Recycling project starts at sewerage plant

Gosford Council has started work on a new dual reticulation water recycling project at its Woy Woy "wastewater treatment plant".

The work involves construction of a recycled water treatment plant together with tanker filling points, and is due for completion by May this year, according to a council report.

The report stated that the tanker filling stations would produce around 25 million litres of treated recycled water a year for use by council and private water tankers for tasks such as road works, dust suppression and irrigation purposes.

Three local concrete batching plants will also use the recycled water to replace town water in their production processes and for other non-drinking purposes.

"These projects are part of a whole host of work that is well underway to replace the use of town water with all forms of recycled water including rainwater, stormwater and treated wastewater from the wastewater treatment plants for non-drinking purposes," mayor Cr Laurie Maher said.

"Currently, we're saving nearly 500 million litres of town water a year by using groundwater, rainwater, stormwater and treated recycled water for irrigating parks and other non-drinking purposes at council depots and facilities as well as toilet flushing at a number of council run childcare centres.

"This has the potential to more than double as we continue to identify and implement further opportunities to use rainwater, stormwater, greywater and treated recycled water at sports fields, public amenity blocks, Council depots and other facilities."

The total cost of the new water recycling project is more than $3 million, of which

$525,000 for phase one of the scheme is coming from the Central Coast Water Saving Fund.

Gosford and Wyong Councils each contributed $1 million to the fund which was extended to include the Central Coast in May last year.

The council report stated that the aim of the water savings fund was to save drinking water in areas supplied by the Gosford-Wyong Councils' Water Authority and to "significantly contribute to the 32 per cent reduction target set under Level 4 Water Restrictions".

Press release, 23 Mar 2007 Tamara Paterson, Gosford Council