Noosa Sewer Overflow Reduction Project

Nick Apostolidis, GHD, Jeff Steel Noosa Council 15 Astor Terrace, Brisbane, QLD, Australia Noosa Council Chambers, Tewantin, QLD, Australia napostolidis@ghd.com.au msew@noosa.qld.gov.au ABSTRACT: There are many examples throughout the world of successful sewer overflow reduction programs. These have invariably involved comprehensive capacity augmentation works, installation of additional storage (in-system or off-system) and/or the implementation of comprehensive source control measures. However there are few, if any that have undertaken a whole of systems approach that included all of the above measures as well as a change in operation and maintenance practices. The Noosa sewer overflow reduction project adopted a whole of systems approach that has resulted in reducing sewer overflows from 40 to 60 events per year to no more than one event, even during one of the wettest periods on record. The improvement measures implemented by Noosa have produced a system that is more robust, reliable and easier to operate. This improved level of performance has been achieved under tight budgetary constraints in an urban and highly environmentally sensitive environment. KEY WORDS : Sewer overflow reduction, storage optimisation, whole of systems approach.

INTRODUCTION Noosa , with its clean waterways and spectacular ocean views make it one of the most desirable tourist destinations in Australia. The protection of these environmental values is therefore fundamental, not only for the environment but the economic well being of the area. In 1994 the Council experienced two major failures of its sewerage collection system that resulted in significant spillage of raw sewage to the local waterways. The spillage caused considerable community concern that resulted in health warning signs being posted on Councils pristine beaches and waterways. The event made national news and directly brought to Councils attention the implications of sewage overflows. During this period, the Council, along with many other authorities in Queensland, was in the process of planning to upgrade its treatment facilities to improve the level treatment and reduce the nutrient loads on the local waterways. The sewage spills made Council recognise that it needed to address both the point source loads from its sewage treatment plants and the non-point source contributions from its sewerage collection in order to achieve its objective of improving the water quality of its waterways. The Council subsequently embarked on a much more holistic improvement strategy that addressed both point and non-point sources. This paper will deal with second part of the improvement strategy.

DESCRIPTION OF NOOSA SEWERAGE SYSTEM Figure 1 shows a plan of the Noosa Sewerage system. It comprises four main sewerage catchments all of which discharge to the Councils new advanced nutrient treatment facility in the vicinity of lake Weyba and Burgess Creek. A second smaller plant serves the inland townships of Cooroy and Pomona. The system serves some 19,000 connections. Being a tourist centre, the population varies from about 40,000 during the off peak periods up to 60,000 people during the peak holiday periods. The system comprises 345km of sewers ranging in diameter from 150mm to 600mm, 93 pump stations and 53km of rising mains. The system has a replacement value of some $AUD120million.

Figure 1 Layout of Noosa Sewerage System

PROJECT CHALLENGES Reducing the frequency of sewer overflows from the 40 to 60 events per year to no more than one event represented a significant challenge in itself. However there were many other challenges that required attention. These included: Many of the required upgrading works were in heavily built up areas; Limited budget that required staging of the works to keep within Councils financial capacity to pay; Difficult soil conditions (many of the upgrading works were in sandy soils with high groundwater, some in acid sulphate soils); Highly environmentally sensitive area; Works had to be programmed around peak holiday periods to minimise disruption to the many businesses that relied on tourism; Deteriorating existing assets; and Need for a cultural shift in operating philosophy from one of reacting to sewer overflow problems to one of anticipating and taking proactive action. In addressing these challenges it became apparent to the project team that a conventional approach to the sewer overflow problems of simply building more capacity was not enough and a more integrated approach was needed. The factor in favour of the project team was the communitys and managements awareness of the impact from sewer overflows and were prepared to consider alternative

