Austral Leppington Wastewater Stage 3

Thank you to those who attended Sydney Water’s Developer Forum on 29 September 2022.

As promised during the Forum, we have prepared a quarterly update, which is available here, to ensure you stay up to date on the progress of the Austral Leppington Wastewater Stage 3 Phase 1 delivery program. This update also serves as the monthly update for December.

The Austral Leppington pre-occupation interim operating procedure guide is also available here.

The January-March 2023 quarterly update will be available posted on this page during early April 2023.

Thank you to those who attended Sydney Water’s Developer Forum on 29 September 2022. Your time and feedback were greatly appreciated.

To ensure you are kept up-to-date on the progress of our delivery program moving forward, we will be posting monthly updates like this one here on our project page. This is in addition to more comprehensive updates that will be shared with the community and developers on a quarterly basis.

Click here for the full update.

Thank you to those who attended the Austral Leppington Wastewater Stage 3 Developer Forum on 29 September. Moving forward we will be providing quarterly update.

Click here for the Q&As from the event. Click here for the IOP Scenarios slides.

Watch the presentation from Emma Pryor, the head of Sydney Water Major Projects, below.

As everyone in the construction industry is aware, the past two years have presented many challenges for delivering infrastructure projects. All essential utilities, including Sydney Water, have been working hard to minimise the impacts of these challenges, which includes, COVID-19, extreme weather events, labour shortages and supply chain constraints.

Despite our best efforts, Sydney Water’s projects have not been immune from these unprecedented challenges. In particular, the Greater Sydney region has experienced ongoing wet weather and flooding in 2022, which has compounded disruptions.

The delivery program for Austral Leppington (Wastewater Stage 3), which will service 1,700 lots, has been significantly impacted by these factors. Sydney Water is conscious of the impacts this has on developers and their clients. As such, an independent review of the delivery schedule was undertaken to ensure the impact of these unavoidable delays was fully understood and the subsequent delay properly quantified.

As a result, the servicing date for the Austral-Leppington Wastewater Stage 3 project has been revised to December 2023. Earliest bonding or release of Section 73 compliance certificates for landowners will be available from June 2023.

As previously offered, Sydney Water welcomes Interim Operating Procedures (IOP) that could service development earlier than the expected servicing date, in line with Sydney Water and council requirements.

Future updates regarding the project will be posted on our Sydney Water Talk site (Austral Leppington Wastewater Stage 3 | Sydney Water Talk) and if you have any questions, you can also email australwastewater@sydneywater.com.au.

Work has commenced onsite and we will hold an online developer forum in September and will continue to communicate our progress with you.

As we work to deliver this important infrastructure for you and your clients, we value your ongoing support and understanding of these unprecedented impacts on the whole industry.

The first half of 2022 has been full of challenging weather conditions for the Austral Leppington Wastewater Stage 3 project team. Despite this, we are fast approaching the end of our enabling works phase, during which we have:

• Built two site compounds that will support main works by providing storage facilities, site offices and a Community Information Hub
• Cleared vegetation to enable construction
• Established access roads for the next phase of construction
• Completed extensive surveying of the project area.

In the coming weeks, we will start our main construction work to deliver safe and reliable wastewater services to residents across Austral and Leppington. During this time, you may notice some of the following construction activity happening in your area:

• piling and excavation work to construct a new wastewater pumping station and new manholes along Gurner Avenue, Austral
• construction of a permanent access road within the pumping station compound
• construction of a temporary pumping station
• setting up a second site compound at 390 Fourth Avenue, Austral
• boring of new wastewater mains, trunk mains and wastewater lead-ins
• installation of watermain along Kelly Street, Edmondson Ave & Tenth Ave

However, the one thing you may notice the most is the delivery of 28 large diameter wastewater pipes that will soon be delivered to site.

So, keep an eye out for this in the coming weeks and be mindful to follow the directions of our traffic controllers as your safety is our highest priority!

Image: Installing temporary drainage pipes for a landowner in Austral

Good afternoon all,

Following our update in October regarding the servicing of Austral Leppington, we are pleased to advise you that we have worked through the available options

and confirmed the servicing solution for up to 1,700 lots.

At this point, subject to approvals, we anticipate delivery of the interim phase one wastewater infrastructure in Q1 of calendar year 2023.

We remain committed to providing you with further information as it becomes available.

I hope you have a safe and enjoyable festive break and I look forward to providing further updates in the New Year.

Kind regards,

Chris Gantt

Head of Business

City Growth & Development

Business Development I Sydney Water

The ‘interim’ phase 1 delivery of wastewater infrastructure to service up to 1,700 lots at Austral-Leppington will be delivered later then anticipated.

We received tendered costs for phase 1 that are materially higher than original estimates.

A number of factors have contributed to the cost disparity including the evolution of the design, complexity of construction logistics, compressed timeframes, environmental and heritage constraints and cost rates for deep sewer sections and maintenance holes.

The increased costs have implications for both phase 1 and phase 2 servicing costs.

We are working through the options to make a final decision on the delivery pathway to confirm proposed delivery programming.

We have provided an update to stakeholders and have collected an array of questions that we will answer and post in the frequently asked questions (FAQs) on this page in the near future.

If you were not able to attend our October 2021 Developer Update please find our presentation in the top right hand corner of the project page under documents or click here.

In line with recent developments regarding NSW COVID-19 restrictions that prohibit all non-essential construction to be halted until 30 July 2021, all planned investigative works planned for July and August 2021 have been put on hold and will recommence once further updates from the NSW State Government have been provided.

Once these works are due to start again, a community update will be provided.