TasWater is delivering a new sewer pipeline to improve sewer and stormwater transfer capacity in Launceston, Tasmania.
The new pipeline is approximately 3km in length and will be installed between the Margaret Street Sewage Pump Station and the Ti Tree Bend Sewage Treatment Plant in Invermay, as part of the Tamar Estuary River Health Action Plan (TERHAP).
TERHAP combined system improvements project director Andrew Truscott said that the additional pipeline and pumping capacity means that when it rains, it will overflow less from TasWater’s network, and take it all the way through to the treatment plant where it’s treated.
“The most challenging bit with this pipeline is given how big it is, and how built up the area between the start of the pipeline and the end of the pipeline is, it was really difficult to find a good route,” he said.
“We looked at a number of different options, but we decided to go relatively directly but under the Tamar Estuary twice.”
These two sections require tunnelling under the river at a depth of 40m in order for TasWater to find a good route from the pump station and the treatment plant.
The new pipeline project is part of TERHAP, which is delivering new sewerage infrastructure across the city of Launceston, which includes a combined sewerage and stormwater system.
A collaborative project between the Australian and Tasmanian Governments, the City of Launceston and TasWater, TERHAP is part of a $129.2 million investment to implement the key actions in the plan.
So far, the team has completed a section of pipeline, with other aspects ongoing in the project.
“We’re in the middle of upgrading an old pump station to increase the pumping capacity and we’ve got this pipeline happening, which is really being done in three parts – the two river crossings and a trench section, which connects those two river crossings,” Truscott said.
“We’re also building a 10 megalitre storage at our water treatment plant.
“We’re about 30 per cent of the way through the overall project and about 50 per cent complete on the pipeline.”
TasWater is targeting project completion by late 2025.
Watch the video below.
For more information, visit the TasWater website.
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