The Eden Park Stormwater Project has won the Under $2 Million category at the
Ingenium Excellence Awards, presented at the society’s annual conference in Rotorua, New Zealand, on Saturday.
Eden Park is New Zealand’s largest sports stadium, and the stormwater project was commissioned by Auckland Council as part of the preparations for the 2011 Rugby World Cup.
Located in a floodplain, Eden Park has historically experienced flooding during storm events due to high groundwater levels. Beca civil engineer Jon Reed highlighted the challenges of protecting the ground from flooding, saying several conventional stormwater scheme designs were discounted on the basis of the construction time and cost constraints.
“The aquifer storage scheme that was finally developed is a novel solution, selected as a viable flood protection option capable of meeting the tight programme and budget requirements.”
Key benefits of the aquifer storage approach are that the scheme avoided adversely affecting local and regional groundwater levels, and disruption caused by construction of the scheme was very small in comparison with potential tunnelled options.
The INGENIUM Excellence Awards are held annually to coincide with the organisation’s conference. INGENIUM represents asset managers and engineers from local bodies and was established with the objective of promoting best practice in the local authority infrastructure sector.