EastLink is a 39km fully-electronic tollway and is one of the largest urban roading projects ever constructed in Victoria. It connects the Eastern Freeway in Mitcham with the Frankston Freeway in Melbourne’s South-East.
This public private partnership project between the Department of Transport (DoT) and ConnectEast includes a range of key performance indicators to help maintain EastLink and ensure it performs as intended. Looking after the stormwater runoff and protecting local creeks and wetlands is just one of those key indicators, and Morphum Environmental is proud to be involved in this process.
Managing assets such as EastLink is a responsibility that needs to be taken seriously. If not managed properly, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can become involved and issue fines for forgoing routine maintenance.
EastLink is designed with Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) principles to ensure that any stormwater runoff from the freeway is treated before entering nearby water bodies. The Eastlink runs alongside 11 creeks and discharges stormwater to 10 of those creeks from numerous discharge points. To treat that stormwater runoff, 63 water treatments systems have been constructed or implemented including wetlands, ponds and biofiltration.
To check these systems are working correctly, at least five sample wetlands must be audited every year. This helps to ensure the hydraulic design, hydraulic efficiency, biological function (i.e. suitable plant cover and health), maintainability and sediment accumulation of EastLink is functioning as intended.
To fully meet this KPI requirement, 95% of the sampled wetlands must have a condition rating of 1 or 2 following each quarterly inspection.
Morphum was engaged to audit the required WSUD devices as well as offer recommendations to ConnectEast on what maintenance and cleanup improvements need to be made. We assessed 12 components for each wetland including the wetland spill capacity/ performance, structural features/ flow devices performance, plant health and open water health, litter presence and condition of the access track.
We assigned a priority level to each of our recommendations so it was clear which assets needed to be fixed first. The overall aim is to ensure that all water treatment systems are operating as per design and that the fundamentals of water sensitive design continue to be met. This will help protect the downstream waterways from any potentially adverse impacts from unmitigated discharge of road runoff.
After successfully undertaking this work, Morphum was subsequently engaged to undertake rectification designs for poor functioning or damaged WSUD assets that were identified.
