Improving wastewater in regional Australia

When considering any infrastructure task in rural and regional Australia, most people tend to think about the scarcity of people and resources in those areas. However, it is also a significant source of innovation, and wastewater provides opportunities for that innovation.

When considering any infrastructure task in rural and regional Australia, most people tend to think about the scarcity of people and resources in those areas. However, it is also a significant source of innovation.

Innovation can lead to remarkable results for organizations in the water and wastewater industry, along with benefits for their customers. Grampians Wimmera Mallee Water (GWMWater) remains at the forefront of innovative technologies and techniques. As a vertically integrated water business, they are directly involved in every aspect of the water cycle. GWMWater provides water and wastewater services to approximately 72,000 people in rural areas and urban towns, serving a large area of over 60,000 square kilometres—roughly the size of Tasmania and about one-third of Victoria.

There are challenges associated with managing a small population that is sparsely distributed across a large area. GWMWater Executive Manager Infrastructure, Nalaka Vitharana, has been involved in the industry for many years across various states and jurisdictions.

“Every water utility is different, but they generally have similar challenges,” Vitharana said. “Every utility wants to provide reliable and affordable services, be able to manage extreme weather events, do less with more and maximise opportunities with what was previously considered waste streams.”

Challenges in rural and regional Australia

Rural and regional Australia face some additional challenges. Vitharana pointed out that regional wastewater treatment plants tend to be much smaller than those in metropolitan areas. “It can be difficult to implement and maintain these systems affordably where you don’t have the economies of scale.”

“This challenge however drives our innovation and resourcefulness,” he said.

Another big issue facing utilities like GWMWater is climate variability. Vitharana pointed out that they expect rainfall events to be of higher intensity but occurring less frequently.

“This means there will be periods where we will get significantly higher inflows into our wastewater systems.” Power outages during storms are also a challenge for the organisation. “If there is a power outage, we still need to be able to maintain power on site to ensure recycled water and wastewater is contained, heavy rainfall events that increase volumes in our wastewater storages,” said Vitharana.

“At the same time, we’re also expecting longer dry periods where trees are looking for water. In our sewer systems, one of the major causes of blockages is tree roots entering the system at the joints between pipes. The scarcity of water at these times does however create the opportunity for us to supplement water supplies with fit-for-purpose recycled water.”

Making a difference

Vitharana highlighted the importance of innovation in managing smaller wastewater systems across large service areas. GWMWater has a mixture of traditional gravity sewer systems, pressure sewer systems, and septic tank effluent disposal systems (STEDs) to collect wastewater, depending on the size, topography and existing infrastructure in the town or area.

“Innovation is fundamental to providing affordable and high-quality services to smaller regional centres. We also use a range of treatment technologies, from sophisticated Sequence Batch Reactor (SBR) treatment systems to simple waste stabilisation ponds,” he said. “We provide recycled water for irrigating green spaces such as parks, ovals, golf courses and racecourses, for agricultural trials for the grains industry, for grazing land, as well as viticulture.”

One of the latest innovative projects for GWMWater is the upgrade of the wastewater treatment plant at Donald. Donald is a small town located in northwest Victoria, within the Shire of Buloke, with a population of about 1,500 people. The town has several industries that support its growth but that also discharge a considerable amount of trade waste. With industrial influence continuing to grow, the original treatment plant – built in 1969 to treat wastewater from predominantly residential customers – needed an upgrade.

“Right from the start our focus for the upgrade was to minimise energy use, emissions, and waste and build in resilience for climate variability,” Vitharana said. “The existing treatment plant site did not have grid connected power and is a considerable distance from the town. The orientation of the network also made it expensive to establish a plant at a new site. It meant that we had to do something different if we were going to meet our objectives. We landed on the installation of rotating biological contactors, or RBCs. RBCs are an attached growth secondary treatment process with a low energy footprint. This technology is well suited to being powered by a Solar Batteries Energy Storage System.”

The local power also provides resilience against outages due to storms.

Wider uses

RBCs can provide GWMWater with a low energy, low emissions solution for its smaller treatment plants. They can buffer variability in certain effluent parameters as wastewater quality changes.

“That’s one of the reasons we selected that technology,” Vitharana said. “This technology is great at handling different levels of biological load and we can generate renewable power on site.”

The Dimboola Wastewater Treatment Plant will also be upgraded in the coming months, taking learnings from the Donald Wastewater Treatment Plant upgrade.

“Our focus remains on minimising our environmental footprint and maximising the beneficial use of recycled water and any of the by-products that are generated,” Vitharana said. “We’ll continue to support regional communities by looking for and adopting technology that supports our region’s development.”

For more information, visit www.gwmwater.org.au/

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