Cannon Hill Community Links (Master planned community, Golf Course and Remediation of Contaminated Site)

The contaminated site portion of the site covered 12 hectares, and was previously used as a land fill, following a major flood that had ravaged Brisbane decades earlier. After the landfill was closed, the site was capped with a poor quality and poorly engineered capping layer. 

Empower drove a process to understand the merits and costs associated with either, undertaking works to have the site removed from the State Government’s Environmental Management Register (EMR), or undertaking works so that the site could be managed so as to minimise environmental harm. A range of factors led to the project decision to remediate the site and retain it on the EMR. 

Empower worked with the projects contaminated land experts (the Suitably Qualified Person (SQP) and the Contaminated Land Auditor (CLA)) to develop solutions that could be constructed, were commercially viable and met the required environmental outcomes. Requirements of these experts were included within a Remediation Action Plan (RAP) and ultimately within the Site Management Plan (SMP). Empower embedded the requirements of the contaminated land experts into our detailed civil design earthworks profiles and levels, a (gravity and pumped) leachate drainage system design. We then then took this design through tender and contract documentation preparation, tender review, contract superintendence, design input during construction, as-built drawings, community consultations and ongoing site management including inspection, leachate monitoring and reporting.

The additional complicating factor was that the site was in a flood plain and nearby to existing houses that has experienced flooding. Multiple iterations of flood models were required to develop an ultimate shape that delivered the required flooding and environmental performance. 

Whilst the site provided challenges, it ultimately delivered a fantastic opportunity to deliver a ‘links style’ golf course on what was once an un-used refuse facility. The requirement to shape the landform to minimise impacts on the flood plain, provided the opportunity to develop an undulating golf playing surface that placed high value assets such as greens and tees above flood levels, with the remainder of cut surface fairways and roughs being shaped to allow flood waters through. Within the contaminated site, refuse was shaped into the golf course features that now lie over the refuse. Wasteland is now a valuable community asset.

The golf course does not include any sand bunkers, as these would have been below flood levels and required considerable maintenance with each flood event that came through. Instead, Empower (along with the golf course designer) included ‘timber fence’ golf hazards that provide the deterrence/penalty that sand bunkers do on other courses. The timber fences are a reference to the home of golf at Royal St Andrews. Additionally, they represent CapEx and OpEx saving for both the developer and ultimate asset owner.

The development approval for the course included a requirement that no potable water is used for golf course irrigation. Whilst not a unique requirement, the location of the course made it so, as there was no ability to dam stormwater flows due to the course traversing mapped marine waterways, and the inability to place barriers. Empower developed a unique stormwater harvesting gate network was implemented and thus made the course viable.

The layout of the site carefully protects and enhances Squirrel Glider Corridors.

Commercially, the project achieved excellent land sale values and was a considerable success story for a public private partnership.