ADRIAN BARDEN:

................was a member of the Minister for the Environment Interdepartmental Office on Hazard Reduction and Environmental Assessment. He was a key person in the establishment of the new bushfire requirements introduced by the NSW Government last year and has qualifications in environmental studies and management. Would you please give a warm welcome to Grahame Douglas.

UPDATE ON RFS APPROVALS OF DAs - changes after the Canberra Bushfires

Grahame Douglas, Manager of Planning & Environment Services, Rural Fire Service

Thank you ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to give you a bit of an update, last year I was here and presented some information on the new legislative requirements and what I hope today to do is actually fill you in and where we are about 12 months later and some of the initiatives that have been implemented and hopefully some good news as well as some mixed news for people.

By way of a basic recap on 1 August 2002, the Rural Fires & Environmental Assessment Legislation Amendment Act resulted in legislative changes to the EP&A Act, EP&A Regulations and the Rural Fires Act. Some of those were really quite significant in terms of the surveying profession and we need to talk about a few of those issues. We now have a greater emphasis on bushfire protection in the assessment of development applications and there is also a greater consideration of protective measures in terms of hazard reduction and how we're going to implement hazard reduction activities.

We must now consider the impact of bushfires on developments of all Class 1, 2 and 3 buildings under the Building Code of Australia, subdivisions and other special fire protection purposes. The most crucial aspect to entering the loop is determining what is bushfire prone land and I'll be referring to the progress we've made to date and some of the impediments to progress to date in relation to this exercise.

Under the legislative arrangements each Council has to prepare a map by 1 August 2003 and must review it every 5 years and the government announced that with the introduction of the legislation the Rural Fire Service would on behalf of local government undertake that exercise for the first round of mapping for those Councils that either had no resources, data, expertise or skills in producing those maps. In practical terms it has meant that Councils in many cases have defaulted back to the RFS even where that capacity is in house.

Crucially if land is deemed bushfire prone than any application other than a subdivision for residential and special fire protection purposes must consider the requirements of planning for bushfire protection to gain development consent. In practical terms this is what we call Section 79BA of the Environment Planning & Assessment Act and the provision provides for a performance based outcome where are deemed to satisfy arrangement under the Building Code of Australia can't be met, but it certainly does not mean as it was portrayed originally as a means of preventing development and as this applies to what we would refer commonly as the single dwelling or the extensions to dwellings and it applies to Classes 1, 2 & 3 buildings this is actually a mechanism for facilitating safer development rather than preventing development.

In contrast, application for residential subdivisions or buildings considered to be a special fire protection purpose are now integrated through sections 91 of the Environment Planning & Assessment Act and require a bushfire safety authority from the Rural Fire Service under Section 100B of the Rural Fires Act and these matters are referred to the head office of the Rural Fire Service at this stage.

I thought in approaching this question we needed to ask ourselves do we actually have a problem and the reason I pose this question is because we often over look exactly the scale of fires on the landscape. I presented this photo or this satellite image last year and that's one perspective of it in the landscape. An alternative perspective is this house which has been now constructed and the scaffolding which you see for that building is actually sitting on the adjoining property. The adjoining property is owned now by a government agency, it used to be the Department of Land and Water Conservation, now DIPNR as referred to earlier. At this stage of construction the land owner requested the Department to clear a fire break on it's land so it could have it's development. The rear of the block is a national park. Interestingly the driveway is on the non hazard side of this house and this photo was presented to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Bushfires and was quite a powerful image in the eyes of that Committee. That building does not comply with either level 1, 2 or 3 of the Building Code of Australia for protection against bushfires and it was approved in the lead up just before the Christmas 2001 bushfires. So this is a 21st century development.

We also lose sight of the fact sometimes that some people are actually directly impacted. This person is facing a huge emotional, financial and social problem in getting re-established in the Blue Mountains as a result of the Christmas 2001-2002 bushfires and I'd suggest that some people in the community when they're affected like this currently realise they do have a problem as well.

These people believe that we have a problem from time to time. They're asked to fight fires and they're also asked to produce and spend their volunteer time preparing communities for the possible impact of bushfires later on in either that year or subsequent years. So they believe there is a bit of a problem and it's their safety that is going to be a primary consideration of the Rural Fire Service when we're looking at development applications that are before us.

So what about the new legislation. Well first of all in summary the Environment Planning & Assessment Act gives statutory effect to planning for bushfire protection and I hope many of you have seen that document and if not it's certainly available through either the Rural Fire Service web page or the planning.nsw.gov.au website.

Planning principles under the new section 117 direction issued by the then Minister for Planning, G20 also relates to the preparation of local and environmental plans, the Rural Fires Act which has amended and provides or the integrated developments of Section 100B matters being special fire protection purposes and subdivisions. Section 79BA which I referred to earlier, the EP&A Act now defines designated bushfire prone areas and the Commissioner of the Rural Fire Service's role is to sign off on those plans and the Building Code of Australia which has been amended to match planning for bushfire protection with AS3959.

