Tintinara Community Wastewater Management System Re-use

Project background and challenges

• Township of Tintinara located on the Dukes Highway 188km south east of Adelaide.
• The Tintinara CWMS was built in 1977 with a gravity pipe collection network and pumped transfer to a treatment lagoon.
• Significant sludge build-up, leading to winter season overflows into an inadequate evaporation basin.
• Receiving basin causing health and environmental concerns.
• Project design focus was around remediation of the treatment lagoon or significant reduction of inflows.
• Wasted resource – lagoon losing all water to evaporation and seepage.
• Recent drought had raised community awareness of the potential resource for irrigation of communal areas.

Scope, solutions and results

• A “sewer mining” approach was adopted – diversion of a specified daily volume to a new treatment plant, with excess to the lagoon for evaporation.
• Reduced reliance on town bore for irrigating the town oval.
• Reduced inflow to the lagoon with no wet season overflow – health and environmental issues resolved.