RESIDENTS have been assured Orange’s second stormwater harvesting system is contributing to water supplies following an electrical fault at the Blackmans Swamp scheme during recent rainfall.
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Orange City Council released figures late last week for water contributed by the Ploughmans Wetlands scheme after the January 12 thunderstorm, but not its sister after the storm affected the power supply.
The Blackmans scheme took a number of years to be approved due to concern from landholders along Summer Hill Creek who wanted to see environmental flows maintained.
But during the past six months, the Blackmans scheme has contributed 294 megalitres, while the Ploughmans scheme has contributed 162 megalitres.
The Blackmans scheme turns on automatically and pumps water once the level has exceeded the threshold of 1000 litres a second, while water in the Ploughmans scheme spends a number of days in wetlands being naturally filtered before it is transferred to Suma Park Dam.
The pumping stops once the water levels drop.
Orange mayor Reg Kidd said the council mixed and matched how it used the two schemes.
“You can’t just switch it on when you want to, it has to go above certain trigger points and that’s monitored very closely,” he said.
“I think those trigger points will probably change down the track when we know a lot more about environmental flows and how that mixes together.”
The council has plans to build wetlands for the Blackmans scheme, which will slow the water down and subject it to the same level of filtration.
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