So that's quite a suite of amendments that have been in place now for some 11 months. I wanted to talk briefly about some of the modern constraints to bushfire management. We now have a huge urban interface and it's been estimated that in the greater Sydney area there are some 7000 kms of urban interface, that is we have housing directly interfacing with our national park and bushland. National parks of State dominate that interface, bushfire mitigation increasingly reliant on volunteers to do work and volunteers value their time at home with their families as well. Fuel accumulation rates in NSW are about twice those of Western Australia and as such we get to the high fuel loads in half the time that they do in Western Australia.

There is a need for developers and the community to recognise the need of land managers to meet their objectives as well. I was yesterday having a discussion with a developer who had gotten an approval by a Sydney Council and the National Parks & Wildlife Service is now expected to provide a drainage easement and a bushfire protection zone within the National Park to accommodate the development and those measure are certainly from a bushfire point of view not an acceptable one from the Rural Fire Services perspective.

We need to stop blaming the land managers all the time. 71% of ignitions that move on to national parks actually come out of private land yet about 11% of fires in national parks ever escape their boundaries. Mind you when they escape they're bobby dazzlers and they have to be managed with great care. There is an absolute need to protect fire fighters.

I bring this information forward because it will give you some understanding for how we're approaching the management of developments in NSW. Very briefly some design and staging issues that the Rural Fire Service is increasingly looking for to seeing as part of the development application process before us. Minimalisation of perimeters, avoiding bottle necks within developments which are close to bushfire hazards, refuges for evacuation particularly for special fire protection purposes such as SEPP 5 development, schools, nursing homes, hospitals and the like, avoiding isolated developments, developing in blocks to avoid scattering of developments, trying to get some consolidation of asset protection zones rather than wholesale clearing of the bushland, promoting subdivisions patterns with good access and expanding subdivisions or staging it from existing developments.

This is a photo of a rural house with a clear asset protection zone, it's probably a little too neat for our liking it could certainly have a few more trees around it and be a bit more aesthetically pleasing but the point to be made is a very clear asset protection zone, access, fire trails, and you'll see on the top of the picture the green trees that are still there while the trees behind them are actually burnt out and that was the outer protection zone doing it's function getting the fire out of the canopy before it got towards the house.

Siting principles. Avoid ridge tops, avoid steep slopes, contain all asset protection zones within the boundaries of the development and the property, provide access away from the hazard, avoid narrow gulleys, surround habitable buildings with drive ways, avoid north to westerly aspects, try to use level ground as much as possible, cut in benches rather than elevated housing, concrete slabs over raised floors, habitable buildings near access, egress, underground services and on site water has to be adequate. For rural residential development, design it with the property access roads joining directly onto the public road system and they shouldn't be too long. If somebody comes to us with a 200 metre access road through thick bushland it will have problems. Consider grouping individual dwellings into clusters, provide adequate and independent water, multiple occupancies at least one of the buildings has to be safe and meet the requirements and in split zonings they'll be treated as if they are property boundaries, even if it's in the one property the split zoning particularly in environmental protection zone will need to be protected as part of the development.

A few bushfire facts. Public land managers also have to meet land management objectives, the bush was there first, we are suffering poor past planning decisions. Construction standards help but land owners need to reduce hazards on their land. The bush is also an asset and asset protection zones in combination with other protection measures are great, they're good they help but they're certainly no guarantee.

What has been achieved in the last 12 months. Well we can group these into a few things, bushfire prone land mapping and I'll talk about that shortly. The number of development applications that have been dealt with, the production of promotional materials and future ones including the use of our web page, training of professionals and the establishment of a working party on development controls in bushfire prone areas to represent stakeholder interests.

In terms of bushfire prone land mapping, I've indicated there the numbers have been approved and the number that are imminent for approval with a large number being produced and finalised prior to 1 August. I'll leave that so you can see if there is anything on there that's of particular interest to yourself.

In relation to development applications I've just pulled out the subdivisions here we've received some 1,021 development applications for subdivisions since 1 August up until yesterday. 835 of those or 82% have been processed, 91 or 11% have been refused bushfire safety authorities and have been returned. In some cases they've returned back to us with amendments, changes and then have been subsequently approved. In June so far we've received 125 development applications which is where a lot of that difference between 835 and 1,021 is. So we still have development applications which are June and May which are before us and at the moment there are no subdivision applications before us that haven't been dealt with in either the time or are out of date now. We were late in a number of them early on but there are none that haven't been dealt with at the moment.

What are the common grounds for refusal. First of all inadequate setbacks for asset protection zones and the reliance of asset protection zones to use Council reserves, national parks or other land uses expecting them to clear the asset protection zone for the development.

Secondly, access arrangements are often inadequate. The point needs to be made that for subdivision purposes the Rural Fire Service will strictly apply the guidelines, strictly. If you cannot meet the setbacks or access requirements it will not be approved.

Where do we go to from here. well bushfire prone land maps if we can get those happening and in place across the State, what we will find is a significant reduction in the number of development applications referred to the Rural Fire Service, but it's certainly true that we are getting a lot of development applications that simply should not have been referred to us. So completion of the mapping will actually reduce significantly the number of DAs that have to be dealt with. Our processing times are now within Statute and we've given a guarantee to government that we'll maintain that. subdivision and home owners packs for lodging development applications are in production and through the working party on development control issues in bushfire prone areas we're hopeful they will be completed shortly.

