Environmental care a focus on new Ipswich Motorway, Queensland

Maintaining air quality, conserving water and protecting wildlife are just some of the environmental considerations that are high on the priority list for the Origin Alliance currently working on the new Ipswich Motorway in Queensland.

Program Director for Western Corridor Projects, Mr Gerald ‘Mango’ Murphy, said the location of the works – in a tight corridor through a congested urban environment – presented a range of challenges and opportunities for the alliance project team.

“We have what you'd probably call some standard environmental issues, including managing stormwater runoff and the impact of noise on our neighbours, and these are managed on a day-to-day basis,” said Mr Murphy.

However, the location also throws up some more unusual challenges, one of which is the need to fill in old underground coal mines beneath the road’s surface.

“As part of this process, we need to extract some of the water which has filled one particular mine,” said Mr Murphy.

“The alliance decided early that it would be prudent to treat this water, so that it could be reused on the project site.

“We're only in the early stages of actually using the treated water, but already we see this as a good outcome and an opportunity to re-use the resources we have here on site,” said Mr Murphy.

Furthermore, the abandoned coal mines are being filled with a paste consisting largely of flyash, a waste product from the burning of coal in power stations. The flyash being used is of poor quality and there is no other market for its use - its disposal has previously been a significant problem for the Swanbank power station.

As is the case with many road projects, some vegetation has been cleared in preparation for the new motorway, and the project team has engaged the services of a professional ‘fauna spotter’ to assist in protecting local wildlife.

The fauna spotter identifies areas that are inhabited by wildlife and is licensed to facilitate the safe removal and relocation of the animals.

“We've had to do this on this a number of occasions to date and, in one particular instance, a family of sugar-gliders was successfully relocated to nearby habitat,” said Mr Murphy.

Mr Murphy also said initiatives to help mitigate the project’s effect on the local ecosystem were enthusiastically supported by site staff.

“In these current times, when more and more people are becoming educated about the environment and the impacts we can have on it, it doesn't take much to get people involved,” he said.

“The project team was particularly supportive when, on World Environment Day this year, the environment team gave away free plants.

“Every person working on the project had the opportunity to take home a native Australian plant, and it was so well received they plan to do something even bigger and better next year,” said Mr Murphy.

Mr Murphy said extensive consultation with the local community also helped to ensure potential environmental concerns were identified and addressed as quickly as possible.

“For example, one of the local schools had an issue with dust and almost immediately a number of initiatives were employed to help alleviate this,” he said.

These measures included the use of additional dust suppressants, temporary sealing of exposed areas and encouraging plant growth in completed sections as early as possible to stabilise the soil.

“Managing environmental challenges such as noise and dust are particularly important to the local community to ensure their quality of life is not compromised,” said Mr Murphy.

The Ipswich Motorway Upgrade between Dinmore and Goodna is one of the largest infrastructure projects in Australia to be delivered by an Alliance (Origin Alliance), made up of the Department of Transport and Main Roads, Abigroup Contractors, Fulton Hogan, Seymour Whyte Constructions, Parsons Brinckerhoff and SMEC Australia.

Full construction of the upgrade commenced in June 2009 and the project is expected to be completed by the end of 2012.

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