Barwon Water’s engineers and planners weighed up the pros and cons of a treatment plant upgrade versus a new pipeline.

Our assessment showed the pipeline has many benefits to customers, community and the environment including:

• increased water security for Birregurra, without impacting Colac’s water security
• addressing water quality risks and low pressure
• reduced greenhouse gas emissions and water losses
• improved bushfire resilience
• keeping water bills affordable.

Let's look at each of these in more detail.

Increased water security and bushfire resilience

Birregurra residents might recall Barwon Water has faced some challenges meeting demand during recent summers due to the treatment plant being at capacity. At times, we have needed to cart water by truck to the town to ensure supply. The pipeline will provide greatly improved water security for Birregurra as the Colac Water Treatment Plant doesn’t face the same constraints at the Birregurra plant.

Once the pipeline is complete, Birregurra will be supplied with water from the Colac water supply system, which is sourced from the West Gellibrand and Olangolah reservoirs in the Otways. This will not affect the water security for Colac – the system is able to comfortably meet the demand in Birregurra, which is about 2.6 percent of that already available in the Colac water supply system. Underground infrastructure such as the pipeline will also provide more protection during a bushfire.

Reduced greenhouse emissions and water losses

The Colac Water Treatment Plant is more efficient than the Birregurra plant and using gravity to transfer the water from Colac reduces the need for pumps that require energy to operate. Water sourced from the Colac system also does not require the more energy intensive specialised treatment that water from the Wurdee Boluc Channel and Birregurra Channel does.

Overall, the pipeline is expected to reduce carbon emissions by 87 tonnes a year. The pipeline is expected to save approximately 51 million litres of water a year by reducing losses from evaporation from the Birregurra storage basins, particularly during summer, and through other system efficiency improvements.

Keeping water bills affordable

Connecting to the Colac system will result in lower operating costs and increased efficiencies, which helps keeps customer bills affordable. There will be no additional cost to customers to deliver this project.

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