We've also done professional training for a number of groups including the Planning Institute of Australia, the Australian Institute of Building Surveyors, and the Royal Australian Institute of Architects and my question there is that for land surveyors what do you think you need? These are great forums and great seminars but probably don't deal with the detail that you may need.

Thank you.

An overview of Sydney Water's e-Developer system, sustainable water systems, water & sewer provision for small - medium projects

Norm Mann, MD Michael Bell & Partners, Water Servicing Coordinator Representative to Sydney Water's External Quality Council

ADRIAN BARDEN::

.......................................Water Quality Council [CAN'T HEAR] develop a system, Norm was a former State and National President of IEMSA and a former Chairman of the Surveying and Mapping Industry Council NSW and is Secretary of Sydney North Group and has been for the past ten years. Please give Norm a warm welcome.

NORM MANN:

Good morning. Now we've got the formalities over, first of all is there anybody here from Sydney Water. Okay we can say what we like then [LAUGHTER]. I'm told that most of the audience are surveyors and should know what Section 73 Certificates are about, is there anybody who doesn't know what a Section 73 involves. Okay well in November 2001 Sydney Water commenced a new system for dealing with Section 73 applications which required all applications to be submitted electronically through a water servicing coordinator. How do you get to be a water servicing coordinator. During the previous 3 months they carried out a tender process which was based on knowledge, experience, quality systems and ability to service the market range of Sydney Water's customers which resulted in the awarding of contracts to 19 firms to carry out the duties of water servicing coordinator. A further firm was appointed some months later after an appeal bringing the total to 20.

Contracts are for 12 months duration subject to audit in June/July for satisfactory performance in fact my firm's due for an audit next Tuesday, with an initial period of 3 years during which Sydney Water may offer the option to renew the 12 month contracts if satisfactory performance is demonstrated. All water servicing coordinators are therefore eagerly looking forward to Sept 2004 when the 3 years is up when we may be forced to spend another month submitting another tender to preserve our business future for the next 3 years.

At the end of the first one year period, Sydney Water decided to renew the existing 20 contracts but also called further tenders which caused a little bit of disturbance among some of the existing WSCs and they appointed another 7 firms, so there is now a total number of water servicing coordinators throughout Sydney Water's area of operations of 27. The main pre requisite to submit a tender to be awarded a water servicing coordinator is that you had to have previously been accredited as a project manager by Sydney Water. We've thus seen 46 project managers in early 2001 reduced to 27 water servicing coordinators at present but there doesn't seem to be a problem in servicing the market.

Now we know how to become a water servicing coordinator - what do we do. Entry is everything because basically Sydney Water's reason for moving to this system was that they didn't want to spend the time talking to little backyard developers and people that they had to explain the process to. So now they've found 27 bunnies to do it for them.

So the WSC deals with everything from the initial application to the final certification of the works and it's all done electronically through a system that they call edeveloper. They spent $52 million getting their customer information billing system developed and installed and edeveloper is part of that. It's not working as well as it's supposed to and so they canned it earlier this year and they're not further developing it through the contract that they had with an external provider they're going to try and do it with their own IT resources so that means it's going to take years to sort out the bugs in it.

Through the Quality Council we've advised them of a number of difficulties and Sydney Water have identified their own difficulties within their own house so there is a great list of enhancements and fixes that have to be done to make it operate the way it was intended to. Being a water servicing coordinator is not a great joy, however we struggle on.

The contract with Sydney Water specifies that the water servicing coordinator must cover all types of applications which can range from no works involved through to major projects, or large subdivision s, multi storey developments etc. so you've got to be able to handle everything from just a notice of requirements that comes back telling you to pay a few hundred dollars in DSP charges through minor works to major works.

The system is that you have to engage a water servicing coordinator if you want to make a Section 73 application and get the Certificate to get approval to your development. When the system started back in 1964 it was called Section 34B then and in the old Act it only covered subdivision s. They've since found over the years that there is a need to have all sorts of developments that may increase the demand on Sydney Water's services covered by that section of the Act.

So when you engage your water servicing coordinator you have to provide him with appropriate information electronically to allow him to submit your proposal. Nowadays with most subdivision s that's not a problem give it to us in Autocad, give us a copy of the Council consent we scan it and put it all together, we stick it in. Part of this system also is that they get us to collect the money too and then they send us the bill so you don't pay your application fee to Sydney Water you pay it to your water servicing coordinator and then we get a bill at the end of the month with all the cases we've submitted. The current application fee is $305 but that will change on 1 July because of the IPART decisions regarding Sydney Water's fees.

So we stick in the application with as much information we can provide with some of the developments other than purely residential subdivision like multi storey developments we have to provide water usage, sewer discharge that sort of stuff so they can assess the usage of the development and in some cases there will be a credit for existing use on the land, which is credited against the DSP charges. DSP charges are developer servicing plan charges, there are 125 of these subdivision plans established throughout Sydney Water's area, they're based on the works that are required over a 25 year period within that sewer catchment or water reservoir supply zone and there is a document that applies to each one that shows how it's calculated. Every WSC has the rates for every DSP charge, they change every year according to the CPI they go up 3.4% on Tuesday, if you have a problem with the charges that come back in the Notice of Requirement talk to your water servicing coordinators and he can challenge them. In fact we have the right to challenge anything that they put in the Notice of Requirements and we do that quite frequently because they don't always get it right.

