PDF and plain text). Qualitative data can be extracted from Mediaflux for standard parametric analyses such as principal components and analysis of variance. At the same time, qualitative data such as species presence or animal survival can be extracted for survival analysis or non-metric multidimensional scaling can be easily linked to the same records, with all the associated metadata available for interrogation if needed. Once extracted from Mediaflux for analysis, CAPIM’s results clearly showed that drains in industrial estates had substantially more oil and heavy metals than those in nearby residential areas. Central Creek
and sections of Edgar’s and Darebin Creeks had high concentrations of oil and heavy metals, well above background levels. Of the 26 catchments we surveyed, four were identified as pollution hot-spots, and referred to the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA Victoria) for further investigation. CAPIM was also able to identify the source of a long-suspected pollution issue by tracing the contamination all the way up Edgar’s Creek, up the Keon Park Main Drain to a small industrial catchment. CAPIM and council staff subsequently participated in an EPA compliance blitz on the businesses in pollution hotspots, with compliance or enforcement required at 25% of premises visited. “Our aim is to provide catchment managers with the tools to protect and improve our water quality by identifying the source of pollutants and measuring their impact on the environment,” Stephen Marshall, aquatic scientist for the Centre for Aquatic Pollution Identification and Management, said. “The ability to search for data using spatial queries is extremely useful when combined with basic metadata such as project name, analytical method, or sampling range. This means we can easily identify areas of interest based on visual searches and combine these with other geospatial data, such as catchment and drainage maps. Pollution events are often episodic, so a fast response is critical to identification and diagnosis. Mediaflux helps us distribute data quickly and effectively to all project members.” Mediaflux also allows CAPIM to control access to data at a very fine level, which is especially important for projects, which include collaborators from diverse institutions with varying levels of involvement. This means CAPIM can easily separate the location information, which is accessible to all, from the chemical, toxicology or stream ecology results, which are accessible only to specific parties. “The ability to interrogate data from field studies and laboratory tests provides our water resources managers with better ways to identify pollution impacts on our vulnerable aquatic ecosystems and the most cost-effective management options to address these impacts,” Jason Lohrey, founder and chief technology officer at Arcitecta, said. “Mediaflux is critical to these studies and reflects Arcitecta’s sustained investment in environmental research. “Our work with the Centre for Aquatic Pollution Identification and Management reinforces our belief in innovation and excellence in research data management, through our research partner The University of Melbourne.”
REFERENCES: 1. Pettigrove, V., Hoffmann, A., 2003c. Toxicants in Melbourne’s Streams and Wetlands: An Emerging Threat to Healthy Aquatic Ecosystems, Ozwater Convention & Exhibition – Australian Water Association, Perth. 2. Pettigrove, V., Hoffmann, A., 2003b. Major Sources of Heavy Metal Pollution during Base Flows from Sewered Urban Catchments in the City of Melbourne, The 3rd South Pacific Conference on Stormwater and Aquatic Resource Protection and the Annual Chapter of the International Erosion Control Association, Auckland, New Zealand. 3. Marshall, S., Pettigrove, V., 2008. Evaluation of an Industry Stormwater Education and Enforcement Program. Centre for Environmental Stress and Adaptation Research (CESAR), Melbourne. 4. The Centre for Aquatic Pollution Identification and Management (CAPIM) is located within the within the School of Biosciences at The University of Melbourne.
ABOVE: Metallic residue on passive sampler retrieved 6th May rom catchment 26. TOP: WP-81 ph Cond Salinity monitor.
5. Marshall, S., Lapinski, V., Kramer, A., Pettigrove, V., 21. Locating stormwater pollution hotspots in industrial catchments. Presented at the 7th international conference on water sensitive urban design. n
STEVE MARSHALL Aquatic Scientist Freshwater Program Grad. Dip. Biotechnology and Environmental Biology Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) 2004 B. App. Sci. (Biotechnology) Queensland University of Technology (QUT) 1999 Marshall’s research is focused on measuring and reducing the impact of pollution on urban waterways by developing innovative approaches to improve the detection and measurement of common pollutants such as hydrocarbons and heavy metals. He is currently applying a range of these approaches to measure the ecological significance of pesticides commonly found in urban stormwater and sediments, including behavioural biomonitors and passive samplers.
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17-18 AUGUST 2016
Gold Coast Conference & Convention Centre, Australia
SAVE THE DATE Since 1998 SPLASH! has become the must attend event for manufacturers, retailers, pool builders, contractors, architects, landscapers, engineers and service technicians to stay ahead of market directions as the wet industry continues to expand and take on new dimensions and international trends. Australasiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s foremost pool & spa trade show provides the opportunity to showcase your company, launch new products, network, build existing relationships, meet the press and build brand awareness while meeting the key decision makers in the wet industry. Contact Karen Jaques on 02 9660 2113 or email kjaques@intermedia.com.au for more information.
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EVENTS
INNOVATION AND IDEAS ON SHOW AT OZWATER ‘15 This year saw the annual OzWater event return to Adelaide with 2700 participants benefitting from not only the ideas and discussion generated by notable water industry presenters, but also from the technological innovations on show.
