Logan City, Australia

Monitoring, Maintenance, and Management

How has the initiative been designed and implemented so that long-term needs for management and maintenance are reduced and can be met?

• Delivery of an Australian first, off-grid water quality solution via a solar powered electro-chlorination facility which includes an off-grid Tesla battery.
• Pioneering an innovative method with the operation of a pilot facility to recover energy from biosolids (sludge) at our Loganholme wastewater treatment plant. The biosolids are dewatered and dried, before carbonised in a gasifier. The gasifier turns biosolids into biogas, a renewable energy that is used in the drying process. The biochar produced is an organic soil improver where nitrogen and phosphorus are bio-available, but carbon is sequestered. The $17 million Biosolids Gasification Project reduces the volume of biosolids by 90 per cent, saving ratepayers around $500,000 annually in haulage costs, while significantly reducing carbon emissions.
• Cedar Grove Environmental Centre which delivered Queensland’s first sustainable wastewater treatment plant. This wastewater treatment plant delivers a net environmental benefit for the surrounding catchment and provides an industry best-practice demonstration.
• A 1.16 megawatt on ground solar farm at our Waste Water Treatment plant in Loganholme.
• Roof top solar installations on Council facilities – successful installation of over 700kW of PV solar across 11 sites saving over $200,000 per annum.  
• Landfill gas collection and electricity production system at our largest waste collection site at Browns Plains.  This system collects the methane gas through pipes inside the landfill cells and diverts it to an on-site power generation plant. At the plant, the methane is converted into energy. The power generated is enough to supply electricity to 2,000 homes.

What protocols are in place to facilitate monitoring of results?

Since 2018, a number of ground-breaking, innovative projects have been successfully delivered which include: 

• Resilient Rivers Initiative – agricultural sector, local producers including turf farmers, – a regional program that supported land producers through restoration of waterways, planting vegetation to stabilise land erosion, separation of livestock watering from waterway banks, and included the development of a turf farm code of practice to support and guide businesses to achieve increased production and more efficient use of fertilizers but also to ensure run off is controlled and environmental outcomes can be achieved in partnership with economic outcomes.
• LEAF – community education and engagement – attended by around 10,000 community members to learn about sustainability, climate change and environmental stewardship.
• Innovative flood modelling – leading to town planning controls on development within high risk flood prone areas.
• City wide Eco Awards – including a sustainability category to recognise and celebrate community members and organisations that align with the living green for climate change.
• Climate Change refugia – innovative mapping using threatened and locally significant species to identify areas in the city particularly important for continued biodiversity.
• In addition to these strategic actions, a range of renewable energy projects have been successfully delivered, these include the following (with more detailed provide in the Resilience section):
  • Solar Farm at our Waste Water Treatment plant in Loganholme;
  • An Australian first off grid water treatment facility; 
  • Roof top solar installations on Council facilities;
  • Landfill gas collection and electricity production system at our Browns Plains landfill site.

How has the initiative been enhanced in response to monitoring of results?

Logan City Council’s living green for biodiversity suite of initiatives has had a considerable ripple effect particularly on neighbouring and nearby local governments.

Many of the key deliverables have regional collaboration at its core with mechanisms for enhanced/wider adoption of local nature-oriented practice and/or offer potential for customised replication in other cities.