Unity Park - Salisbury

Unity Park Stormwater Harvesting Scheme

Project Value: $14 Million

Location: Pooraka, South Australia

Status: Completed 2011

Client: City of Salisbury

The City of Salisbury’s Unity Park Biofiltration and Reuse project is designed to harvest stormwater from the Dry Creek catchment for treatment and storage in the aquifer for later recovery. The project received funding under the Federal Government’s $1 billion National Urban Water and Desalination Plan, with further State Government and Council contributions.

The project involved the design of a capture basin and diversion dam at Dry Creek in Walkley Heights; designed to capture and release flow events at lower rates to improve the harvesting capture at downstream wetland locations at Pooraka Triangle and Montague Road.
The project also involved modifications to an existing 6ha of wetlands to increase capture size and performance; the design of two, 200m2 bio-filtration cells, and 6 ASR wells for injection and extraction. Works were undertaken in conjunction with DesignFlow, and the project represented a model research site for the trialling of large-scale biofiltration treatment of stormwater for ASR in South Australia.
The project included:

• Hydrologic modelling using MUSIC and WaterCress to determine yield and to optimise capture basin sizes (investigating 20ML to 50ML capacity)
• An assessment of the impacts of in stream capture basin sizes on flood levels in Dry Creek
• HEC-RAS modelling of new storages on Dry Creek flood levels
• Water quality modelling

The Unity Park project won the Excellence in Infrastructure Award at the 2011 South Australian Stormwater Industry Association Awards and an
Award for Excellence at the 2011 Institute of Public Works Engineers Australia.