T
he Australian Water Association (AWA) once again hosted Australia’s largest international water conference and exhibition – OzWater ’15 – which was held from May 12th to 14th at the newly-updated Adelaide Convention Centre on the banks of the River Torrens. This year’s theme – Water for Growth and Prosperity – saw a massive 153 oral presentations on topics such as wastewater treatment, water reuse, asset management, stormwater, liveability and sustainability, and servicing rural and regional communities. According to AWA, OzWater ’15 had 2700 participants, including 960 delegates, 1000 trade visitors and 181 trade exhibits. It also reported the attendance of international delegates from 45 countries. Officially opened by Ian Hunter MLC, the South Australian Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray and Minister for Climate Change, the three-day event was structured with plenary sessions and keynote speakers followed in the afternoon by parallel sessions and workshops.
The bustling Exhibitor’s Hall at OzWater ’15
Hunter said Ozwater’15 was a great success. “Ozwater is an important international event which returned to Adelaide for the first time since 2011, and featured more than 150 local, national and international speakers,” he said. “It’s a great opportunity to showcase the best of our state’s water and related industries, and also learn from the brightest minds from around the country and the world.
columnist for The Australian. Salt’s presentation was entitled ‘Think Big, Think Long-Term, Think Water: Why water requires real commitment to secure the future liveability of a community.’ He discussed population growth and the increasing global demand for water, and how in the future governments are likely to turn to the private sector for water solutions.
This year’s keynote speakers were:
Cathryn Ross – Ofwat Chief Executive, the Water Services Regulation Authority UK. Ross presented on ‘Privatising the UK Water Industry: Lessons Learnt that Benefit Customers.’ She discussed the history of water services in England and Wales, challenges facing the UK water industry and Ofwat’s successes.
Bernard Salt – demographer, futurist, social editor/
Thierry Mallet – Director, Innovation & Business
“In addition, with around 80% of the 1,000 delegates attending from out of South Australia, the economic benefit to the state is estimated to be in the area of $500,000.”
Performance for Suez Environment (France) presented on ‘The Importance of Innovation in the Delivery of Water Solutions for the 21st century.’ Mallet discussed a series of global megatrends and how they relate to the water industry. Aaron Hood – Chief Investment Officer, Minderoo Group presented on ‘Unlocking Australia’s Water Resources.’ Wednesday evening’s OzWater ’15 Gala Dinner saw 960 guests enjoy the best of South Australian food and wine. During the social extravaganza, major sponsor TRILITY donated funds to WaterAid in place of a delegate gift. Out in the Exhibitor’s Hall Kenelec Scientific, one of Australia’s leading and longest serving scientific and
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EVENTS
ABOVE: Technology on show RIGHT: Kenelec Scientific’s FlowCAM
environmental technology companies, showed off its FlowCAM digital imaging particle analyser at this year’s event. FLowCAM simplifies and speeds up the process of identifying and quantifying nuisance algae, taste and odour algae, and toxic cyanobacteria. It helps water system personnel identify an algae bloom in a reservoir or other surface water source much faster and with greater certainty than they could by traditional means. Kenelec Scientific sales engineer Rod Smith said OzWater ’15 generated a lot of interest for the FlowCAM technology. “It was virtually constant because there was always somebody walking past wanting to have a look, and what we found too was word got around,” he said. “A few people passed on word to somebody else and then they came for a look, so it was great.”
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New to the Australian market, FlowCAM automatically captures digital images of microscopic particles in the range of 2µm – 2mm, storing each image and indexing them according to 32 discrete measurements (such as length, width, transparency, and circularity). This large number of measurements taken for each particle enables sophisticated pattern recognition algorithms to identify subtle differences between particles for automated identification and classification; much like the human eye can through a microscope. But unlike traditional microscopy, the FlowCAM can perform this type of analysis automatically on thousands and thousands of particles per minute. Smith credits the technology’s real-time results for the amount of interest it generated at the event. “You put your sample in and you see the results straight away,” he said. “The machine automatically does all the
counting and everything for you. Most people that saw it said, ‘My goodness, we’d have to do all that under a microscope and count manually.’ The delegates could see something that could save them a lot of time and give them more beneficial results.” Smith also found the OzWater delegates were mostly from industries relevant to Kenelec Scientific. “The delegates were basically all from the water industry,” he said. “A lot of water companies, people related to drinking water and wastewater, and we also had people from universities come to our stand, many of whom doing aquatic studies and perhaps doing algae research. “Oz Water is a fair investment and overall we felt we could see real return. Kenelec Scientific got some good, solid enquiries out of the event, and with one of those enquiries we’re well down the track to hopefully securing an order.” n
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INDEX
Rowallan Dam, Tasmania. Image courtesy of Hydro Tasmania.
ADVERTISERSâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; INDEX Australian Innovative Systems ............. 2
Clean Energy Council ........................... 6
Proaqua ............................................. 43
A.S. Harrison & Co Pty Ltd .................. 50
Government News ............................. 46
Quantum Filtration Medium Pty Ltd .... 59
Baleen Filters Pty Ltd ......................... 22
Hayward ............................................ 75
Sentek Technologies .......................... 27
Barron GJM Pty Ltd ...................... 11, 76
IWES .................................................. 41
SPLASH! ..................................... 70, 73
Bentley Systems Inc .......................... 31
Oleology ........................................ 4, 47
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