The Reinvention of the Ayr Drinking Water Supply to meet water quality and resiliency benchmarks

Abstract

The drinking water for Ayr, Brandon and Alva has been historically supplied via a network of connected Bore Fields since approximately 1966. The treatment train associated with this drinking water has been historically low, while still meeting Australian Drinking Water Quality guidelines, due to the historical quality of the ground water in the Burdekin Delta. In recent times contamination of the drinking water was detected in the Principal Bore Field from external sources, which caused many bores to be switched off to meet drinking water health targets. This also resulted in an unbalanced network from the loss of the bore fields and placed additional network pressure on trunk mains not previously used for distribution from other bore fields in the catchment. The resiliency of the total network was called in to question, including water storage, trunk distribution capacity and future treatment trains. This resulted in a reanalysis and modelling subsequent of the total network and staged upgrade of trunk mains, Scada Controls, reservoir storage and pressure balance. Construction of these augmented works for the water supply network is now underway, including the design of future treatment works to future proof drinking water supply for several townships in the Burdekin. The details of the network analysis, design, trunk main route selection, bore field upgrade, control systems and reservoir storage analysis and structural design are outlined in this paper. This is the story of ‘The Reinvention of Ayr Drinking Water Supply’ and the many challenges faced on this journey.