Sydney Water doesn't want to talk to you so don't waste your time trying to talk to them. Go back through your water servicing coordinator who has the tools to argue on your behalf. That's the way they want to do it that's how we have to do it. The notice may come back saying that you need to sign a Minor Works Agreement. Minor Works involves insertion of a sewer junction, concreting casing of 150-300 diameter sewers if you're building over them or provision of a sideline up to 6 metres long. If it's more than that it's major works.

There are 2 separate lists of constructors for the different types of works. There are minor works constructors some of which are also qualified for major works, and there are major works constructors who are qualified in various sizes of works for instance water mains, 100mm to 375mm water mains 375-750 sewers, 150-300 sewers, 375-750 and above, and there is another classification for steel mains which are needed in some cases where they have to be maintenance free or larger mains. If you are doing a small development and the builder's plumber says yeah I'm accredited by Sydney Water I can do that no problem mate, go to your WSC and check up otherwise he's wasting your time. Some of them think that being accredited by Sydney Water is the fact that they are a licensed drainer. These are two totally separate types of accreditation which they have to jump through higher hoops for. So if the builder has got a mate who can do it check with your WSC because we can access the list very quickly and check up whether they can or not otherwise you're wasting your time and the WSC's time because we get calls from various plumbers I've been asked to do this job but what have we got to do you know.

Then you have major works which covers everything above minor works. You have the opportunity at the point where the notice comes back and your WSC passes it on to you with the requirements to change WSCs at that point if you want to look after the design and construct process. So you can go and get a quote from somebody else to do the rest of the job if you're dissatisfied with your current WSC but I would hope that most of them are providing the appropriate service and you don't need to do that but if you want to fish around for a price for design and project management that's the point where you can.

Having decided to go ahead with the job you sign the agreements, return them, the WSC organises the design, tenders construction, supervision, testing, certification and at the end of it you get your Certificate as long as you've paid all your bills and paid all your DSP charges and things like that.

One thing you might keep in mind if you've got a small development where you're building on it, you have to pay your DSP charges before they will let you connect to either the water or the sewer main. So just remember that one and remind your clients that has to be done before they'll be allowed to connect even if they don't have to do anything else, if they just want a drilling for a water main connection they won't be able to get it unless they've paid their DSP charges. They get paid directly to Sydney Water not through the water servicing coordinator although if you want to give your cheque to the water servicing coordinator made out to Sydney Water I'm sure most of them can handle getting it there in a hurry. We have things going there every day so it's not a problem to do that.

In the design and construct process there are a couple of things to keep in mind particularly if you are building and you may want to deviate a sewer because you want to stick some home units there with a basement and there is an inconvenient sewer in the way. If you are doing a deviation or a water main adjustment, because it's an existing asset of Sydney Water's they insist on a bond being provided before you start construction. This has been the cause of a lot of discussion and argument and in recent years we've got them to the point where if you are doing the actual construction of the sewer deviation or the water main adjustment without touching the existing asset, all you have to bond is the connection costs so if you've got say a $200,000 sewer deviation, instead of putting up a bond for $300,000 which would be the normal requirement, that's the formula, cost plus 50%, you get the cost of connecting the sewer at each end separated out by your constructor in his tender and you bond that cost so you might be only talking about $20,000 bond instead of $300,000 so it's something to remember. Your WSC should be aware of that one too.

There are a few other little catches that I might tell you about. It's quite common that there is a lack of uniform policy application by the developer servicing representatives in Sydney Water. All WSCs have been provided with all the policies of Sydney Water regarding Section 73 and development and even had to do a day's training and an exam at the end of it so if you get somebody applying the policy incorrectly we can go back and argue with them and point out what they really should be doing.

One of the most common of these is expecting the sewer to be extended into the property. In developed areas and commercial areas we've got the building coming right to the boundary, that's just stupid. Unfortunately the way the book has been written it's based on the Greenfield situation where they want the sewer connection within the property but the general requirement which has been there for years for developed areas is that you only need to bring the sewer connection to behind the kerb in the footpath, so if you're doing a development in a developed area, and you get Sydney Water telling you you've got to bring the sewer right into the property, get your WSC to go back and argue about it. You'll find particularly that if you're doing anything in the Wollongong area or Illawarra's Sydney Water office area, that they apply that one we have to argue about it all the time. That's just something to be aware of.

Other small jobs if you're doing the classic 2 lot subdivision with a street in front and a street or a lane behind, there is no water main in the street behind of course, you don't want to pay for a water main all the way from the nearest cross street which is probably 300 metres away up to your block do you. Put in an easement for services for the water connection, it's quite allowable and not a problem.

If you've got clients with dual occupancy proposals keep in mind whether you can subdivide it in the future, whether they want to subdivide it in the future and you can organise the services accordingly. You can get your Certificate based on whichever you tell them at application stage, if you just want to do a dual occupancy they'll charge you the DSPs and you don't have to do anything else, you can have joint connections or whatever, but if there is a possibility you're going to sub divide it in the future, discuss it with your WSC and arrange your services accordingly, either separate water connections, separate sewer connections or even provide a short sewer extension before you've got the place built out.

