Sydney Water, as Australia’s largest water utility, provides drinking water, wastewater, recycled water, and some stormwater services to more than 5 million people across Greater Sydney, Illawarra and the Blue Mountains.

Similar to many water authorities in Australia, Sydney Water faced stormwater entering the wastewater system. These wet weather flows add to the total volumes passing through sewer pipes and then discharging into waterways.

Wet weather overflows pollute the environment in several ways:

Visual impact from debris within wastewater flows
Chemical pollution from ammonia, nitrogen and phosphorus
Restricting access to rivers, waterways and the ocean due to higher levels of faecal coliform

As part of the long-term partnership with Sydney Water, Aurecon applied digital engineering tools to identify how and where wet weather flows were entering the wastewater system. The Wet Weather Overflow Abatement Program inspected emergency relief structures – used to prevent sewer overflows through maintenance holes – and devised a digital platform to geographically plot the performance, condition and location of each structure.

Collating this information digitally enabled Sydney Water to prioritise capital improvement works according to the sites and areas that were contributing to the wet weather overflows.

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