38 | Timaru District Council: Pareora Pipeline Project REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT Russell Fredric Locals lead the way in pipeline upgrade The completion of the pipeline upgrade will offer better supply capacity and resilience for the network. The final section of work has started on Timaru District Council’s three-stage Pareora pipeline project. The existing pipeline, installed in the 1930s, is critical infrastructure that carries water 37km from the upper Pareora River intake to the Claremont water treatment plant and reservoir on the outskirts of Timaru. Timaru’s current peak demand sits at around 29 megalitres, or the equivalent of more than 10 Olympic size swimming pools of water per day and the Pareora pipeline supplies about 60% of this amount, with the balance drawn from the Opihi River. Pareora provides the highest quality water of the two sources and consequently requires the least treatment. The Pareora pipeline upgrade has been designed as three overlapping projects involving three main contractors and this has enabled the job to be delivered using a majority of local contractors. Section 1 was led by Rooney Earthmoving, section 3 was led by Paul Smith Earthmoving and the main contractor for section 2, which is currently in progress, is Hadlee & Brunton. The third section of the pipeline, which involved laying 13.5 kilometres of new 450mm diameter polyethylene pipeline from Pareora Gorge Road to Claremont, was accelerated to offer better security of supply following a water discolouration incident due to high levels of manganese in December last year. to page 40
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