I could go on forever about some of these things but I don't have the time to. I've also been asked today to tell you something about sustainable water systems and Sydney Water's policies associated with development. Obviously Sydney Water has a saving water policy so they don't have to build any new dams in the future. They've got a number of methods of encouraging people to save water, the first is in the pricing, you will notice that your rates have gone up from 57cents a kilolitre to 94 cents a kilolitre in the last two years so that's one way to discourage you from using too much water. They're offering subsidies or discounts to encourage people to buy water efficient appliances, I heard an ad on the radio this morning on the way here that Retravision are selling energy efficient washing machines with a 4 or 5 rating, if you buy one by 30 July Sydney Water will give you $100. They also have subsidies to encourage installing rainwater tanks and they've actually been targeting most of the larger project builders to install them with their new houses and they're offering $500 on those but that will run out shortly too they're not going to do it forever.

The other way they're trying to do it is expand recycled water usage. At the moment there is a recycled water system at Rouse Hill which incidentally took 8 years to come into operation, it had cross connections to the potable system until they got enough recycled water produced by the treatment works but it's been running for 18 months or so now. They're also extending the Homebush Bay system to the redevelopment of the Roads Peninsula. There will be a lot of high rise residential and a bit of commercial development there replacing all the old industrial development. They're also doing some upgrading work at Glenfield and Liverpool Treatment Works and as a result of that they're proposing a pipeline from Liverpool Treatment Works to Malabar via Regents Park so they can deliver recycled water to any customers they can find along the way who want recycled water. We were involved in finding a site for a major water user a little while ago and we were encouraged to a site at Regents Park but unfortunately the sewer couldn't take the discharge. So if you've got any clients that want some recycled water there is an opportunity there because Sydney Water really want to sell it. The EIS for that pipeline has been on exhibition for the last couple of months it finishes on Monday, it goes through 13 different local Government areas so they may have a few things to sort out but there is an opportunity if you want some recycled water.

They've also set up a Smart Works group to investigate and encourage smart water usage and I know that they are looking at a desalination proposal and also wind power to power pumping stations and so forth but we will wait and see how long it takes to develop those.

I'll leave it at that. Thank you.

Waste Water Treatment Solutions for Developments with Recycled Water Capabilities

John Noble - Director, Acron Noble Pty Ltd

ADRIAN BARDEN:

John Noble is going to come and speak to us now. John Noble is known to most of us for his involvement in Acron Noble. About twelve months ago Ludowici bought the company and combined their expertise. John is formerly from QLD but he tells me he no longer supports the maroons. He has been working with on site sewerage treatment and disposal for the last 15 years please give a warm welcome to John.

JOHN NOBLE:

Thank you. Water is a very important resource probably the most important resource and it's received a great deal of exposure recently because of the drought. We deal in water, we deal in waste water and we try and purify water clean it up and return it to the environment correctly and try and get re use from it. That's what we're going to look at today by going through and I'll just give you a little bit of background about Ludowici has been a company here in Australia for 150 years they started in 1858 got involved in seals and other mechanisms, they also got involved in mining machinery and 12 months ago they got involved in the water and waste water industry and you're going to hear a lot more about this company in the next few years. We basically do commercial work we do not do domestic work and we basically go into areas where it's going to be an on site disposal such as mine sites, schools are outside the municipal sewerage area, luxury islands, resorts, subdivisions, wineries, tourist parks and the like. We'll go into the area of how we clean up the water, what we do with it, we won't spend a lot of time today on the process but we'll mainly bring out the opportunities.

The process we actually use is called an activated sludge B&R process B&R meaning biological nutrient removal. That's a typical plant for a small commercial that's up at the Hunter at McWilliams Wines. They get between 500-1000 people a day going there, sampling the goods and of course they use it as a rest stop as well. That's the size of the plant, it's aesthetically very pleasing, it has no smell, you can actually go and stand on top of that tank and there would be no offensive odours.

Today what I'd like to address mainly is centralised sewerage in the area of subdivisions and small towns and developments and there are areas here where there is a change in philosophy. Once upon a time a few years back the common approach was to go and buy a block of land say in this exercise 50 hectares, sub divide it into 25 blocks, each of two hectares. Today we look at a different style of thing altogether, we take the 50 hectares, we look at a nice ridge or pleasing aspect and we break it into 3 areas, the first area we break into smaller blocks or 40 blocks we then leave a common area which can be used for either golf, equestrian, or some other sport or recreational area then we break the rest of the 20 hectares up into another 40 blocks so the outcome of that is in simple form example 1, 25 blocks at say $200,000 each you get a return of $5 million. Example 2 sell 80 sewered blocks and that's what you can do and any developer here would know that if you can use the word town water or sewered you're going to get a lot more money for your block than if you're in a rural situation and the difference there is just for this example $5-14 million.

Now how do we do this. The way we do this is we make a standard connection in plumbing from the house to a small pump station, the pump station stands about this high and goes in ground and it has a positive displacement pump and then it delivers by a small bore polypropylene to the actual communal sewerage treatment plant so it's only a shallow pipe you don't have to put huge works in with concrete pipes, it's only 600 in ground, and it runs then to the communal sewerage treatment plant. The impacts of that are that you get very very little infiltration. You collect all the waste from the house, you take it into a small pumping station, it delivers it in a small bore polypipe to the actual sewerage treatment plant, the sewerage treatment plant then actually treats and cleans up and what we get at the end is that. That's what it looks like and that's what it smells like and that's the end product. LAUGHTER you can if you like. Some I would and some I wouldn't.

