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Earthworks for a new wastewater transfer pipeline between Warkworth and Snells Beach will start next week.
The work will create two launchpads for the tunnel boring machine, with tunnelling expected to start next March and finish in 2025.
The five kilometre pipeline will stretch from the pump station in Lucy Moore Memorial Park to the treatment plant in Hamatana Road. It will include a dual rising main, break chamber (transition from pressurised rising main to gravity) and a gravity sewer section.
Watercare has partnered with major infrastructure company McConnell Dowell to deliver the $300 million project.
Watercare project manager Dirk DuPlessis says the project team will use the ‘direct pipe’ tunnelling methodology to carve out the underground pipeline route. It is a type of micro tunnelling that allows trenchless pipeline installation and is robust enough to go through a wide variety of rock.
He says the transfer pipeline will build resilience in the wastewater network to help support development and residential growth, which is expected to swell to 28,000 by 2050.
The existing Warkworth wastewater treatment plant, which discharges into the Mahurangi River, will be decommissioned when the new plant opens.
