Burnie Landfill Wetland

Burnie Landfill Wetland

19 Jul 2017

Burnie City Council developed a state-of-the-art treatment wetland at the Burnie Waste Management Centre, on the north coast of Tasmania. The Burnie landfill wetland is constructed on top of a rehabilitated landfill cell. Groundwater seeping from the landfill (leachate) contains elevated levels of nutrients. The leachate is treated by the wetland, improving the quality of the water to the point that it can be safely released to the surrounding environment.

The Burnie landfill wetland has a number of benefits:

• Increasing environmental flows in nearby Cooee Creek;
• Reducing movement of groundwater from the landfill to the environment;
• Maximising the capacity of site stormwater and sewer infrastructure; and
• Improving the aesthetic and biodiversity values of the landfill site.

Construction of the wetland commenced in April 2016. Planting occurred over winter 2016 and construction was completed by late 2016. More details of the project are given here.

ARR testing

12 Aug 2015

Australian Rainfall and Runoff (ARR) is a national guideline document, data and software suite that can be used for the estimation of design flood characteristics in Australia.

The document Australian Rainfall and Runoff was first published by Engineers Australia in 1958. It  has since become an essential guidance document for the practice of hydrology in Australia. The last major upgrade was in 1987.

The National Committee on Water Engineering, Engineers Australia, in conjunction with Geoscience Australia updated the document in 2016. The update included revision of the document, update of design information with new data and methods and development of new tools. The new guidelines, tools and data are available on the ARR project website.

The ARR revision project occurred over a number of years. The project contracted a number of industry practitioners to develop and test the tools and techniques.