Procurement is expected to start soon on a tunnelling project which will eliminate the dumping of untreated sewage into the sea through the construction of an A$63.5 million (US$44.5 million) wastewater pumping and transportation network in the eastern suburbs of Australia's largest city Sydney. The new wastewater system will cover the South Head Peninsula area. A legacy of Sydney's ageing network, wastewater from the peninsula is not treated, but instead is discharged directly into the ocean at three locations via ocean outfalls. These outfalls, which were built between 1916 and 1936, are located at the bottom of the cliffs at Vauduse, Diamond Bay and Dover Heights, and discharge to a largely inaccessible part of the coastline. Unfortunately, some of this discharge has a habit of drifting back towards the shore at Bondi. In 2018, Sydney Water committed to reducing the continuous flow of untreated wastewater from these outfalls, which are the last three remaining in New South Wales. This was on the back of the release of a pollution study report, the findings of which subsequently led to Sydney Water to recommend that people "avoid fishing, swimming or coming into contact with water near the three outfalls while we work towards a solution". Sydney Water is now set to embark on a project that involves transferring waste-water flows from the existing ocean outfalls to the Bondi Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP). This will be achieved by constructing and operating two new waste-water pumping stations, new wastewater pipelines and ancillary infrastructure in the Vaucluse and Diamond Bay areas to divert flows away from the ocean and send them to the Bondi WWTP. This will bring the wastewater system for the Eastern Suburbs up to the same standard as the rest of Sydney.
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