Borefields will be 'officially opened'

The new Peninsula borefields will be "officially opened" in late February or early March "once all operating trials are complete", according to Gosford Council's manager of asset provision Ms Pam McCann.

Ms McCann stated in a recent email that the new Peninsula water treatment plant had been producing "high quality, potable water, and delivering it to the community intermittently", as part of a series of commissioning trials since November.

Ms McCann stated that these trials had allowed for finalising operational guidelines and testing the full capabilities of the new equipment.

The plant is capable of adding up to a maximum of 5 ML per day, but council stated that it only had a planned average operation of 3.8ML per day.

Ms McCann stated: "Council has generally been operating the plant at the lower end of the operating range for several reasons: monitoring of performance to ensure satisfactory water quality while progressively increasing production levels, to introduce the groundwater slowly to the customers, to minimise any sudden changes to the water supply system that may cause discoloured water in the area and to carry out a series of bore pumping scenarios to ascertain which suite of bores are operationally preferred".

She stated that there had been substantial streamflows, which had supplied the Central Coast water needs since June, and these had allowed the gradual introduction of the groundwater at both the Peninsula and Narara borefields.

She stated that the total amount of water provided by the Woy Woy borefield to date was approximately 12 ML.

In discussing bushland monitoring, council stated that specialist consultants had completed a baseline ecological floristic survey.

MsMcCann stated that follow up surveys of the 10 sites within the four groundwater dependant ecological communities would occur at six month and 12 month intervals in accordance with the Environmental Management Plan for the Woy Woy Peninsula Borefield.

She also stated that the base line tree assessments for 500 trees in public reserves, which are situated within a 50m radius of the production bores, had been completed.

"Follow up surveys and assessments will occur initially at three months intervals," Ms McCann said.

"A controlled assessment comparison has also been included with a number of trees in similar condition outside the bore production zone for comparison.

"A review of frequency of future assessments will be determined after assessment of data collected over the first 12 to 18 months of borefield production."

Lyle Stone, 11 Jan 2007 Interview: Meaghan Wilkinson, Gosford Council