TasWater took over three weeks to respond to a leaking pipeline that worsened into a burst main on a Launceston private property in May this year, the water group's chief executive officer told a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
George Theo said a failure in the company's internal processes led to the incident, which caused substantial property damage.
"A leak that ran for so long - we got it wrong, it fell through the cracks, we should have got there earlier and we should have fixed it earlier," he told the Legislative Council's Government Businesses Scrutiny Committee.
"Unfortunately, the leak got worse and became a burst water main, which we needed to fix as a consequence."
He said the company was reviewing its internal processes to ensure the incident isn't repeated.
TasWater director Nick Burrows said the company would increasingly focus on developing its wastewater infrastructure, including its plan to decommission up to a third of its water treatment plants.
"We have too many wastewater treatment plants currently, and extensive work is already underway on how we can rationalise these, decommissioning a third of those and upgrading others as required," he said.
The company is dealing with a legacy of poor-performing assets, including leaky pipelines that have gone undetected and cause massive losses of potable water, the committee heard.
Mr Theo said the company is spending $4.5 million over the next two years in establishing metres in 150 areas to allow technicians to find sub-surface leaks from the network.
"We've already got sophisticated software in place that allows us every 60 minutes to look for variations in leakage across our network of 6,500 km of pipes," he said.
Those measures would have been put in place by December next year, he said.
Another major problem was the infiltration of storm water into the sewage system, which was resulting in frequent spills of untreated wastewater into river systems.
"It takes as little as 5ml of rain to bring in a million litres of storm water into the sewage network," he said.
The solution was a whole-of-community response, he said.
Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content:
- Bookmark www.examiner.com.au
- Make sure you are signed up for our breaking and regular headlines newsletters
- Follow us on Twitter: @examineronline
- Follow us on Instagram: @examineronline
- Follow us on Google News: The Examiner
