A tunnel will be dug under Darwin’s central business district in Australia for a new sewer main to be connected to the Ludmilla Wastewater Treatment plant. It is part of an AUD 80M (USD 71.7M) project to bring Darwin’s sewerage system up to modern standards by replacing the notorious ‘poo shooter,’ that deposits over three million litres of sewage into Darwin’s harbour every single day. Tunnelling will begin in September and is expected to take a year.
The contract for the AUD 12M (USD 10.7M) tunnelling project went to MacMahon.
The plan will use micro tunnelling to minimise aboveground disturbances.
The main sewer pipe will divert sewage to the Dinah Beach trunk sewer and then on to the Ludmilla treatment plant. Work has also begun on a new sewer pipe along Larrakeyah Tce.
The Northern Territory Government has come under fire recently after several beaches were closed due to an e.coli outbreak. The Government denied the poo shooter was to blame for the outbreak, even though it dumps 1.5 gigalitres of sewage into Darwin Harbour each year. The Government plans to shut down the poo shooter by October 2011. By then the Ludmilla plant will be processing Darwin’s sewage.
A further AUD 30M (USD 26.8M) will be spent extending the East Point outfall into a deep-sea pipe. The new plant will be a secondary sewerage system, inferior to the tertiary sewerage infrastructure seen in Sydney and Melbourne.
Northern Territory politician Rob Knight said it would take AUD 50M to 60M (USD 44.7M to 53.7M) more to bring Darwin’s sewerage system up to the same standards as Australia’s southern cities.
