Lights, camera, action

23 Nov 2010

While Hollywood actors won’t be making an appearance, the star attractions sought by camera operators over the next couple of weeks in Alice Springs will be tree roots and cracks in our sewer mains.

In an ongoing project to upgrade the town’s sewer mains, Power and Water has been using Closed Circuit TV (CCTV) cameras to identify sewer pipes that need repair. 

Thirty-five tonne trucks, scaffolding and ‘camera vans’ will set up along streets in the Alice Springs CBD today, in the first stage of this project to reline a major section of the town’s sewer mains.

The cameras will be inserted into the sewer mains, with technicians monitoring the action on TV screens from specially set up vans.

Once the cameras have located any damaged pipes, a state of the art process where a polyester resin coated liner is inserted, then cured or set, in the pipes. 

This process takes around eight hours to complete 100 meters of sewer mains.  Connections from the main sewer lines to individual customers are then cut out using remote cutters, which eliminates the need to excavate and replace kilometres of pipeline.

This project is part of Power and Water’s annual schedule of maintenance and repair works, and will continue for around six weeks.  Once completed, these works will greatly strengthen this critical infrastructure, providing a lifespan of up to 50 years. 

The annual allocation for this project, which will see the completion of sewer relining works for the Alice Springs CBD, is $1.2million.