Salty water situation under control

Thursday 24 August 2017, 2pm:

The salty water situation at Bray Park Weir is now under control. However, residents are asked to continue to minimise water use as it will take another four to five days for the situation to return to normal.

Council is now producing 440 litres a second of good quality water with a dissolved solids concentration of 279mg/litre. Normal operations produce water at 160mg/litre and Australian Drinking Guidelines state that anything below 600mg/litre is ‘good’ quality.

“Every hour we can produce 1.5 megalitres of good water so we will be in a position shortly to recharge the shire’s reservoirs without the risk of pushing more salt into the system,” Manager Water and Wastewater Anthony Burnham said. “We need 20 megalitres a day to meet demand.

“Gold Coast City Council also has very generously allowed us to open the connection between Coolangatta and Tweed Heads and we are receiving 31 litres a second of quality water from them, equating to about 2.7 megalitres a day.

“We should be in a position to close that connection by mid-morning tomorrow.”

Council will continue to release 90 megalitres a day from Clarrie Hall Dam for the next few days to continue to top up the good supplies in the top strata of the weir pool as the dredge works to draw the heavier salty water from depths of about 8.5 metres and discharge it downstream.

“The dissolved solids concentration at the bottom depths has been measured at 3700mg/litre so we are very appreciative of the huge effort of our staff and the assistance of external agencies, contractors and the Gold Coast City Council who have worked to control this situation.”