wastewater disposal and water supply preliminary report woodlane

4. Aquatec-Maxcon Pty Ltd (Aquatec)
Known as Aeroflo during the project construction stage, and formerly as Copa
Water, Aeroflo later traded as Eimco Water Technologies and was recently
bought out by Aquatec. Contact established with Phil Mercer, Eimco’s previous
Regional Manager, who had been involved in the maintenance of the
wastewater treatment plant, has provided us with an as-built layout plan of the
plant, dated May 2003 (refer Appendix B). For reference purposes this plan
should supersede the Secon Drawing Plan 91632/ST1 (Sewer Treatment Plant
Enclosure) as described earlier in Section 1.2.1.
It can be seen from the as-built layout that drying ponds were originally
installed just outside the fenced area to receive backwash waste from the sand
filter and sludge from the waste activated pump, but these sludge beds have
since been decommissioned.
Based on the audit report submitted by United Water, April 2006, due to OHS
infringement and odour events, backwash waste from the sand filter was
pumped back into the treatment plant under the approval of Copa Water, this
being the case at least up to the time of submission of the audit report. This is
quite evident from the site investigation conducted, where the backwash pipe
was observed to eventually fall into the intermittent aeration tank (IAT) (see
Appendix P Photos 12, 15 and 16). However, a deliberate disconnection of the
backwash pipe was also noticed a few metres away from the irrigation pump
shed (see Appendix P Photo 13), hence suggesting that backwash did not
reach the IAT. We believe that the disconnection occurred only within the last
two years.
Interestingly, a subsequent visit on the 13 Dec 2007 showed that the backwash
pipe had been connected (see Appendix P Photo 14), although it is not clear
how and when exactly this had happened.
As a result of the re-routing of the backwash waste, the drying ponds had since
been abandoned (see Appendix P Photo 17) and the waste activated pump is
no longer in service. A 60mm dia. transfer pipe from the submersible pump to
the drying ponds is still clearly visible (see Appendix P Photo 8), and a metal
label plate by the side of the IAT indicates that it is a Flygt pump. Feedback
from ITT Flygt reveals that they no longer have any records of this pump.
Woodlane Wastewater Disposal and Water Supply Preliminary Report
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