The $A750 million Sugarloaf Pipeline project is part of the Victorian Government’s Our Water, Our Future – The Next Stage of the Government’s Water Plan.

The pipeline is designed to allow the transfer of 75 billion litres of water to Melbourne by 2010 as part of the Food Bowl Modernisation Project. The pipeline will have a maximum diameter of 1.75 metres.

John Holland has been awarded the contract to construct the pipeline. The contract is an alliance between Melbourne Water, John Holland and designers Sinclair Knight and Mertz and GHD. The initial development phase of the project commenced in early 2008, with construction commencing in November 2008 and due to be completed in 2010.

Ollie the TBM

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An $A8 million remote controlled tunnel boring machine has completed an 830 metre tunnel under the Toolangi State Forest to make way for the water pipeline.

Spokesperson for the Alliance Denise Hurley said stringent environmental approval processes and many months of preparation went into preparing the site for Ollie (the TBM).

“The Alliance’s tunnel team had to dig a launch shaft and assemble a bridge crane to lower the machine into the shaft. The four key components of Ollie, which have been shipped from Germany, then had to be assembled, tested and lowered into place,” she said.

The TBM, nicknamed ‘Ollie’ after the world’s biggest earthworm the Giant Gippsland Earthworm (Oligochaetra), was manufactured especially for the rock encountered in the area.

A Herrenknecht AVN 1800 TD (with an extension kit to suit 2,000 ID/2,400 OD pipes) was used to excavate the tunnel, 700 metres of which was through rock with strengths ranging from 80 to 250 MPa. The final 130 metres was excavated through soft colluvial material.

‘Ollie’ mixes the excavated material with slurry for transport back to the surface, where it is segregated by a large Slurry Treatment Plant onsite. Some of the rock has been used elsewhere on the Sugarloaf Pipeline. The majority is disposed of at the old Castella Quarry.

Alliance Project Manager Rob Cranston said the successful completion of the tunnel marked a major milestone in the pipeline project. Mr Cranston congratulated the Project Manager Sam Jones and his team on successfully completing the tunnel earlier than expected.

Tunnelling began on 1 April and took ten weeks. A crew of ten worked 24 hours a day, six days a week to complete the drive. Workers have dismantled the tunnel boring equipment.

Future works

Construction of the 70 kilometre Sugarloaf Pipeline is several months ahead of schedule, with the last of around 5,500 pipes having been laid in the Yarra Glen area, Victoria.

Visiting the site, Victorian Water Minister Tim Holding said water could now flow to Melbourne from the $A750 million project as early as February 2010.

Water will begin flowing to Melbourne following completion of two pumping stations near Yea, a power substation, reservoir chute and extensive testing of the pipe.

The project has injected more than $A200 million into the Victorian economy and about $A50 million into the regional economy.

At its peak, the project employed more than 1,200 fulltime direct and subcontract staff, with up to 800 people employed for a sustained period over twelve months.

The two pump stations that will take water over the Great Dividing Range – the Goulburn River pump station, north of Yea, and the high lift pump station to the south of Yea – are already more than half built.