Early detection of adverse raw water quality with the use of targeted weather station installations.
In November 2019, Mid-Western Regional Council (MWRC) were required to issue a boil water alert for the town of Mudgee. The boil water alert was prompted due to an intense storm, that in as little as an hour saw 50mm of rain dumped into the raw water catchment offtakes at the Mudgee WTP.
The BOM weather station, located at Mudgee Airport only recorded 0.2mm of rain. Therefore, no warning was given to the water treatment plant operators to prepare for the change in the raw water quality over a very short period of time. Another compounding factor was below-average rainfall over the past three years. This made the catchment very dry with little vegetation, causing a much higher raw water turbidity.
In July 2020, MWRC contracted SAFEgroup Automation to install the first two weather stations based on the recommendations from the internal review. The weather station in the town of Kandos, which is located upstream of Lake Windamere Dam wall, will act as the early warning system. The weather station is installed at an existing sewer pump station and is connected to the existing SCADAPack 334 via Modbus which enables weather data to be feed into the councils ClearSCADA system in real-time.
If you’re interested in finding out more about our weather stations and how it can benefit your operations, contact our Smart Utilities Product Manager, Adam Simpson or get in touch with the SGA team today!
Acknowledgements:
The application note has been based off a presentation by Rod Morton - Treatment Supervisor at Mid-Western regional council. The full presentation: Response to boiled water alert to prevent subsequent incidents can be viewed online at WIOA Virtualwater.
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