Sydney’s Kogarah Council is creating a new Town Square with ‘best practice’ stormwater harvesting, treatment and reuse. The exciting redevelopment is in partnership with Sydney Water, the Institute for Sustainable Futures and the development company, High Trade Pty Ltd.
The Commonwealth is providing $629,000, from the Urban Stormwater Initiative as a catalyst for the reuse project. The redevelopment is located between the two highly urbanised catchments of the Cooks River and the Georges River. Both rivers flow into Botany Bay. The rivers and the Bay are suffering from urban stormwater pollution.
The new Town Square project will include 193 residential apartments, 4,500 square metre commercial retail outlets, a public library and a Town Square with public parking underground. The redevelopment’s environmental design features a stormwater filtration system using garden beds with ‘ecosoil’.
A surge tank will handle high stormwater flows prior to treatment by the filtration system. Rainwater will be collected in tanks and used for toilet flushing, landscaping, carwash bays. Interestingly, it will also be regulated into a public water feature jointly designed by German water feature expert Herbert Dreiseitl and project architects Allen Jack & Cottier.
Of the 7,500 kilolitres of water that falls on the site, 85% will be captured and used. Of this, 60% will be used in toilet flushing and to irrigate the gardens of the courtyards and periphery landscape areas of the site. Sydney Water will carry out an evaluation of the project and monitor water use as well as water quality.
It will take about two years to build the Kogarah Town Square project which blends quality urban design with best environmental design.
“This is a project which will take Australian town planning into the future and when completed, the building will be one of the few in Australia, and indeed the world, which recycles stormwater and generates its own power,” said Acting Mayor, Councillor Jim Taylor.
A $1 million grant from the Commonwealth’s Australian Greenhouse Office, Renewable Energy Commercialisation Program, will result in the installation of solar panels that will provide 60% of the development’s energy, reducing its annual power bill and saving 375 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
For further information contact Rob Snelling, telephone (02) 9330 9536 or email rskmc@kogarah.nsw.gov.au