The environmental outcomes are that you clean up the method of collection so it's clean, there is no odours no smell no pump outs no septic tanks, no trenches and all those other things, it's exactly the same as if this house was in the suburbs. It's a closed system so you don't have to oversize the system and allow for 5 times average dry weather flows or anything like that which you have to do in some other instances. It's aesthetic because you saw the type of tank at McWilliams, it's the same sort of design. Then we are able to filter that and we return it back to the block or we use it in a very environmental outcome and we look on the end product as a resource, not as a waste.

A couple of typical applications that we've used around here was at Kurrajong Country Club Golf Course, there were 36 homes up there, working on say 700 litres per day per household, roughly 25,000 run it up to say 30,000 litres as plant, that's about 150 EP plant EP meaning equivalent person, and your costs are round about $1,000 per EP so that plant is about $150,000 now that's just for the sewerage treatment plant itself, that's not your pump station that's not your reticulation nor your disposal but for your plant to give you a basic gut feeling so when you're looking at a proposal that might have 50 homes if you work on those numbers you'll know where your costs sit.

Little Island Estate at Kurrajong Heights, that was slightly different that was under the old EPA approval days where they decided to put 5 little sewerage treatment plants in instead of one I don't recommend that, that's not the best outcome. Today we'd go for one. One that's on the books at the moment we're really enjoying doing is out at Riverside Oaks, it's a beautiful site, and that beautiful golf course is now getting 50 new homes all around it and they're building another 18 hole golf course alongside and more homes are going to come. Now the way to do that is once again the small your little pump station because you've got fairly flat land, very difficult to put a reticulation system in under the normal system so we're using a pressure system for that.

The approvals, local government is responsible for the approvals of sewerage treatment plants up to 2,500 EP so you go to your local Hawkesbury Shire Council or whatever and they deal with it. If it's over 2,500 it's EPA. Now the biological treatment systems have been around for a while but I'm going to touch on it very briefly here so you get a feel for what happens is that the raw sewerage comes into a plant, it's basically organic material if you give a good environment for bacteria to develop there and grow, the bacteria actually eat the organic material and it turns it into nitrates and nitrites, nitrates and nitrites then by recirculation back through the system using anoxic and aeration cells, you nitrify and denitrify and the end product is an excellent treated effluent which is then used as a resource.

Now the type of tank we build, we build these in ground quite a few compartments so when it comes in it's flowing from compartment to compartment without any pumping or anything like that it's just a flow through and the end product is then pumped out. For those that understand the chemical processes we use the modified Lou Sac [CAN'T HEAR] process, there are other processes but this one works. That's it in a process schematic. This presentation today will actually be left with your organisers and they will download it and anybody can have access back to this so I'm going to go through this fairly quickly.

That's another tank to give you an idea of the cleanliness of it, the ease of it and then the best part about it is after we've got this treated effluent, we then really clean it up. We dose it with chlorine, we pass it through a multi media filtration, that takes out any of the suspended solids that are still left in there, we backwash that back to the head of the plant, then we may put it through a sand filter again and we keep refining that until as I said before this is the end result because we're very very understanding of the perception out there of what a sewerage treatment plant is. Sewerage treatment plant to the public is something that is an eyesore, it actually smells and you can get unhealthy results from it. When you use this process it is the reverse. You actually get a very simple biological action, all done within a concrete tank with a roof on it and the outcome is just clean water.

The type of plant options up there on the left hand side is a typical multi media cleansing plant in the middle is our switchboard, it's all done with a PLC we can actually even run a plant 1,000 miles away with a laptop if we have to. I don't recommend that for some of the smaller developments but for some of your larger developments where you don't want to have on site maintenance at all, we can run that through a website.

Irrigation there are two methods, above ground or below ground, wherever we can we prefer to go subterranean. We're doing a lot of schools at the moment where we're actually taking the water and the waste and cleaning it up and putting the treated effluent back under the school oval which means they don't have to use fertilisers, they don't have to use drinking water to actually irrigate playing fields, and that's the correct use of waste water. Water is too expensive today to be just using drinking water on recreational fields, golf courses or any other type of area where it's so simple to just clean up your water correctly and then put it through.

This is a diagram of what you do, grid system, under a playing field, under a football field and you've watered the field and there is enough nitrogen in there and enough phosphate in there to actually allow it to be it's own fertiliser. That's a typical sub surface irrigation field in one of the schools.

The type of water quality we get to give you an instance there, just very quickly again the BOD on that plant is 1 and suspended solids is 4. I don't know if any of you know anything about sewerage treatment but most municipal sewerage treatment plants can't get under 10. here is another one BOD of 1, suspended solids less than 1 now that's a clean product that means there is no suspended solids in it that's better than drinking water out of Sydney Water. And we can clean up the fecal coliforms, they're the main concern that where the e-coli are that's where the health risks are, but we can clean that up.

