MDBA head of River Management David Dreverman said “It’s important that the weir is upgraded and maintained so the river can be properly managed and reliably support surrounding industries. Mechanised gates will be a significant improvement to the existing method of adjusting the pool height and flow rates, which (previously) required weir staff to manually install and remove large numbers of timber drop bars”.
Mildura Weir has undergone major upgrade works with AWMA supplying mechanised multi-leaf water control gates for five of the weir’s trestles.
The weir is operated by Goulburn-Murray Water on behalf of the Murray–Darling Basin Authority. Mildura Weir and Lock 11 are located on the Murray River at Mildura in north-western Victoria. Since 1927 the weir has been manually controlled using a large number of timber drop bars. Five of the weir’s trestles were built by Crib Point Engineering and now feature three dual leaf penstocks each. The penstocks are 1.5m wide and 2.85m high. They are custom designed and electrically isolated from the impressed current protected trestles.
The penstock gates were designed in accordance with AS 1664.1 and account for site and operational specifications including non-rising spindles and debris impact loading.
The water control gates are automated with dual spindles and Rotork 3 phase electric actuators. Dual spindles provide a clear water-way with no risk of the spindles being damaged from debris in the river. The weir gates will be locally operated from the weir with the option to be remotely operated via SCADA in the future.
Mildura Weir’s new gates eliminate all OH&S issues associated with the insertion and removal of timber drop bars and provide improved regulation and isolation capacity.
For more information
Client: Crib Point Engineering
Asset Owner: Murray–Darling Basin Authority
Operated by: Goulburn-Murray Water
