SBS Insight - update
Update on the SBS Insight program on recycling v. desalination.
Mayor Thorley held her own - which you would expect for a seasoned politician. At times, she didn't let others speak - which you would also expect from a seasoned politician ("DI THORLEY: No, I will butt in on you, and I don't have much problem doing that at the moment.")
The live online debate should be renamed the "lively debate" as there was plenty of spirited discussion following the program.
Interesting comment from the online session on the Mayor's factual accuracy:
"I manage the Dalby water supply. Di Thorley does not have her facts straight. Very little of Dalby's water comes from the river so is rarely impacted by Toowoomba's wastewater. Generally less than 10% pa comes from the Condamine. Most of the water is used by irrigators before it gets to our storage."
This was a response to this comment from Mayor Thorley:
"DI THORLEY: No, but I'm just trying to check up that all the blokes in Dalby don't get really cheesed at us saying they've got small penises and they're feminised because we've been putting this water down for 70 years so I'm really worried that when I get home they're going to belt me up because I let it go through. So let's put it out there that the boys are fine in Dalby. I'll just stick up for them here. And they're not growing boobs so they'll be happy with that. Look, no, I don't think I am. And it is really simple for them to sit here and come up with some of the stuff - I hear about a project I took in 2001 and that was one that was to take water to the irrigators and water to Ackland coal, it was not about cleaning up any water at all. And at the time, the minister, our minister said that it wasn't a project that stacked up, they weren't going to put water in pipelines to irrigators and that was it. But to go back to the community... "
See - SBS Insight.
And then there was this comment from the program in relation to the draft National Guidelines for Recycled Water released last Friday:
"DAVID CUNLIFFE, WATER HEALTH EXPERT: I'm part of the team that's helped develop the draft national guidelines for water recycling that were issued late last week, they're out for consultation. At this stage they don't specifically deal with indirect potable re-use."
And this comment in relation to recycled water in Western Australia:
"JIM GILL: We've got some trials under way injecting treated wastewater into acquifers and ultimately we could use those for drinking water. But we're determined to get the science right before we do that and that's going to take quite a few years."
So isn't it a bit early for Toowoomba to start drinking it?
I must take issue with something Ian Kiernan said:
"IAN KIERNAN: I agree with both of you that we need to look at all of these options and we did that through the expert water panel. But at the same time, desal was the least favoured option because it will be exacerbating climate change through its energy consumption and we know that from the Saudi example of a major desal plant against the Singapore major sewage recovery plant, that the Saudi plant, even with subsidised oil, was twice as expensive as the Singapore plant."
If Singapore's recycling plant is so cost effective compared to the cost of desalination plants, why did Singapore just build a desalination plant (opened 13 September 2005)?
See - New desalination plant for Singapore.
As expected, the Mayor played the "NEWater party trick" - dragging out some bottles of Singapore NEWater for people to drink. She never seems to understand that it's not what you can smell that's the problem - it's what you can't smell and what the Federal government reports say could still be in the water that is the concern.
The results of the poll were not as some recyclers predicted or wanted - an overwhelming majority of those polled preferred desalination to recycled water. Remember this wasn't the online poll which was subject to manipulation.
"JENNY BROCKIE: Alright, well as I mentioned a little earlier, with the help of Newspoll we've conducted our own national survey on water, and we surveyed 700 Australians across five capital cities. Asked whether they would feel safer drinking desalinated water or recycled waste water, the majority, 61% said they would feel safer drinking desalinated water. Only 21% feels safe with the idea of drinking recycled waste water. Interestingly, men feel significantly safer drinking recycled water than women, which in the light of some of the comments about alligators earlier is interesting. And Sydneysiders seem to feel safer drinking recycled water than Australians in other cities. I think those results are pretty interesting, Ian Kiernan. You've got a big job on your hands selling this to people, haven't you?"
Perhaps the results may have been different if those polled were fully informed about each option or if they were asked: would you prefer recycled water once the Federal government has resolved all health risks referred to in their recent reports.
Maybe someone could explain what a "sweet bippy" is?!?
posted by Concerned Ratepayer at 9:12 AM
2 Comments:
© 2002 Special Broadcasting Service
RUNNING DRY
There's no doubt that most Australian cities are getting less rain than they used to. Sydney and Perth are both taking drastic action. They've imposed tough water restrictions to deal with the dwindling water in their dams. They've also announced plans to build desalination plants - turning sea water into water we can drink. But critics of desalination say it's environmentally damaging and it uses lots of energy. We could recycle our waste water but that idea isn't too popular with the public, as Insight will reveal in an exclusive poll later tonight. So how serious is our water shortage?
JENNY BROCKIE: Well, I'd like to start with you, Jim Gill, you're the head of WA Water. How serious is it in WA?
JIM GILL, WA WATER CORPORATION: Well, it's pretty serious, Jenny. Climate change does seem to have hit Western Australia earlier and harder than just about anywhere else in the world, and if you look at the stream-flow records of the last nine years, they've been running at a total of about one-third of what they did 30 years ago. So it's pretty tough when you're running a water utility and that happens to you. What we've done, we sort of read the tea-leaves 10 years ago and we embarked on a massive program of new water source development - so new dams, new bores and then other things, now a desalination plant, but trading with irrigators, clearing catchment vegetation, and working a lot with the public. So we've managed to get through it.
