Virginia pipeline in 1999 a world leader in bringing Class A water from Bolivar plant to vegetable growers
The Virginia Pipeline Scheme involved a 142km network covering 200 square kilometres of the vegetables-growing area.
Radcliffe map (not to scale) courtesy Water magazine.
The Virginia Pipeline Scheme in Adelaide from 1999 was one of the largest high-quality water recycling schemes in the world and the first of its type in Australia. The scheme uses Class
A recycled water from the Bolivar wastewater treatment plant, South Australia’s biggest, to supply 20 gigalitres (GL) to more than 250 vegetable growers over 200 square kilometres in the Virginia area, 35 kilometres north of Adelaide.
The Class A recycled water was enabled by a $30 million dissolved air flotation and filtration (DAFF) plant commissioned in 1999 at Bolivar wastewater treatment plant, also north of Adelaide.
This was part of a commitment, firmed by the South Australian State Water Plan 2000, to reusing water from treatment plants rather than spilling nutrients, with harmful nitrogen, into Gulf St Vincent.
Virginia growers – a diverse group spanning Italian, Greek, Vietnamese and Cambodian backgrounds – had other reasons for welcoming the Class A water from Bolivar. They’d been dealing with high water costs after depleting the local groundwater aquifers with overuse by drawing on 14-18 GL annually. Before the pipeline was built, they had been drawing on Class C water from the Bolivar plant.
The $55 million Virginia Pipeline Scheme, including the DAFF plant and the 142km pipeline network, attracted $10.8 million from the federal government’s Better Cities programme.
A private company Water Reticulation Services Virginia gained the 20-year contract (bought back by the state government in 2019) to access the Class A water output from the Bolivar plant and sign up clients for its distribution. It worked with the Virginia Irrigation Association and SA Water, with the Environment Protection Authority having ongoing approval and review.
