Potable Water Treatment Plant, Wyangala Dam
Water Infrastructure NSW (WINSW), within the Department of Planning Industry and Environment (DPIE), has appointed Enviropacific to design, construct, commission, and hand over a fit for purpose 0.8MLD water treatment plant. The plant will deliver a safe, secure, and reliable drinking water supply to the village of Wyangala and the Wyangala Waters Holiday Park.
The new water treatment plant is planned as part of an early works package for the Wyangala Dam Wall Raising project. In 2019 the NSW Government classified the Wyangala Dam Wall Raising project as Critical State Significant Infrastructure.
Why are we installing a water treatment plant?
The new plant will treat surface water from the Wyangala Dam to a standard that complies with Australian Drinking Water Guidelines (ADWG) for a Category 4 Catchment.
Enviropacific’s treatment system will allow the community and the holiday park van owners to continue benefiting from the wide range of recreation activities available in the Wyangala Dam catchment without compromising the quality of drinking water available to the local community and its many visitors.
Enviropacific will deliver a treatment plant that will have the adaptability, resilience, and capability to treat water of variable quality resulting from:
- High turbidity events during refilling events following a drought;
- Increasingly higher levels of soluble manganese as the water depth progressively increases;
- The increased frequency of algae events which are expected due to the generally increasing temperatures, and;
- Contamination of the water catchment due to recreational activities, agriculture, and rainfall-runoff following bushfires and other natural events that may occur from time to time.
How will the water be treated?
Enviropacific’s water treatment system’s primary processes incorporate oxidation, coagulation, and membrane filtration (ultra-filtration). This is followed by disinfection as the main treatment approach to produce potable (drinking) water and will result in a process train offering the greatest validated LRV for bacteria removal that will be important in a category 4 catchment.
The unit operations and equipment used to achieve this will be:
- Oxidation of metal salts, such as iron and manganese, via an aeration system in the repurposed existing raw water tank
- pH adjustment for optimal coagulation conditions and coagulation to destabilise any colloids and transform any dissolved organics to particulates before filtration.
- Membrane filtration for particulate removal, including automatic chemical cleaning equipment
- Adsorption for removal of residual organic impurities
- Disinfection by UV light and chlorination
- Treated water storage, repurposing an existing raw water tank and installing a new storage tank
- Membrane and Filter backwash water management system incorporating sludge thickening, supernatant filtration and return, and sludge drying and evaporation
- Various other types and configurations of pumps for flow and pressure control through the plant
- Instrumentation for the monitoring of flow, pressure, turbidity, and pH
Benefits of our design and build process
Water treatment technology has advanced quite substantially in recent years. Enviropacific now has more than 30 people supporting our water treatment business across Australia, including project managers and engineers from chemical, environmental, mechanical, and civil engineering backgrounds, and operators from various trade backgrounds. This means that Enviropacific is well connected to the communities increasing requirements for improved water quality and is at the forefront of delivering innovative technologies and driving the best practices required on projects.
The Wyangala Dam Water Treatment Plant will feature many of these innovations. It will have a very compact footprint that minimises site disturbance and maximises the use of gravity flows. This will minimise pumping and energy costs and reduce the overall lifecycle cost of the project. It will also offer ease of operation and the potential for additional capacity that will be required to support the greater opportunities generated from the Dam Wall Raising Project.
Enviropacific always has sustainability in mind, incorporating and repurposing existing assets. The Wyangala project will be no different and will sustainably repurpose two of the existing raw water tanks. One as a raw water and oxidation tank and another a clear water (or treated) tank. The existing sludge drying beds will also be reused for an evaporation basin, incorporating supernatant return rather than just subnantent.
Benefits for the local community
The construction of the Water Treatment Plant will deliver an economic benefit to the local community. Enviropacific is actively involved in procuring goods and services from the local region that will be utilised on the project.
For more information on the project please visit the official Wyangala Dam Wall Raising website at:
https://water.nsw.gov.au/water-infrastructure-nsw/dam-projects/wyangala-dam