The City of West Torrens Assets Departments core responsibilities cover traffic and parking analysis, infrastructure planning, design and construction and the management of stormwater.
Staff in the department provide engineering services and develop asset management plans and strategies to achieve long-term sustainability of more than $638 million worth of building and infrastructure assets.
Then Deputy Mayor and current Councillor George Demetriou nominated the team as high achievers in June at the 2014 National general Assembly of Local Government for their application of Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) principals in stormwater management across the city.
A recent WSUD project saw Mile End turned into the Adelaide’s first retro-fitted water sensitive suburb.
Water Sensitive Urban Design seeks to manage water in an urban environment in such a way as to minimise the negative impacts of urbanisation and maximise economic, social and environmental benefits,” said Engineering Services Coordinator Andrew King at the Local Government Association (LGA) SA conference and expo.
“For us, it’s all about delivering a more liveable, environmentally-friendly and cooler city, characterised by trees, green space, flood risk management, a reduction in the flow of pollutants to the coast and, ultimately, a fit-for-purpose water supply that harnesses diversified sources of water.”
The core of WSUD initiatives is the construction of rain gardens, which function as streetscape or property–scale bio-filtration systems to capture rainwater runoff from roads and properties.
Directed to kerbside gardens populated with trees and other plants, the runoff helps them to survive hot and dry weather as the water well element of the rain garden provides access to water for several weeks.
After being collected, the stormwater passes through various layers of soil that act as filters and remove harmful chemicals and sediments before the water reaches local waterways.
Other responsibilities the City Assets team is responsible for includes asset management, corporate leadership and management, capital project management, engineering services and traffic management.
The team has had a number of successes but two in particular are the development and adoption by Council of the ‘Transportation for the next Generation 2025 City of West Torrens Transport Strategy’ and the biennial Road Safety Mock Crash for local high school students.
The Transportation Strategy won the Local Government Managers Australia, South Australian Division, Excellence in Asset Management within Local Government Award in 2010.
This Strategy outlines how our Council will deal with traffic and transport management issues into the future.
It was developed to take into consideration travel demand and managing increased use of public transport.
The Mock Crash is an event that is staged by Council and the West Torrens Road Safety Group every two years and sees 500 local high school students see firsthand the horrors of a road crash.
Student actors play crash victims and local police, ambulance and fire personnel are on hand to show what happens in a real-life crash scene.
This project earned an Award of Excellence at the Institute of Public Works and Engineering Australia (SA Division) in 2011.
There have been many highlights that City Assets has had, but the most recent is the completion of a massive stormwater system upgrade that took more than a decade to complete.
The project cost more than $10 million and will now help alleviate flooding to thousands of homes from the suburbs of Mile End to Cowandilla in the event of a one in 100 year flood.
