Western Victoria’s Ballarat City Council has taken out the Government – Other Agencies category of the National savewater! Awards with its water recycling project at the Marty Busch Sports Precinct.
The savewater! Alliance works with member water businesses, government agencies and product companies to deliver water conservation programs throughout Australia. Its aim is to accelerate water conservation behaviour change and water saving product purchasing in line with government and water industry needs.
The savewater! Awards are in their eighth year and have emerged as Australia’s leading awards for water sustainability.
This year’s awards attracted over 1,200 entries from across Australia and internationally.
Ballarat Councillor John Philips accepted the national award at the 2010 savewater! Awards ceremony in Sydney on 12 November.
Councillor Philips said it was a huge coup for Council to be recognised nationally.
“The sports precinct project has allowed year round access to two ovals for training and match play for a large number of junior and senior players of various sporting codes,” he said. “Projects such as this demonstrate the value of recycled water for maintaining the important social interactions that sporting clubs can provide during challenging times.
“Council is grateful to Central Highlands Water for it significant contribution to this project in making recycled water available for the reserve and its assistance in the use of recycled water.”
The Marty Busch Sporting Precinct includes two ovals, a multipurpose play area, tennis and netball courts, a velodrome and BMX facilities, as well as a clay target gun club.
The precinct is located within one kilometre of Central Highlands Water’s Ballarat South Water Treatment Plant – a water treatment facility that provides Class C water for the irrigation of recreational playing surfaces.
The project was designed and implemented to deliver the Class C water straight to the Marty Busch precinct from the Ballarat South Treatment Plant.
As a result of only using Class C water on the sporting surfaces in the precinct, approximately 18.4 megalitres of quality drinking water was saved in the reporting period 2009/2010 – the equivalent of 7.6 Olympic size swimming pools.
A sub surface drip irrigation system was also recently installed across 11,000 square metres of turf. This method of irrigation provides significant water savings, reducing water consumption by around 60 per cent compared with traditional above ground methods.
The initiatives implemented by the City of Ballarat at the Marty Busch sporting precinct mean that the reserve is no longer reliant on potable water for irrigation and Council as a whole has used eight per cent less water in 12 months.
A Commonwealth Water Grant and drought proofing funding from Victoria’s Department of Sport and Recreation also contributed to making this project possible.
Other organisations in the category included Darebin City Council, the Victorian Department of Justice and Kyneton District Health Service.
For further information contact the City of Ballarat’s Manager of Service Development Cameron Duthie on (03) 5320 5887.
