A two-pronged approach will ensure water quality, with an expansive Floating Treatment Wetlands and subsurface Flowceptor installation maximising land yield and developable space.
Tarneit is one of Melbourne’s fastest-growing suburbs, and the location of Villawood Properties’ Alamora Estate – a 77-hectare residential development setting best practice standards for integrated stormwater management and sustainable communities.
A rapidly developing corner of Melbourne’s western growth corridor, Tarneit features expanding retail services, supermarkets and schools to accommodate the area’s increased housing and families.
The initial development will encompass a 37.7-hectare catchment, which will expand to accommodate the project’s final 77-hectare size.
Partnering with Wyndham City Council, Melbourne Water, and Villawood Properties, we delivered a peerless combination of solutions to accommodate the housing estate’s phased development. This asset selection will futureproof the local community and ensure Joy in Water outcomes across the project’s extensive timeline.
Modular and scalable, a comprehensive suite of Atlan Stormwater assets will reduce lead times, project costs and design complexity.
Floating Wetlands: Maximising Treatment Capabilities
A two-pronged approach will ensure water quality, with an expansive Floating Treatment Wetlands (FTW) and subsurface Flowceptor installation maximising land yield and developable space.
Conventional approaches to Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) include large, constructed wetlands and sediment basins. These both use significant areas that would otherwise be free for development – valuable considerations given Melbourne’s increasing urbanisation and housing density.
Installed on top of an existing sediment basin, approximately 1,000 square metres of FTW will significantly reduce the footprint for stormwater treatment compared to traditional approaches. These green assets grow on top of typically barren sediment basins, providing natural aesthetics and vegetation which help to conserve land value and community amenity.
The design of Atlan’s Floating Treatment Wetlands allows its size and treatment capacity to be increased with additional modules, ensuring ease of maintenance, replanting and reconfiguration as catchment characteristics change.
Supercharging pollution removal performance, plant growth in the FTW extends root systems down into the water column. The biofilm of these root systems treats incoming flows with a range of biological processes. These natural pathways combine enhanced sedimentation with nitrification and phosphorylation to cycle nutrients.
Atlan’s design team collaborated with stakeholders to ensure the Floating Treatment Wetlands would handle the fluctuating water levels in the sediment basin, particularly at their apex in overflow points.
The strength and durability of the anchoring system will enhance service life and secure the position of the FTW to maintain optimal performance.
Flowceptor: High-Performance Sediment Capture for Fine Particulates
Flowceptor is our locally manufactured, 100-year design life, Class 1 separator device, providing high-performance pollution removal for hydrocarbons, sediment, gross pollutants and heavy metals.
A horizontally configured two-chamber system, the Flowceptor’s extended detention times help to settle and separate Total Suspended Solids (TSS). Beneficially, this allows the capture of finer particulates and prevents their conveyance to the sediment basin.
The Flowceptor will pretreat incoming flows and lower turbidity in the sediment basin, and capture hydrocarbons before they impact downstream biological assets.
Capable of treating up to 400 litres per second, the Flowceptor has been sized to meet the challenges of the large catchment and is essential to supplementing the performance of the sediment basin to align with Melbourne Water standards.
Alamora Estate benefits from leveraging existing sediment basin infrastructure and the subsurface nature of the Flowceptor to provide stormwater outcomes that facilitate greater lot yield and maximise development opportunities.
Scalable, effective and compliant, the Atlan solution demonstrates how stormwater management can work seamlessly with large-scale residential development to provide value for project stakeholders across multi-phase project timelines.
Maintaining water quality across this residential site with integrated, adaptable stormwater infrastructure will protect Joy in Water for future generations and provide avenues for asset expansion to match the challenges of the growing project.
