Client: Melbourne Water

Project Summary:

Afflux Consulting was engaged by Melbourne Water to work with several nurseries throughout the Yarra Valley Region.

Through this engagement we undertook water balance and demand modelling to determine potential irrigation demands. 

We found that the container nurseries created an impervious barrier of black plastic overlain with crushed rock. We found significant benefit to the down stream environment when we:

• Captured the runoff and directed it into dam storage.
• Sealed the dam with a liner to prevent natural seepage.

One benefit of the harvestable flows was the prevention of nutrient delivery to the waterway.  What resulted were significant algael blooms within the storages. Most growers had to install pumps to recirculate the water regularly and prevent the blooms from forming at all.

They also found they didn’t need to dose as much nutrient to their storage tanks which provided a further unexpected financial benefit.

Key Features and Innovations:

• Land Capability assessment.
• Nutrient recycling.
• Grower engagement and collaboration.