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Griffiths water mains have been the plague of the town for a number of years.
Last year the council announced plans for upgrading the mains in Wakaden Street, which were budgeted and planned after an increase of pipe bursts.
Have these plans gone down the drain, or are more upgrades going to happen?
Director of Utilities Graham Gordon spoke about the water main renewal so far, the causes of main bursts and planned upgrades.
He says there is a process in place determining the replacement of water mains.
“Every year we have an asset renewal, a capital works program, and that is based on a hierarchy of asset knowledge.”
“We have old mains, just by age, trunk mains which are a bigger diameter of 375 mm and bigger, and they are the ones that sends the bulk of the water out to smaller mains”
“Wakaden street, for example, before December last financial year, we definitely completed a 375 trunk meter, so that was at Barellan street right around to Bowen Place, they were those couple of bursts we had the year before, so that’s always programmed in as needing replacement.”
Mr Gordon wanted to emphasis that bursts occur mainly during cold weather, and is not related to water pressure.
“A lot of people think that water main upgrades are due to pressure and things like that, but that’s not the case, it is purely an asset renewal.”
“The 200 ml water main that burst on Wakaden Street this morning was an old main… it’s old caste iron, so its possibly over 30 years old, so it’s defiantly not a new main.”
He said the trunk main system has already been replaced on Wakaden street, from Crossing Street on to Bowen.
“We are just in the stages of stakeholder consultation and LIA management in about what we are doing from an urban planning, before we go in and rip up the street to put the water main back in, we are going to do it as a whole project”
“Once the councilors have given the green light on the final layout of what Yambil Street will be, then we will commence works, so that time frame is dependent on whether they are happy in the first couple of proposals, if there is a lot of debate and discussion and changing then that delays the start time of the project.”
“In the 17/18 financial year we have various projects happening, some of them are the cement mains that were put in 40 years ago, some are cast iron, and some are just PVC that haven’t fared well in the test of time, and some just need upgrading in size.”
Mr Gordon said upgrades were planned for Yambil Street, Kimdan Way and Ford Road intersection, Slopes Road, MacArther Street near Lake Wyangan, as well as others.
“They are potable water, drinkable water, then we have some raw water main replacement which is predominantly in the Yenda area.”