approaches including a change in operations and maintenance practices if this solved the sewer overflow problem. KEY ELEMENTS OF THE IMPROVEMENT STRATEGY Councils original improvement strategy heavily focused on capacity augmentations of two key trunk systems that posed the greatest risk of failure. Upon reviewing this strategy GHD and Council recognised that proposed improvement works merely offered a short-term solution and a much more whole of systems approach was needed that also addressed the source of the problem so that the capacity deficiencies did not shift to another part of the system. The Council officers also strongly believed that there was a need for them to change their operations and maintenance practices. They needed a better system for monitoring the performance of their system and they had to change their operations regime from one of reacting to sewer overflow problems to a more proactive regime. A review of sewerage improvement strategies for separate systems provided some good examples of successful sewer overflow reduction programs. Many of these involved comprehensive capacity augmentation works, installation of additional storage (in-system or off-system) and/or the implementation of comprehensive source control measures. However there were few that involved a more integrated approach that included all of the above measures as well as a change in operation and maintenance practices. The key elements of the improvement strategy proposed for Noosa involved the following: Extension of the SCADA(supervisory control and data acquisition) system to all the sewerage pump stations so that the operators had very good handle on the performance of the all the collection system at all times; Re-organisation and strengthening of the sewer maintenance crews to carry out more preventive maintenance works to avoid sewer overflows; Augmentation of capacity in high risk areas; Improvement in flexibility and reliability of the system; Optimisation in the use of storage within the system; Source control; Rehabilitation of existing degraded assets; and Sewer overflows rationalisation and provision treatment where any overflows were unavoidable. The following sections provide some further details on each of the above measures Extension of the SCADA System A significant number of the overflows (dry and wet weather) occurred at the sewerage pump stations. The predominant failure modes causing overflow included: mechanical failure of pumps, electrical failure of switchboards, insufficient pump and/or sewer capacity, loss of electrical power and vandalism. The Council had installed SCADA on several of the key pump stations and this proved most helpful to the operators in managing the system during emergency conditions in those pump stations. However because the large number of pump stations and their integrated nature, the operators did not have a good picture on the total system and were not able to control overflows in the smaller pump stations. To overcome this problem, the SCADA system was extended to all the pump station regardless of size. This gave the operators a much better appreciation of the total system performance, and most importantly, it allowed them to control all the pump stations to make better use of in-

system storage and avoid many overflow events that would have otherwise have occurred. The resultant SCADA system was like a live sewerage collection system model. Strengthening of Sewer Maintenance Crews Prior to the two significant sewer overflow events, the Council operated a skeletal sewer maintenance crew that was shared between water and sewer maintenance departments. At the same time the Council was experiencing significant growth. Upon reviewing the tasks required to maintain the existing sewerage assets as well the new assets coming online it became evident that additional resources would be required. Council recognised that if it was going to reduce the frequency of overflows it could not allow existing assets to further deteriorate nor could it allow new assets it created to reach the same level of deterioration in future. As a result the Council restructured the water and sewerage departments and provided more resources and shifted its operations towards a more proactive approach to sewer overflows. This may seem straightforward now but was in fact a significant cultural change at the time as the focus in most water utilities was to down-size, to perform minimum preventive maintenance using minimum resources. Having secured the additional resources, it provided a good incentive to the Councils operations team to demonstrate a return on investment in the form of improved sewer system performance and reduced overflows. The significance of this cannot be overstated. The sewerage collection systems operations team had key performance indicator to aim for. This is not too dissimilar to the way sewage treatment plant operators use licence compliance as a measure of performance. The difference in the case of Noosa was the Council decided to adopt this performance measure itself; it was not a regulatory requirement at that time. Capacity Augmentation in High Risk Areas A computer model was established of the collection system (including pump stations) to determine its performance under present and future load conditions. The analysis highlighted the assets with capacity deficiencies under present and future loads. In general the majority of the system in the developed catchments had adequate capacity to handle the current design loads and only required some limited augmentation. In the newer catchments several trunk systems required augmentation to cope with the additional loads from new developments that were coming on-line over the next decade. The capacity analysis also evaluated the performance of the system under actual load conditions and projected future conditions assuming the assets were allowed to continue to deteriorate without any preventive maintenance. The results form this analysis showed that in most of the new and in some older areas the system was performing better than design predictions. However, in a number in the older areas where the assets have been known to be deteriorating excessively, the capacity of the system was exceeded even though theoretically the system should have had adequate capacity. The results while not surprising, clearly demonstrated the benefits of integrating future capacity augmentation with preventive maintenance. Simply augmenting the capacity of the system without addressing the source of the problem is only a short-term solution. Eventually the system will deteriorate further requiring additional augmentation or rehabilitation works. The solution adopted at Noosa was to augment the transportation system requiring augmentation due to load increases from additional development and to limit the excessive dry and wet weather flow catchments through preventive maintenance.

Improvement in flexibility and reliability of the system The configuration of the Noosa transportation system comprised several key trunk reaches with series pumping. This meant that if any pump failed in a particular reach then the entire reach would fail. To improve flexibility and reliability a number measures were implemented. This involved: Adding redundancy in each pumping station so that if one pump failed there was at least one standby to minimise the risk of complete failure; Adding cross connections between catchments which would allow the use of an alternative trunk sewer route in the event of a major failure in the normal trunk route; Provision of standby power generators (including a mobile generator) in the event of power failure; Addition of parallel sewer rising mains (where opportunity existed) rather than one large main to minimise the risk of complete sewer rising main failure; and Use of stronger materials in high risk locations (eg River crossings, under roads, etc) The above measures were implemented on an opportunistic basis, where the extra cost of implementing one or a combination of the above measures was deemed justified. Optimisation in the use of storage within the system A significant proportion of the areas served by sewers were laid in relatively flat terrain and as result offered the opportunity to make use of the in-system storage. However, because of the pump operation mode that was used at the time, it was not possible to make effective use of all this storage especially where pump stations operated in series. By simply modifying the mode of pump operation it was possible to make use of this storage and thus lessen the risk of sewer spills. In some catchments this simple measure more that trebled the storage capacity of the local system. Figure 2 below shows a schematic of the pump control system that was adopted. Under normal mode of operation all the pump stations in the catchment operate using the Start1 and Stop1 levels. In the event of a pump failure, or when the water level in the well exceeds the high level alarm, the pump controls revert to the Start2 and Stop2 levels for all the upstream pump stations. During this emergency period the operators closely monitor the changes in water level within the catchment and can determine where an overflow would occur should it be unavoidable.
Figure 2 Emergency Pump control Schematic

