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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2016-06-22 Daily Xml
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Hallett Cove Pipeline

The Hon. J.S. LEE (14:36): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Water and the River Murray a question about the Hallett Cove water supply pipe rupture.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.S. LEE: A constituent contacted the opposition about the water supply outage at Hallett Cove yesterday. It was reported that many homes and a school were without water yesterday afternoon. The problem occurred when a significant water supply pipe, embedded in an embankment that crosses Waterfall Creek, was washed away due to the high rainfall at Hallett Cove.

The significant water supply pipe that crosses Waterfall Creek in an earth embankment is also a walkway, and the stormwater discharge pipe that passes through the embankment feeds the flow of stormwater into a developed area, into the creek and eventually out to sea. It was noted by this constituent that the pipe was undersized to accommodate heavy flows.

Yesterday, the prolific flows backed up and flowed over the embankment and walkway, and subsequently ruptured the pipe. SA Water reported the incident on its website as 'support infrastructure being washed away,' which, according to this constituent, is not the case, as there was no engineering or support infrastructure in place; it was an earth embankment that was washed away. My questions are:

1. Can the minister explain why SA Water built a water pipe crossing an embankment that is highly prone to be washed away?

2. What risk assessments did SA Water undertake to ensure risk is minimised during heavy rainfall and bad weather?

3. Can the minister confirm how SA Water has fixed yesterday's pipe rupture?

4. Will the sizing of the pipe be re-evaluated and upgraded accordingly?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (14:38): I thank the honourable member for her most important questions. Of course SA Water, myself and the government regret any inconvenience caused to the community due to a washout that interrupts people's water supplies. As I have explained in this place many times before, SA Water crews are sent out to address these issues as a triaging project, to determine the most important jobs to be done first and what are of lower priority. Those decisions are based on issues of public safety, public amenity and also, of course, people's homes and businesses and the disruption that may be caused by such a problem.

The problem the honourable member mentions—which I also saw reported in the media—was an act of nature in terms of floodwaters washing out an urban embankment through which a stormwater pipe was laid. In terms of the details of the past engineering, I do not have that accessible to me at this time. Additionally, I do not have anything before me which tells me the technical crews' response in the last 24 hours, but I can undertake to find out that information for the honourable member and bring it back.

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