High performance turf reinforcement matting for flood-prone Burpengary Creek

Moreton Bay Council chooses PyramatⓇ 25

Project snapshot

The semi-rural suburb of Burpengary is located north of Brisbane, with a population of around 13,000 residents who often have to contend with localised flooding of nearby Burpengary Creek.

The creek generally only has a small amount of water flow, but with heavy rains, it can quickly become a torrent of rapidly rising fast-flowing water. Burpengary Creek has broken its banks 19 times since 2009, inundating the residents of adjacent Dale Street on each occasion.

To counter this frequent flooding, $5.8 million was secured from the federal government to build an 800m levee bank along the northern side of Dale Street. The levee bank was designed to keep the water from inundating the Dale St homes, however, because the creek was seasonal, it also needed to be an aesthetically pleasing feature in the dry season.

The Challenges

The levee design involved covering it in turf, however as this needed to be laid on the sloped levee walls and top, it would need extra reinforcement to protect it from high water velocities when in flood. The team at Moreton Bay Regional Council needed an aesthetically pleasing, cost-effective geosynthetic solution to prevent scour.

Our Solution: PyramatⓇ 25

Pyramat® 25 is a synthetic High-Performance Turf Reinforcement Matting (HPTRM), designed to prevent erosion and allow the roots of vegetation to easily grow through or on top of it.

This three-dimensional matting was chosen by the designers as it has a very high velocity and shear stress tolerance, long-term material longevity, and high permeability - all at a relatively low cost.

Around 3500m2 of Pyramat® 25 HPTRM was installed at this site without specialist labour or heavy machinery, making for a fast and straightforward project. Both the 1st and 2nd generation versions of the product are made of 100% synthetic, UV stabilised components and are completely non-degradable. Once vegetated, Pyramat® 25 can withstand rapid water flows of up to 6.1m/second.

This solution will provide the local residents with reliable protection from the rising floodwaters of Burpengary Creek when the waterway swells in the future.

Find out more about Turf Reinforcement Mats

Pyramat® 25 is a High-Performance Turf Reinforcement Mat (HPTRM) that offers a permanent engineered solution against erosion.

It functions by providing a layer of permanent reinforcement to the soil until vegetation is fully established and is ideal for situations where water flows are strong, soils are poor and vegetation is difficult or slow to establish.