\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPerth\u2019s population is growing, but drinkable water is becoming harder to find. To keep the city quenched, this utility\u2019s engineers are sending kilometres of pipelines out to sea.<\/p>\n
Off the coast of the northern suburbs of Perth, buried 15-60 m beneath the ocean floor, two pipelines that will help secure the city\u2019s future for decades to come are being laid.<\/p>\n
The shorter of the two, which extends 1.6 km from the shore, will pull seawater from deep below the ocean\u2019s surface and transfer it to the Alkimos Water Precinct, where a new desalination plant will filter and treat it, then remove salt, bacteria, viruses and other impurities via reverse osmosis.<\/p>\n
The resulting drinkable water will then be delivered to Perth\u2019s water network through a 33.5 km, 1.6 m diameter underground pipeline \u2013 the largest ever built by Western Australian water utility Water Corporation \u2013 that runs to Wanneroo Reservoir.<\/p>\n
The wastewater from the process \u2013 a brine that is twice as salty as seawater \u2013 is returned to the ocean through the longer of the offshore pipes, which extends three kilometres from the coast.<\/p>\n
The enterprise is vital for keeping the residents of the growing \u2013 and increasingly parched \u2013 Perth region supplied with a clean and reliable water supply. The city\u2019s population is expected to reach 3.5 million by 2050, yet rainfall in the region has reduced by a fifth since 1970.<\/p>\n
Today, 40 per cent of Perth\u2019s water supply comes from groundwater, but that allocation is set to drop by 27 per cent in 2028 \u2013 when the Alkimos Desalination Plant is scheduled to come online.<\/p>\n
Average annual rainfall runoff in Perth dams in 1975: 420 billion L
\nAverage annual rainfall runoff in 2026: <70 billion L
\nProjected Perth population in 2050: 3.5 million
\nAlkimos desalination plant annual capacity: 50 billion L
\nEnergy sourced from renewables (annually): 400 MW
\nPipeline from plant to reservoir: 33.5 km long
\nIntake pipe: 5.9 m below sea level
\nOutfall pipe: 20 m below sea level
\nEstimated delivery date: 2028<\/p>\n
Seawater, not groundwater\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re ready for full production by mid-2028 when some of those groundwater allocation reductions come our way,\u201d said Daniel Rossi, Water Corporation\u2019s Manager of Major Source Projects. \u201cWe\u2019re well into our civil and structural works on the plant itself, and we\u2019re building our pipelines out to the ocean. Right now, we\u2019ve got two large jack-up barges installing our marine work.\u201d<\/p>\n
These pipes have to extend kilometres out to sea so that they can collect the best quality water to use in the desalination process \u2013 and then to dispose of the resulting brine in the safest environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of investigations and environmental studies so we\u2019re able to best locate where that water goes,\u201d Rossi said. \u201cUltimately, what we\u2019re trying to do is bring the best quality water in and then disperse the saltier water out in the high-energy environment along the coast, where it can mix well with the existing environment and within a regulated area.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Perth\u2019s population is growing, but drinkable water is becoming harder to find. To keep the city quenched, this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":467647,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,75,128],"class_list":["post-467646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}