eFlash #498
Date: 18-Aug-2021
In this edition: Tomorrows Essentials Webinar – Registration closes at 5pm today!| LEL Gas Management Guidelines Survey| Welcome to our new Affiliate Members| The Best of the Best Queensland Water Taste Test - Enter Now!| qldwater Annual Forum 2021 – Register Now| Water Night| Channels for XR Event – Postponed to December
1. Tomorrows Essentials Webinar – Registration closes 5pm today!
qldwater's next Essential Webinar will be taking place tomorrow Thursday 19th August at 10am. You must register here before 5pm today to participate.
The session will focus on ‘Drinking Water Quality’, bringing together two speakers that are passionate on this topic.
Our two presenters are:
Terry Fagg (Western Downs Regional Council)
Enhanced Coagulation in practice - A useful tool in the management of disinfection by products.
Terry, as an experienced and well-respected water treatment manager will provide a background to how enhanced coagulation can be used to help manage raw water high in organics, and lead to better DBP outcomes.
Mark Harvey (Charters Towers Regional Council)
DWQMP: After 10 years, have we taken them off the shelf yet?
Mark will reprise his presentation from the Charters Towers regional conference for a wider audience, talking about the challenges and improvements that the industry has faced since the introduction of the DQWMPs in Queensland.
Registrations will be required to participate in this webinar. Click here to register and lock it in to your calendar.
2. LEL Gas Management Guidelines Survey
WSAA has launched a project for the development of National Guidelines for Lower Explosive Limit (Gas) Management. qldwater is a contributor to this project and sits on the Project Steering Committee along with representatives from Townsville, Mackay, Whitsunday councils and Unitywater. Through our contribution it is planned that the Guidelines will be made available to all utilities nationally.
Stantec has been appointed as the consultant to aid with the develop the Guidelines. A very early step in the project is to survey water and sewerage service providers for their approach to LEL gases. Stantec are keen to get feedback from the industry, and we are keen that that feedback includes our members, so that our particular challenges (e.g. climate, small councils) are captured in the Guidelines.
Your input into this survey will be appreciated. You can complete the survey here:
https://forms.office.com/r/rStsUCLU5x
Background Information from WSAA
This project involves writing National Guidelines for Lower Explosive Limit (Gas) Management.
It is a member driven project run by WSAA and Stantec is the consultant appointed to undertake the works.
A number of utilities are dealing with LEL gas problems in isolation. A consistent approach by the industry will add tremendous value, providing much needed guidance for protecting workplace health and safety (WH&S).
Many utilities have risk management regimes to deal with LEL gases, but it would appear the coverage and standard of such regimes is variable and does not always consider the increased risk caused by illegal discharges. It is possible that this is a widespread problem that may be common to many Australian utilities.
It is intended that the guidelines provide an understanding of the fundamentals of explosive gases in sewers as well as best practice explosive gas management guidance.
This survey is one of the ways that we are capturing current practice and key focus areas for the guidelines.
Any questions or extra information can be directed to:
James Gardner at WSAA: gardner@wsaa.asn.au
The Stantec project email address: 300203452@stantec.com
The closing date for the completion of the survey is 9 September 2021.
3. Welcome to our new Affiliate Members
qldwater is pleased to welcome UNGANCO, Pensar, Grenof, 360 Engineering and Concept Environmental Services as new Affiliate Members for 2021/22.
To learn more about our new Affiliate Members please visit Our Affiliates page on our website.
qldwater now offers the opportunity of Affiliate Memberships to other industry partners, consultants and service providers located in and outside Queensland.
If you would like to enquire about our Affiliate Membership, please email ncarragher@qldwater.com.au for more information.
4. The Best of the Best Queensland Water Taste Test - Enter Now
Back by popular demand and open to all qldwater members, the Best of the Best Queensland Water Taste Test competition will establish who has the best tasting tap water in Queensland in 2021. If you plan to enter a sample at our Annual Forum in September, now is the time to start thinking about your top drop. Some of our members take the competition more seriously than others and even host their own taste test events to select their best sample to enter!
Each year the competition gets bigger and better. Since its inception in 2011, the competition now crosses borders with WIOA taking the challenge to NSW with the Water of Origin Taste Test. Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania followed with the first National Ixom Australia Best of the Best Tasting Tap Water competition held in 2015.
Sponsorship of the 2021 Best of the Best Queensland Water Taste Test is still available, so get your name in the game by contacting Naomi Carragher.
To enter the taste test competition, please fill out the entry form here.
5. qldwater Annual Forum 2021 – Register Now
Registrations close Tuesday 24th August at 5pm.
