After a long and rocky journey, MidCoast Council’s $27 million Gloucester Water Upgrade project is now complete, providing locals with access to a reliable, modern water network.
The upgraded Cemetery Road reservoir site in New South Wales now hosts a range of new infrastructure, including a seven‑million‑litre concrete reservoir, a smaller, elevated service reservoir, and a chlorine dosing unit.
This major network overhaul began in 2015 as a renewal of the area’s water reservoirs.
The resulting improvements, which came alongside upgrades to the town’s reticulation network, have eliminated the historical issues of the area’s old infrastructure, which has now been decommissioned.
MidCoast Council’s Director of Infrastructure and Engineering Services, Rob Scott, said the project’s initial scope was focused on renewing the Gloucester area’s water assets.
“We had two ageing reservoirs existing in that area,” Mr Scott said.
“One of them was not structurally sound enough to be filled to the full supply level. We had to impose a restriction on the level to which we could fill it.”
After the reservoirs were initially constructed, Gloucester continued to grow around them and eventually above them, meaning they could not supply sufficient water pressure to higher elevated areas.
“Neither of the sites were sufficient to supply enough pressure,” Mr Scott said.
“Over the years, Council had to tack on infrastructure – little booster pumping stations that boosted pressure into particular areas. We had four of those in town.
“That meant every time there was a power failure we had whole streets or whole areas of town that went without water because there was no pressure in the system to deliver that water. Not to mention the consequences of then having to go and clear the network when the power comes back on.
“We’ve had to go and sort out air and dirty water trapped within the system. It was quite a complicated and annoying operation, but it was just the way that the system had evolved.”
Through its investigations of the project, Mr Scott said Council determined there was not enough storage in the existing reservoirs to meet the modern requirements of the town and the water treatment plant had to run year-round to make up for it.
“What started as a simple replacement became an improvement in service delivery as well,” Mr Scott said.
“We went from one total reservoir being replaced to the concept of two: a large-volume lower-level reservoir and a small-volume higher-level reservoir that can keep the pressure up into those higher areas of town without having to rely on electronically boosted pumping stations.”
The plan continued to expand to include optimisation of the town’s reticulation network and the addition of a new chlorine station at the new reservoirs to support water quality.
“It all works, it meshes together now,” Mr Scott said.
“We have the ability to control everything so much better than what we had before, as well as solving the service-related issues and the asset‑management-related issues.”
A fraught journey
The project faced several major setbacks during its lifetime. During early phases, Council become embroiled in a suite of local government reforms that were occurring across New South Wales.
“We actually had a two-stage merger process where, in the first stage in 2016, three local government councils were rolled into one,” Mr Scott said.
“What was once Gloucester Shire, Greater Taree City and Great Lakes Council became MidCoast Council under the then State Government’s Fit for Future program.
“Then in 2017, the MidCoast Water utility was dissolved into one MidCoast Council. They were previously separate for about 20-odd years.
“That created a whole host of problems with staff, with contract conditions and employment issues. It was a very big interruption.
“We had a project we knew we needed to do, and then we had this massive interruption to our resources and to how we actually do work that virtually stalled the project for a couple of years whilst we regrouped and rebuilt the organisation around the new structure.”
It wasn’t until 2018 that Council was ready to proceed with the project, advancing it to the detailed design stage.
“It was about 2020 when we finished the detailed design, not long before that wonderful year that we had COVID,” Mr Scott said.
“Unfortunately, the original contractor that we went with was Queensland-based and we were in the middle of the contract when the border shutdowns started to occur.”
The contractor, FB Contracting, suddenly found itself struggling to deliver the project, as it was not able to move resources and personnel into New South Wales.
“They had to source new sub-contractors and new resources that were available from within New South Wales, which became a big resource issue,” Mr Scott said.
“Circumstances aligned for a perfect storm of cost escalation, difficulty sourcing materials. You name it, we pretty much had it.
“Ultimately, and unfortunately, that contractor was spread a little bit too thin with the number of projects they had on the board, which led to them going into liquidation.”
FB Contracting was appointed a liquidator in late-March 2022 after construction had started in June 2021 and was estimated to be approximately 50 per cent complete. Works already undertaken included most of the new water main, and substantial progress had been made on the smaller steel reservoir.
Mr Scott said that while Council tried to work with FB Contracting as much as possible to keep the project moving, it didn’t have the cash flow to continue.
Suddenly finding itself without a contractor to lead the major project, Council had to take matters into its own hands. Having put in a significant amount of work to fully document the progress of the project, Council was able to pick up where FB Contracting left off.
“We had a whole heap of sub-contractors, suppliers, local vendors, and we stepped in to try and take over as much of that as we possibly could,” Mr Scott said.
“As an organisation, we directly project-managed all of the work external to the reservoir sites.
“We either did it ourselves using our own resources, took over the arrangements that were in place with the previous contractor, or we created our own new arrangements to complete that work.”
Council managed the project on its own for three months before it was able to retender and secure a new head contractor.
“Everything flowed quite quickly from there because we’d already done a lot of the in-ground works,” Mr Scott said.
“It was great to see the project finally get out of the ground.”
Built for the community
With the project complete, Gloucester’s water network is now delivering greatly improved services for residents.
“We now have a better, more resilient piece of infrastructure. As a result, there’s no more structural deficiencies on the reservoirs capacity,” Mr Scott said.
“Because we’ve got a lot more in storage now, we don’t need to run the treatment plant every day.”
The increased storage capacity means the region can handle potential water supply disruptions presented by flood events, without putting strain on the treatment plant.
“We can rely on what’s in the reservoirs for a couple of days, or even up to a week, before we have to start running the treatment plant again,” Mr Scott said.
“Whilst that water’s stored there, we can run the circulation system. We can run the disinfection system and keep the residual chlorine under control as well.
“We’re not going to face a problem where we have low chlorine levels or low disinfection. From a community perspective, that’s valuable.”
And with the new pressure standards in the network, new building developments no longer have to include their own fire fighting systems.
“We had buildings that had to have their own water storage and diesel-powered booster pumping system that would pressurise their sprinklers in the building so that they met their fire security,” Mr Scott said.
“By removing the need for this, we were able to reduce the cost of new entrants into the market for our industrial estate and for the surrounding areas.”
Mr Scott said that the commitment to the project from both staff and councillors was commendable.
He also praised the Gloucester community for their ongoing patience over the years.
“I think everyone has understood how important this upgrade is to Gloucester,” he said.
