Background
Goulburn Valley Water (GVW) provides water and sewerage services to approximately 130,000 people in 54 cities, towns and villages across more than 20,000 square kilometres in northern Victoria. GVW also provides water and sewerage services to a large and diverse food manufacturing industry in the Goulburn Valley – the food bowl of Australia. Providing these water and sewerage services requires 37 separate water treatment plants for roughly 59,000 properties across 54 towns, 26 wastewater management facilities for approximately 50,700 properties across 30 towns and 1,800 kilometre of buried water mains and sewers.
These 63 geographically dispersed water and wastewater systems are a defining feature of the operating environment of GVW, which has a major influence on the capital investment program, operational costs and customer service response times.
Provision of high quality water and trade waste services to food processing industries is a major business focus due to their individual impact on Goulburn Valley Water’s systems.
The geographic area of Goulburn Valley Water comprises the local government areas of:
- Shire of Moira;
- Shire of Campaspe;
- City of Greater Shepparton;
- Shire of Mansfield;
- Shire of Mitchell;
- Shire of Murrindindi; and
- Shire of Strathbogie.
The main activities undertaken by Goulburn Valley Water are:
- Harvesting and treatment of raw water;
- Planning and management of headworks;
- Reticulation of treated water to customers;
- Collection and transportation of wastewater including trade waste;
- Treatment and beneficial re-use of recycled water;
- Beneficial recycling of wastewater treatment by-products such as biosolids and biogas;
- Development and implementation of programs for the conservation and efficient use of water;
- Planning with communities for their future water and wastewater services;
- Community education about sustainable water management.
Goulburn Valley Water provides a range of services defined as Prescribed Services and Declared Services (regulated services) in clause 7 of the Water Industry Regulatory Order 2014 in respect of which the ESC has the power to regulate price standards and conditions of service and supply.
The regulated services provided by Goulburn Valley Water are as follows:
- Retail water services;
- Retail recycled water services;
- Retail sewerage services;
- Storage operator and bulk water services;
- Bulk sewerage services
- Bulk recycled water services;
- Connection services;
- Services to which developer charges apply;
- Trade waste services.
Goulburn Valley Water does not provide drainage services (stormwater), irrigation services and irrigation drainage services.
Concrete Asset Structure Failure Review
Review literature and data for concrete asset failures in a water authority context. Calculate the deterioration of the concrete and infestation of H2S into sewers. Specifically, focus upon sewerage pump station assets, which have a lifecycle of 50-100 years where H2S is present.
Review literature and reports from University of Queensland, Sydney Water etc, where H2S reduces the expected life of assets and how this impacts maintenance and collect data from the Water Industry sector and identify key issues in the literature.
Highlight high H2S pump stations in the Goulburn Valley asset base and the impact of waste- water on assets where concrete is weakened, take samples, install penetration device to assess deterioration of vulnerable assets, collect various field data, and undertake destructive testing. Inform GVW about vulnerable concrete structure assets and useful life of its assets and provide robust advice about best approaches to design life of assets and methodology for calculating asset life.
Deliverables:
The deliverables of this project will be staged with an initial focus on literature review and data collection and some filed work.
Governance:
This project will be managed through weekly meetings of the students () whom will seek draft approval from the Project Managers (Dr Biplob Pramanik and Marcos Anastassiou) and through frequent contact with the Project Sponsor (Michael Welk) to ensure work is satisfactory.
Reporting Requirements:
There will be draft approval and/or progress reporting fortnightly to the project managers.
Assumptions and Constraints:
Primarily governed by ready access to the relevant GVW data
Risks and Minimisation Strategies:
Incomplete data collection resulting in inaccurate recommendations.
- This will be minimised by collecting as much data as possible from as many sources as possible.
Low data resolution.
- The highest resolution data available will be sourced to ensure accuracy.
Guidelines/Standards:
Water Act 1989
Water Industry Act 1994