A review of power outage records and discussions with operators showed the Council crews would be able to attend to the majority of the routine failures they experienced within three to four hours. Allowing for some contingency a six-hour storage capacity (based on average dry weather flows) target was adopted for all existing and new sewerage catchments. The storage capacity included the volume within the collection system and the pump station wet wells. Using the above control scheme it was only necessary to provide for storage within the local pump station catchments rather than compounding upstream catchments. As part of the upgrading strategy all catchments that did not meet 6-hour storage target were upgraded. All new schemes were required to provide such storage to gain Council approval. Source Control As noted earlier in this paper some of the older sections of the Councils system exhibited excessive levels of stormwater infiltration and inflow (I/I) entering the sewer system. The causes of the excessive I/I were a combination of illegal connections to the sewer system and the deterioration of the sewers and manholes. Adding more capacity was not addressing the source of the problem and any long term solution need to address this. The Council thus implemented a source detection program to identify illegal connections and assets in advanced deterioration. With the aid of flow information the hot spot catchments were targeted using a combination of techniques including smoke testing, manhole inspections and CCTV inspections. The defects were systematically catalogued and programmed for rectification and rehabilitation. Rehabilitation of existing degraded assets Council experienced several unexpected sewer failures and most of these resulted from sulphide attack of the concrete or AC trunk sewers and manholes. These unexpected failures caused considerable disruption to Councils system and required costly emergency repairs to be affected. To overcome this problem the Council implemented a renewals program for all assets assessed to be at risk of failure. The prioritisation of the rehabilitation works was based on the source detection results and from Council operator knowledge of the condition of the assets. The planned renewal program has proven most successful as the Council has been able to obtain very competitive rehabilitation rates and the frequency of unexpected sewer failures have since significantly reduced.

Sewer overflows rationalisation and provision treatment Even with the above measures some overflows are unavoidable. To minimise the risk to the environment and public health, the Council have rationalised their overflow release points. Generally these are at major pump stations or specially designed sewer overflow structures that provide some treatment and fine screening. So if an overflow were to occur the consequences of such an overflow are minimal. Figure 3 provides a typical schematic of a sewage pump station designed for some overflow treatment. Essentially the wet well is in the form of a clarifier that provides some primary treatment and it includes fine screening (2mm aperture) should it overflow. Figure 3 Typical Sewer Overflow Pump Station Configuration

RESULTS Figure 4 summarises the frequency of sewage spills since the implementation of the Noosa Sewer overflow program. The program commenced in 1994 and was largely completed in 2001. As can be seen, the whole of systems approach referred to above has been successful in reducing the frequency of sewer overflows from the 40 to 60 events per year to not more than one event even though 2000/01 was an above average rainfall year.
Figure 4 Summary of Sewage Spills Recorded at Noosa Since 1994/5

No of Spills

0 1994/5

20

40

60

80

1995/6

1996/7

1997/8

1998/9

1999/00

2000/01

CONCLUSIONS Noosa Council has demonstrated that a whole of systems approach can be very effective in reducing the frequency of sewer overflows. Individually none of the various measures implemented in this project are particularly innovative or involve any new technologies. What makes this project unique is the comprehensive approach that was taken to solve the problem. In particular the empowering of the operators with more resources and tools to help them better understand the performance of their system and gain their commitment to eradicate sewer overflows. The approach used at Noosa has applications in many other systems throughout the world. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors wish to acknowledge GHD and Noosa Council for allowing them to publish this paper and the valuable contribution by staff in both organizations that worked on the project to make it the success that it is . REFERENCES GHD (1994), Noosa Heads Sewerage Strategy Planning Report, Brisbane, Australia GHD, Noosa Council (2001), Noosa Sewer Overflow Reduction Project, 2001 ACEA Awards for Excellence, Sydney, Australia. CONTACT Contact name: Organisation : Telephone: Facsimile: Email: Nick Apostolidis GHD +61 7 3258 3600 +61 7 3832 4592 napostolidis@ghd.com.au