Deep Creek Watermain

Remarkable Restoration

PROJECT: Deep Creek Watermain CONTRACTOR: Fulton Hogan CLIENT: Dunedin City Council VALUE: $366,000

Deep Creek Raw Water Feed remediation project shows what can be achieved when a client, the contractor and subcontractors have a one-team relationship.

The result helped safeguard Dunedin’s water supply after a significant Act of God, at a cost equivalent to less than $2 per resident.

On 24 September 2021, a 4000m3 rock fall destroyed the raw water feed at Deep Creek, in the hills of Middlemarch. Deep Creek is the source of 60 percent of Dunedin’s potable water, flowing to the city’s Mt Grand Reservoir via a 40 kilometre concrete and steel gravity-fed pipe system. This left Dunedin City with an estimated maximum of 40 days’ supply of water. The initial projections were that reinstating the Deep Creek Raw Water Feed could take up to six weeks.

The project was completed in less than four – a week building the access, 10 days clearing the rock and a week fabricating and installing the infrastructure.

Working with Dunedin City Council, GHD and subcontractors Action Engineering, GroundFix and Geosolve, Fulton Hogan developed and executed an operating plan to successfully meet this pressing need in a challenging and unpredictable environment, ensuring New Zealand’s fourth largest city had an undisrupted flow of potable water.