Outback Date Plantation with Lucern Production

Queensland, Australia – Honor Award, Water Management, Planning & Analysis

 CONSULTANT

Jim Phillips, JP Water P/L

PROJECT OVERVIEW

• Pastor Mark Hampel bought a property in at Charleville, Queensland, Australia to grow dates
• It is an ideal area for growing dates, hot, dry, sandy soil. But dates too need irrigation and water in this area is usually a scarce commodity. Then it rains, in buckets and floods
• As part of the purchase, Mark negotiated with the Murweh Regional Council to utilize the treated effluent from the Charleville township sewerage treatment plant
• Dates grow slowly and, even though he had transplanted several mature trees, it would be 5+ years before the plantation would be in production
• Date palms do not like getting their trunks wet as it causes pest and disease damage. Lucern (alfalfa) on the other hand likes regular watering, usually by spray
• Turning the property in to a functioning plantation was always going to be a challenge and given that Pastor’s wages are not that high, had to be achieved on a tight budget

PROJECT NARRATIVE

• The Plantation irrigation had to be capable of meeting the following:

• • Servicing two differing crop types, palms, and pasture
  • Keeping the palm trunks dry
  • Staying within a water budget
  • Remote operation
  • The unavailability of electrical power
  • Population hazards (Theft, vandalism etc.)
  • Turning the property in to a functioning plantation was always going to be a challenge and given that Pastor’s wages are not that high, had to be achieved on a tight budget

• The treated effluent was channeled down to a sump, a holding lagoon, reed bed filter and finally a coarse gravel filter bed
• From the sump, the semi filtered effluent was pumped into two holding tanks using a solar powered pump
• The effluent was further treated in the tanks before being fed into the diesel centrifugal pump
• Discharge from the centrifugal irrigation pump was passed through media filters then out into the DN100 PVC main
• The plantation was divided up into 12 date irrigation areas and 13 lucern (alfalfa) areas

ROLE OF THE IRRIGATION CONSULTANT

• Calculation of the Peak Irrigation Requirement for both crops
• Drip emitter flow rate and spacing recommendations based on the outcome of the PIR calculations and soil considerations for both crops
• Hydraulic design works.
• Initial and final storage tank capacity
• Control system (GoldTec Oasis, hydraulic)
• Oversight of initial installation of zone headworks, mainline thrust blocking, filter installation and pump container
• Detailed Bill of Materials and suitable suppliers
• Vetting of tenders for supply and responding to Requests for Information from suppliers.
• Project commissioning

A solar powered pump moves water from the sump to storage tanks

                    Trenching

           Media Filtration

Entrance to main lagoon