Gold Coast City is experiencing rapid growth with forecasts indicating an increase in population from 466,500 in 2006 to 1.2 million by 2056. These figures do not include the 10.1 million (approximately) tourists who visit per year. This growth is placing increasing demands on the City’s infrastructure and services, including the recycled water release system.
Excess treated recycled water is currently released at the Gold Coast Seaway on the outgoing tide maximising dispersion and mixing of recycled water. However, early in 2000 Gold Coast City Council identified that the existing recycled water system would reach capacity within a decade. Gold Coast City Council subsequently instigated a series of studies in search of a sustainable release system to support future population projections. The culmination of these studies was the Broadwater Assimilative Capacity Study.
The Broadwater Assimilative Capacity Study demonstrated that the Broadwater has capacity to meet future needs for recycled water release without compromising the water quality of the receiving waters of the Broadwater. The release of recycled water is regulated by the Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM) under the Environmental Protection Act 1994. Based on the scientific information obtained during the Broadwater Assimilative Capacity Study, DERM, granted approval at the completion of the investigation to allow for an additional release pumping time of 2.8 hours per day from the northern release system (Coombabah Wastewater Treatment Plant). Based on future population projections as well as increases in recycled water reuse, this increase in the release window offered a short term strategy to sustainably manage the release system for at least five years.
To manage this additional release time responsibly, Gold Coast City Council instigated the current Seaway SmartRelease Project to deliver a suite of sophisticated state-of-the-art hydrodynamic and advection-dispersion models to optimise the recycled water release system. This will provide a powerful and calibrated modelling tool capable of real-time simulation of the recycled water release.
The broad aims of the study were to:
- Undertake detailed investigations of the behaviour of the recycled water upon release to the Seaway
- Investigate a range of hydrodynamic and mixing processes that influence the behaviour of the release
- Determine optimal conditions for release
- Design and implement a decision support system that guides the optimal operation of the release.
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