Sustainable water for Sydney Park

City of Sydney Council will build a water harvesting system in Sydney Park to create a sustainable water supply early next year.

“We’ve just finished the consultation period and we got some overwhelming positive feedback about the proposal, so at this stage the plan is to start construction in February 2010 and we’re hoping to have it up and running in the middle of the year in 2010,” the spokesperson said.

“Basically what will happen is that [rainwater] will be collected and it will go into one of the four wetlands in Sydney Park. It will be treated and then it will circulate around each of the other wetlands, and then later on it will be used to water the park.”

The water will be treated to remove litter, coarse sediment and organic matter before it is circulated around the wetlands.

The project is expected to save 440 million litres of run-off water annually.

Currently the park’s wetlands do not have a sustainable water supply needed to maintain a healthy aquatic environment. “At the moment stormwater just goes down drains in a lot of cases, so there is some water wastage,” the spokesperson said.

“What this is about doing is capturing that water and using it to improve the health of the wetlands in Sydney Park as a first step and secondly to irrigate the park.”

Stormwater currently drains via underground stormwater pipes down Campbell Road and discharges into Alexandria Canal.

The harvesting system will instead divert the stormwater into Sydney Park via an underground pipe which will run within Sydney Park, parallel to Campbell Road.

The stormwater harvesting system is part of a number of similar projects aimed at meeting Council’s goal of having a zero increase in the use of potable water by 2015.

The spokesperson said the state government has agreed to contribute $100,000 to monitor the project.

by Ehssan Veiszadeh