Shade cloth covers are installed over East Gippsland Water’s two drinking water storages in Mallacoota to ensure the local community has secure, high quality drinking water supplies well into the future.
The covers are designed to safeguard water quality in the 41 million litre raw water storage and 23 million litre treated drinking water storage, by greatly reducing the risk of soil, algal and airborne contamination. They also cut evaporation by some 90 per cent.
Using shade cloth followed pioneering research involving East Gippsland Water and CSIRO, which demonstrated the effectiveness of the material when installed over open storage basins.
At Mallacoota water is drawn from the Betka River and groundwater bores, and pumped into the raw water storage. From here it is gravity-fed to the Mallacoota Water Treatment Plant, where it is treated before being supplied to customers.
As well as installing shade cloth covers, East Gippsland Water invested in additional groundwater bores to boost local water provision.