Managing Australia’s water crisis is perhaps one of the most contentious public issues we are facing. The need to ‘drought-proof’ our urban centres, especially those with rapidly-growing populations, is necessitating significant upgrades of water infrastructure.
The Gold Coast Desalination Plant was designed and constructed in response to the unprecedented drought in South-East Queensland and the need for a non-climate dependent water source. The A$1.12b project was successfully delivered using innovative, sustainable approaches and proactive community consultation.
It included the delivery of a reverse osmosis desalination plant, two inlet and outlet tunnels, a 25 kilometre pipeline, a 1900 litre per second pump station and a 125 megalitre reservoir.
The Gold Coast in the international context
South-East Queensland is growing at an unprecedented rate, with the region experiencing its worst recorded drought. With existing catchments such as the Hinze Dam and the Wivenhoe system containing less than 30 months’ supply, desalination is the only treatment process that could reliably supply the volume of water required within the tight timeframe brought about by the extreme severity of the drought.
Located next to the Gold Coast Airport in Tugun, Queensland, the Gold Coast Desalination Plant was constructed for the new owner WaterSecure by the GCD Alliance (GCDA) comprising John Holland Group, Veolia Water Australia, Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM) and Cardno. With a capital value of A$1.12b, the project includes the desalination plant construction and intake/outlet tunnel, marine and network pipeline engineering.
Awarded in December 2006, the plant was fast-tracked to be completed in December 2008 (as combined dam reserves in the region had been down to as low as 17% during the design and construct phase) – making it one of only a few large desalination plants in the world.
Outcomes
The plant produced its first water on 25 November 2008, and started to supply water into the south-east Queensland grid for the first time in early January 2009. The plant will continue to ramp up and now operates at full capacity of 133 ML/d.
Planning and design has been undertaken to increase the capacity to 170ML/d if required, however any expansion past this would be constrained by the distribution pipelines in the receiving network.
Lessons Learnt
Delivering large desalination projects presents new challenges for the water industry and the engineering design consultancies that have to deliver them.
Different skill sets required to meet these challenges include:
- How to apply innovation and sustainability to address the challenges
- The difficulty to achieve public acceptance of these facilities calls for proactive community consultation/public understanding
- Tight timeframe to deliver a reliable, non-climate-dependent water supply
- How alternative water supply strategies can be applied
While the issues of climate change are manifold, this project shows that by applying innovative, sustainable approaches to meet the challenges to the water industry, complex projects like this can be successfully delivered.
Lessons learned from this project will translate easily to desalination projects in other areas, as well as infrastructure upgrades of other types.
The GCDA will now operate the plant for 10 years, with the option to extend for a further five. While John Holland was principal contractor in the construction process, Veolia Water Australia will take primary responsibility for the operation of the plant.