Only 3 weeks left until our qldwater Annual Forum which is being held on the 8th & 9th of September with an additional ‘Automated Metering’ themed workshop being held on the 7th of September.
This year’s forum is being graciously hosted by the Redland City Council with most events based at Alexandra Hills Hotel and at North Stradbroke Island for our day tour.
Please note – we have been advised by Seqwater and Redland City that actual site visits to the WTP and STP are unlikely to proceed at this point due to the challenges in planning around COVID restrictions. We are however in the process of organising some excellent replacement sessions to happen at the lunch venue.
The updated programs with presenter's names for the three days are now available on our event website.
7 September – ‘Automated Metering Workshop’ It will be a great opportunity to share experiences in automated metering and our increasingly digital operating environment, as well as the chance to connect with industry experts and vendors.
8 September – A Day on North Stradbroke Island with a range of fun activities including the Best of the Best Queensland Water Taste Test!
Followed by the Annual Forum Dinner where you have the opportunity to network with other delegates over a three course meal and have the opportunity to listen to our keynote speaker Andrew Curthoys from Cross River Rail.
Andrew Curthoys is the Digital Relationships Manager from Cross River Rail. Andrew is a digital subject matter expert and has been an integral part of Cross River Rails journey in delivery of their digital federated model. The federated data model allows the Cross River Rail team to utilise BIM, GIS and other data sets to generate a ‘real time’ model, assisting in both construction and troubleshooting. The evening will allow Andrew to talk through the Cross River Rail journey and include a live demonstration of the models.
9 September – The Annual Forum day will be focused on Industry Strategy (building on the highly successful 2019 event) and 'Is Asset Management for Water and Sewerage in Queensland broken?' Speakers from around the state and nationally will provide case studies on how AM is improving.
Sponsorship opportunities are still available across the three days. If you are interested in sponsoring any of the days, please contact Naomi Carragher on 07 3632 6850 or ncarragher@qldwater.com.au.
Thank you to our confirmed sponsors Calibre Group, Royce Water Technologies, Taggle, Veolia, Aquatec Maxcon, Suez, Concept Services.
6. Water Night
In October 2020, Smart Approved WaterMark (SAWM) held their inaugural Water Night where households pledged not to use their taps between midday and midnight.
Based on significant research, SAWM determined that Australia’s relationship with water – tap water in particular – would only improve with education and personal experience. To develop endearment and value for tap water amongst householders, they asked households to become ‘more water mindful’. 3,417 households signed up to participate with 6.3K adults and 2.1k children pledging not to use their taps on Water Night.
The experience proved to be immersive and easy for most people to undertake and timing of the event as part of National Water Week was a success. The Australian Water Association (AWA) suggested that their National Water Week initiative had never been bigger or as popular with the media thanks to Water Night. This is a great outcome for Water Night and the Australian water industry.
Water Night ambassadors, Costa Georgiadis, Sophie Thomson and Jane Edmanson (ABC Gardening Australia) and Gorgi Coghlan rallied to the cause generating significant engagement on social media.
The event is back on 21 October this year, and it’s great to see a number of Queensland utilities have already signed up including the Whitsunday Isaac Mackay QWRAP alliance and Fraser Coast Regional Council. Brisbane City, Douglas, Townsville and North Burnett have also shown interest.
By signing up, you receive access to a large amount of collateral and assets including mazes, factsheets, flyers, case studies, surveys, pre-recorded radio ads, event promotion and campaign evaluation reports.
For more information, please contact Zoe Palmer on 0424 059 246 or email zoe.palmer@smartwatermark.info
7. Channels for XR Event – Postponed till December
Over the years, WaterStart has carefully cultivated a community focused on solutions and knowledge sharing. Many of you have shared with us, either directly or indirectly, that workloads have become overwhelming, it's become difficult to balance the various conferences/summits across the sector, and the pandemic has created a new level of work-from-home challenges and fatigue. For these reasons, we have decided to POSTPONE our Thursday Sept. 9 CHANNELS Connect webinar to Monday Dec. 13, 2021.
We intend to maintain our signature program, and will be following up in the coming weeks to secure your availability have you been asked to present or participate on a panel. We're sincerely hopeful this change alleviates some of the pressures and challenges.
For those of you that have already registered for the Sept. 9 event, we will transfer your registration. If you have not registered yet, please do so here for the Dec. 13th event!
Thanks for your patience and understanding. Please keep an eye out for more details. As always, we are here for you so please don't hesitate to reach out via info@waterstart.com.
Click here to register for Dec 13 Event.
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