Technical Tours Post Conference Technical Tour – Thursday 29 October 2009 Tour 1: Green Olympics, Sydney Water’s new green building and smart toilets Time: 0830-1600 Cost: $80 – Limited to 40 delegates Dress: Casual/comfortable, closed toe shoes Caroma Dorf Factory Tour A wide range of products is manufactured, including toilet pans, cisterns and basins, as well as an extensive range of commercial sanitary ware. This is the factory where leading water efficient products are made. Sydney Olympic Park The Water Reclamation and Management Scheme (WRAMS) is an excellent example of how innovative environmental technology has been used for water recycling and conservation. WRAMS is a complete system for water management of a discrete area, encompassing stormwater harvesting, improving stormwater quality for irrigation needs, water treatment infrastructure, water supply infrastructure and sewage treatment. WRAMS is designed to save more than 850 million litres of drinking water annually and was Australia’s first large scale urban water recycling scheme. WRAMS supplies high quality recycled water to all sporting venues, commercial facilities and parklands of Sydney Olympic Park and the neighbouring residential suburb of Newington. Approximately 40% is used for toilet flushing and the remaining 60% is used for irrigation and operational wash-down activities. Sydney Water, Parramatta This building is designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent and reduce drinking water use by 75 per cent compared to a typical office building. Details include: • The reduction in water used at the site reduces the flow of wastewater to the sewerage system by up to 90 per cent. • An onsite wastewater recycling plant provides recycled water for toilet flushing, cooling towers, fire system testing and irrigation. • A 100,000 litre rainwater tank provides additional water for toilets and cooling towers. Chilled beam cooling will be used instead of conventional air conditioning. Chilled beams work through the introduction of chilled water through cooling elements in the ceiling. Rising warm air is cooled by the chilled beams and then descends, due to natural convection. State of the art water conservation including water efficient toilets, showers and taps. A building management system will monitor water and energy use to minimise leaks and waste. Tour 2: Gardens, golf courses and domestic reuse Time: 0830-1600 Cost: $85 – Limited to 40 delegates Dress: Casual/comfortable, closed toe shoes Eden Gardens Eden Gardens is an innovative new gardening complex in Sydney’s North Ryde which opened its doors in November 2004. A unique and integrated horticultural centre combining beautiful Display Gardens, Café, Garden Centre and much more, Eden Gardens is set to become a favourite destination for the gardening enthusiast and general community alike. In keeping with its aim to inspire and inform Sydney’s gardening community, Eden Gardens runs a series of course, lectures and demonstrations covering a wide range of gardening topics. Pennant Hills Golf Course The Pennant Hills golf course was one of the first ‘sewer mining’ projects in Sydney – extracting sewage from a Sydney Water sewer, purifying it on-site, then using the treated water to irrigate the golf course. This practice is now being more widely adopted, but Pennant Hills remains as a pioneer. Rouse Hill – Recycled Water Scheme Australia’s largest residential recycled water scheme is in the Rouse Hill area. The scheme started in 2001, and more than 18,000 homes are now using up to 1.4 billion litres of recycled water each year for flushing toilets, watering gardens, washing cars and other outdoor uses. Treatment facilities and the local network infrastructure will be inspected. Tour 3: Wollongong Recycling Plant Time: 0830-1700 Cost: $80 – Limited to 40 delegates Dress: Casual/comfortable, closed toe shoes Sydney Water operates one of the biggest water recycling schemes in Australia, for industrial use by BlueScope Steel in Port Kembla. About 20 million litres of high quality recycled water per day is being delivered to BlueScope Steel from a new recycled water plant at Sydney Water’s Wollongong Sewage Treatment Plant. This replaces 7.3 billion litres of drinking water per year previously drawn from the local Avon Dam, a 57 per cent reduction of drinking water consumption by Sydney Water’s largest customer. The water recycling plant at Wollongong uses micro-filtration and reverse osmosis membrane processes to produce high quality recycled water, suitable for a range of industrial purposes such as cooling systems. This project alone reduced the use of drinking water across the total Illawarra region by 17 per cent. There is potential to expand to other local industries in the future.