 Lakes Entrance Bypass
Lakes Entrance Sand Bypassing
Lakes Entrance, Victoria, is situated around a man made ocean entrance.
The entrance provides access to Bass Straight for a large commercial and
recreational fishing fleet.
The entrance is situated on a high energy coastline and has a significant
bar.
Transfer Station
Slurry Systems, in conjunction with Gippsland Ports, have engineered and
installed a sand bypassing system to collect sand from within and outside
the entrance and pump it back to the ocean.
The system comprises a series of submarine and land pipelines and a
transfer station. Sand collected by conventional dredging is pumped to the transfer station before being boosted through a
discharge pipeline and back into the ocean.
The transfer station is electrically powered with full instrumentation to
record sand volumes. The transfer station is unmanned and remotely operated
and monitored.
Sandshifter
Initial Trial
The initial trial was conducted from 2000 -2002 with 234,000 cu.m of sand bypassed. This was a totally diesel powered system and operated independently of the electric transfer station.
A further trial was conducted from 2007 – 2009 with recovered sand pumped to the electric transfer station for disposal through the system pipelines and returned to the ocean. A total of 260,000 cu.m was bypassed during this time.
Current Situation
A series of pipelines have been installed under the entrance channel to allow sand bypassing from the east and west sides of the channel.
The pipelines also allow the transfer station to pump sand to the east and west to better mimic the prevailing conditions.
Permanent installation of an electric powered sand bypass system is subject to future funding.
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