Coomera facility opens up for community use
The Gold Coast’s only dedicated facility for disposing of sediment from dredging has attracted its first community user.
Our purpose-built facility is designed to save users time and money on sediment disposal as it’s the only site on the Gold Coast which is designed to accept dredged material which is too fine or silty for beach nourishment or offshore disposal.
The alternative is to transport the material to Brisbane which is too costly and time-consuming for local organisations.
This has meant some dredging has been put off in the past, constraining access to sites such as marinas.
A marine operator within the Gold Coast Marine Industry Precinct in Coomera is the first organisation to take the opportunity to use the facility.
There are more than two-and-a-half thousand people working in the Precinct so by opening the facility to other users we’re supporting jobs in one of the key boat building and servicing centres on Australia’s east coast.
The dredging works will enable the marine precinct to continue accommodating larger vessels, including superyachts, for servicing and maintenance.
We developed the facility to enable the upper Coomera River to be dredged, something that couldn’t be done previously because there was no way to deal with the silt found in that part of the river in an economical and environmentally friendly way.
Other organisations operating in the area faced the same problem so when we commissioned the facility it was always intended to be used by bodies corporate, companies working in the marine industry and other organisations, including City of Gold Coast.
GCWA invested over $10 million in the Coomera Dredged Sediment Management Facility and the associated recent dredging campaign in the Coomera River.
