In 1938 Premier Thomas Playford increased the demands on BHP, and came to an agreement with Essington Lewis that if the company were to install a tinplate manufacturing plant, the State would supply the water infrastructure.

In 1940 the Commonwealth Water Agreement Ratification Act was passed, complementary legislation passed through South Australia's parliament[1] and South Australia's Engineering and Water Supply Department was given the task of getting the job done, under considerable pressure from the War Department, and with reduced manpower and materials due to exigencies of wartime.

The chamber is somewhat elliptical in shape and is divided by a wall across the smaller diameter; one half housing the pumps and the other containing the screening machinery.

The concrete walls of the chamber are over a metre thick to give it sufficient weight to prevent it floating during a flood.

Water is drawn from the river and passed through rotary screens with a fine wire mesh of 200 openings to the inch (80 per cm).

This was originally the only filtration and removed all solid matter except colloidal clay, which when present gave rise to a milky appearance.

The last pumping station near Robertstown operates into the Hanson storage tanks, which are 1,558 feet (475 m) above sea level and 57 miles (92 km) from Morgan.

The route was chosen to pass close to all the main reservoirs in the Mid North of South Australia, so that they could be supplied with River Murray water.

The South Australian engineers followed the practice of the Goldfields Water Supply in adopting continuous welding of the pipes.

This was soon vindicated when floods hit Port Augusta and Whyalla, causing damage to roads, bridges and the pipeline.

At one place, where the water had swept across the road and piled timber up against the pipeline a length of pipe 80 m. between concrete blocks had been bowed outward by over a metre, but had not broken.