APY Lands milestone for SA Water’s poo patrollers

SA Water’s duo of unique, remote-controlled sludge boats have made the long journey to South Australia’s Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands for the first time, as part of a collection of important data at the utility’s outback wastewater treatment plants.

This comes as the two vessels – aptly named ‘Indeepship’ and ‘Plop-eye’ – notch up more than 770,000 square metres of wastewater lagoons surveyed across regional South Australia since coming into operation in 2018.

The one-metre-long boats use sonar to indicate the build-up of sludge in the utility’s wastewater treatment lagoons across regional South Australia, with data used to help minimise odour and prioritise when each site is due to be de-sludged and cleaned.

SA Water’s Senior Manager Production and Treatment Lisa Hannant said the floating patrollers helped make the remote assessments a safer and more enjoyable task for the team.

“Like other remote-controlled toys, our people used a handheld controller to navigate the boats across the surface of 17 lagoons in the APY Lands, with sonar technology used to scan and record the distance to the top of the sludge layer,” Lisa said.

“Any fine sediment that is left in the water after primary wastewater treatment stages settles at the bottom of our polishing lagoons to form a sludge, which is then periodically removed to maintain the lagoons’ holding capacity and minimise the potential for odour to affect the nearby community.

“Managing our wastewater treatment plants is a critically important part of ensuring public health and safety, so we need to have an accurate understanding of how much sludge is in our lagoons to ensure they are cleaned in the most timely and cost-effective way.

“Wastewater lagoon surveys at our regional and remote facilities is typically done using a full-sized boat, so the use of these smaller fit-for-purpose vessels is a great example of our people harnessing innovative and new technologies to improve our wastewater operations, for the benefit of our customers and the wider community.”

Taking approximately four days to complete, the surveys were undertaken at SA Water’s wastewater treatment plants in the APY Lands communities of Amata, Indulkana, Kaltjiti, Mimili, Pipalyatjara and Pukatja.

SA Water operates 28 wastewater treatment plants across South Australia, responsible for treating millions of litres of sewage each day.

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