This is a little bit of background about what we can do I'm not going to spend any time on that. We can actually now with a closed system and this is just an example, we did a case study, we worked with the QLD Education, Department of Natural Resources, EPA and 8 of us sat round a table and we designed this for State Schools. We collect the rainwater off the roof of the schools, we pass it through a solid screen just to get the first particles out, we go through a carbon cartridge filter, then we use ultra violet to disinfect, it goes up into the tea room and the school room it comes back down to the sewerage treatment plant, we clean up the sewerage, we then pass it through one of our multi media filtration then it goes back up to the school as a toilet flush. It then comes back down into the sewerage treatment plant again, we store that and we've cut down the water usage of that school by 80% and the 20% thats left over is then taken off the storage tank and then it's put as a grid system under the school oval. So we've actually taken the water off the roof, cleaned it up, worked it round in the school a couple of times, and we've disposed of it environmentally correctly under the school oval and they've cut down 80% and we did a whole case study with the government department on that.

If anyone needs to get any further information through your group here on packaged water treatment come back to us and we're quite happy to talk to you and give you some prices or give you an idea. This is where we've done a lot of our work, mainly in mines, resort golf courses, schools, small towns, we don't get involved in the large sewerage treatment business we leave that up to the big boys and we don't get involved in domestic. Thats another one of our plants at Milmerran Power Station that was looking after 1350 construction worker. Double Island Resort up in Cairns, other conference centres, a conference centre like this out in the country where it's not connected to Municipal Sewerage, that's the sort of work we do. This is a plant south of Murwillumbah at [CAN'T HEAR] that's what it looks like as a finished plant thats just the simple irrigation set up under the school oval at a school south of Brisbane, Redland Bay, this is in Central Queensland showing the type of collection and the treatment. This is some of the work we've done in the foot of the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury and we do a lot of work with roadhouses out there. This is one of our tanks, we build them in situ or they come like this straight into the hole, bang, two days later they're up and running.

A little bit about the pump station, this is the pressure sewerage you're going to hear a lot more about sewerage treatment being reticulated through what some people call low pressure. It's not really low pressure it's just a pressurised sewerage system where you can have 50 of these little pump stations all in a 50 house development all through a small bore to a communal sewerage treatment plant and the other results are there. That's a typical pump that was used so we can provide the quality engineered waste water treatment plant, plant upgrades, service and maintenance, offside pumping stations, irrigation fields, and also we're into wine waste, we're doing a lot of work with the wine industry and the wine waste. Another one that the EPA have targeted recently so we're doing that. That concludes the talk today, if you have any questions I think they're going to throw that open very shortly and I'm only too happy to answer any question you may have on it.

Thank you.

APPLAUSE

ADRIAN BARDEN:

Thank you John for your rundown on the waste water solutions available and as John has mentioned we'll make each of the presentations you've seen today available on the Cumberland Group website for download. We're going to throw it open for 1-2 questions now if you've got burning issues.

John Tierney:

My question to Norm Mann. Norm you were saying that the WSC carries out inspections during the construction works and I presume the WSC then signs off when the work is completed, if later on there is a problem with the constructed works, what liability does the WSC have to take on his shoulders and how does that impact on PI.

Norm Mann:

I said in my talk that to be a WSC you have to previously have been a project manager. In order to become a project manager you had to lodge a bank guarantee of $25,000 with Sydney Water and that still is sitting there for every WSC so Sydney Water will come back to the WSC, the WSC will obviously go back to the constructor, and it'll get sorted out. Otherwise Sydney Water will pull up the guarantee that the WSC has and fix it.

Question: With the recycling of the water, is there any residue in those tanks?

John Noble: Yes there will be a small sludge because we have an aerobic digestor on the end of the actual process, we set up another colony of bacteria in that digestor and that reduces the sludge down to very little. In a plant like that one at McWilliams they would only have to desludge that every 3 years. If there is a requirement for phosphorous removal and we have to dose with alum you'll get a lot more sludge because it will come out in that residue.

Question: What do you do with the sludge?

John Noble: The sludge then has to go to a qualified or certified disposal person who within that local government area would either be one of the known pump out people and they would take it to a sewerage treatment plant.

Thank you.

Question: John one of the problems with these treatment plants is that you quote a typical development of 36 lots and of course it invariably happens these developments come along in stages and we find that there is a minimum requirement for the [CAN'T HEAR] treatment plant of that size to function adequately and we have the problem of if you've got the first 3-4 houses we've got to go through a deduction process which is pretty damn expensive, your product take that typical one you're constructed at McWilliams at Pokolbin as to what would be the minimum number of houses that you'd have to have deducting or putting waste to that plant for it to start to work efficiently.

John Noble: That's a very good question because that's the one that we have to sort of tackle nearly always. Most of the developments we get involved with we can construct a modular development so that if it's a fairly large one of say 150 houses but they're going to come in over a period of 3 years, we would then recommend that the plan go ahead in 2-3 stages. Because we use activated sludge B&R process, we can control the amount of air going into the plant so when the first house comes on line we actually allow that amount of air that would control that. So we're building the actual plant up as the houses come on line just by tweaking a little bit of the process we can still get good results.

Martin Bourke: Norm, I was wondering if you could give me some comments on whether there would be conflicts of interest developing between Water servicing coordinators, their clients and Sydney Water.

Norm Mann: Conflicts of interest - in which way Martin between the WSC, the client and Sydney Water how do you envisage there being a conflict.

Martin Bourke: For instance a Notice of Requirements comes back to the water servicing coordinator requiring some pretty major works from which the water servicing coordinator can look at the design and construction phase of that and maybe not question the Notice of Requirements.

Norm Mann: I think we all have a professional responsibility to carry out the job as it should be done according to an appropriate Code of Ethics and I wouldn't envisage that being a conflict of interests.

Question: It's to Grahame Douglas. At least year's seminar I understood that the Rural Fire Services consent to a development really was a one stop shop you could therefore virtually go ahead on the basis of a consent from the Council with a sub-division. I've had a sub-division before the local Bega Valley Shire for 18 months and during that period of time in more recent months Bushfire Control have been out seen it and given recommendations on clearing the site with a view for rural residential blocks of about 40 of them 1.5 hectare. Now only as of last week I was told that I still had to go to Land & Water Resources to get a consent from them to the clearing as recommended by Bushfire Control. Land & Water Resources clarified it by saying that bushfire fuel reduction necessarily didn't mean approval to clear trees and that under the Native Vegetation Act they were the authority on that and had to give us consent for that. Which is the correct thing to do.

Grahame Douglas: I can't answer the full question because the answer to the question arises out of the integrated development provisions as I understand your question. The integrated development provisions rely on Council making the appropriate referrals at the single time of the Development Application so for example if and I don't know your circumstances fully but I do know about your matter down the south coast, if the Council has failed to refer it to the Department of Land & Water Conservation at the same time as to us for example, then that will lead to delays in processing. The arrangements for integrated developments were intended and this is for the Department of Infrastructure Planning & Natural Resources to really answer, is that all of the various approvals licences, etc are dealt with at the single point of lodging the Development Application so when you get a development approval you've got an approval of all the various licences, permits etc that were tied to the development of that land and the Rural Fire Services requirements for a Bushfire Safety Authority are only one of the many licences that are dealt with at that one point in time.

I understand. My development was lodged before the amendments to the Act

Grahame Douglas: In that case the only question was whether the Council believes they wished to get advice in relation to your development but there is no requirement for a Bushfire Safety Authority from us if it's prior to 1 August 2002.

Right so we still have to go to Land & Water

Grahame Douglas: Yes and I can't answer obviously for the Department of Land & Water.

I'm actually told that with a consent by the Council then going off with the conditions of consent to Land & Water still means they could refuse a consent and therefore kill the subdivision

Grahame Douglas: Yeah and I can't answer obviously on that issue.

I understand.

ADRIAN BARDEN

Okay that's the end of question time. Each of our guest speakers will be around for a bit to go into detail or to set up some sort of contact. I'd like for you to join me now to thank them and we'll give them a gift for coming along today.

APPLAUSE

I'd like to call upon our Chairman Michael to present the award for the Images of Surveyors Competition. Thank you Michael

MICHAEL PARKINSON

Thank you Adrian. We now are going to briefly run through some of the entries in the Images of Surveyors photo competition and then we'll announce the prize winners, then after that we'll break for lunch.

Unfortunately I didn't have time to put all the captions on there. The photos will be judged on their suitability for the promotion of the practice of surveying. That's not an entry that's the Cumberland Group website. The winner of $1,000 cash prize is Warren Thomas for his entry Surveying: Aiming High. This involves the use of time lapse photography, it's probably a bit difficult to tell, it may be easier to see if it's full screen. It's an outdoor shot, is Warren here, would Warren like to come and collect his prize and he can more eloquently describe to our audience the techniques he's used.

APPLAUSE

I'd like to present you with the cheque. A few brief words about the photograph.

Warren Thomas

Thanks Michael this photograph has been in mind for a long time to actually have a go at taking a photograph like this and the lure of first prize at the Development Seminar got me thinking a bit more. It's a double exposure the first exposure was the surveying subject at the bottom, and the second was the top half of the frame and that was taken at Crackneck Lookout near Bateau Bay and it took 3 hours, myself and my daughter sitting there in the darkness with the camera set up on a tripod pointing at the South Celestial Pole hoping to get the circular effect and lo and behold it worked so thanks.

APPLAUSE

Michael Parkinson

I'll call on our winner of the second prize which is a cheque for $300. that's Philip North, would Phil like to come and collect his prize and describe his photograph. The title of the photograph was a Lonely Lovely Place, Congratulations Phil.

Philip North

This photo came at great personal cost being a city surveyor and going down to Yass, sorry Geoff we were in the backyard, we intended to go up to a trig station to do a Telco site, loaded up with a commercial van and we got about 100 metres up the hill and we still had about 700-800m to go and it was very steep so we lugged the gear up to the top and near the end of the job you can see the mast just to the right of my shadow there, the trig was actually dismantled and my offsider was holding a target on the trig and I thought that looks pretty good with the setting sun, we didn't contemplate 10 minutes taken out to take a photo and in doing so we had to walk down almost in the dark, but it was a brilliant place to be and for a city bloke as I guess I am nowadays it's lovely to be up there in the bush and really enjoy the scenery so it was a privilege to have been able to take the photo and thanks to the Cumberland Group for presenting the prizes today.

Michael Parkinson

Thanks very much Phil and thanks to all the other excellent entries. We'll now break for lunch. There is quite a lot of food available for you so nobody will miss out.

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