JENNY BROCKIE: But you're still worried, aren't you? For all of that you're worried?
JIM GILL: We're still worried because we don't know what the climate's going to do to us next.
JENNY BROCKIE: And it's global warming that's causing it?
JIM GILL: It's partly global warming it's partly the normal variation of climate in Australia. How much of each, who knows, but it certainly has been a very hard hit for Western Australia.
JENNY BROCKIE: Colin Creighton, you're with the CSIRO, is this happening across the country?
COLIN CREIGHTON, CSIRO: Most definitely, we talk about the big four - we talk about Perth, Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, between them 80% of Australia's urban water use, all of them with growing populations. While Perth is the start of the change with climate, some of our work is suggesting the south-east corner, which means Melbourne and Sydney, are next going to be affected by this change in rainfall, of droughts and floods.
JENNY BROCKIE: Now is there a crunch point time? I mean, if you look into the future, are you saying at a particular point in time we're going to run out of water?
COLIN CREIGHTON: We already have demand management in many, if not all of our cities, except perhaps Hobart - still haven't got metering in place there. We already have people reducing their consumption but we also have increasing population, more variable rainfall and floods and droughts. We are pretty close to that point right now for our cities.
JENNY BROCKIE: How close? Close to what point? To the point of running out of water?
COLIN CREIGHTON: If you look at Sydney and Perth at the moment they're doing a lot of work to plan their future to cater for just that issue.
JENNY BROCKIE: You're making it sound not too alarmist but I'm just wondering realistically, if the patterns continued, would those cities run out of water and if they were going to, when would it be?
COLIN CREIGHTON: Can't give you a year on that. Might be a flood next year. But certainly all our cities right now are facing a crisis in terms of the water available compared to population growth, climate change and increasing lifestyle demands.
JENNY BROCKIE: Clare Richards you're a weather forecaster and you've been a weather forecaster for two decades, are things getting worse?
CLARE RICHARDS, METEOROLOGIST, WEATHER CHANNEL: If you look at the dam levels definitely and even if you look at the streaming flows particularly - as south-western Australia is an example - the water supplies there are definitely getting worse. 2002 definitely stands out as a very dry year but when you look at the rainfall averaged over the last 5 to 10 years we're really only looking at rainfall that's about 200mm below average and that is actually about 1,000mm a year.
JENNY BROCKIE: So why are there these dire predictions? You're painting a picture that's slightly different. You're saying it's not that bad.
CLARE RICHARDS: Well, what I'm saying is the rainfall that we've received over the last 5 to 10 years - when you average it, taking out the low rainfall from 2002 - is actually only just below average so it's got more to do with how we consume the water or more importantly, how much of our water actually goes down the drain and that we don't use.
JENNY BROCKIE: Ian Kiernan is there a problem with the way we use our water? Is that the problem?
IAN KIERNAN, CLEAN UP AUSTRALIA: Yes, Jenny, there is. We are in the throes of a global fresh water crisis that's here now. But there is enough water if we manage it correctly. What we need is water reform. We need to educate, we need to get the community to have more respect for water and to improve their own water management. I mean, climate change is a fact and the first thing we've got to do with climate change is to learn to live with it and with the continuation of climate change, there's going to be more and more pressure on these water resources.
JENNY BROCKIE: And on water use. Well, let's have a look at who our biggest water guzzlers are. It turns out the residents of some of Australia's more affluent suburbs are the worst offenders. Here's Peter Martin.
MOSMAN HOUSE STORY:
REPORTER: Peter Martin
Each morning Sean Kelly and his family use and then throw out 200 litres of water.
SEAN KELLY: Good scrub, come on. Get a cup, please. OK, we've got three bathrooms, two upstairs, one down here.
Plus a swimming pool, a lawn watering system and a bath in his bedroom.
SEAN KELLY: That's a decent bath. Actually I've never had a bath in that. I mean, this is straight out of 'Vogue Living'. This is what...Gabriel loves this.
He's invited a water efficiency expert to put his house through the wringer.
WATER EXPERT: The top loader washing machine you have here, it's a fairly later model one, it does have some water efficiency.
The small pieces of advice are useful.
WATER EXPERT: You certainly can, it's just a matter of screwing that off there and fitting one in.
But the big advice sticks like a fur ball in his throat. He's being told to put in a tank.
WATER EXPERT: A rainwater tank would be something else we would suggest you could do here. It's going to cost you around $3,000 - $2,500, $3,000.
SEAN KELLY: And how much is that going to save me?
WATER EXPERT: It's going to save you around about $60 every year off your water bill on the current water prices.
That's 40 years of losing money before breaking even, should the tank and Sean last that long.
SEAN KELLY: But for me, I mean, just now it's pretty hard to justify that sort of money just for the tank. I mean, is it going to help the community that much if I put a tank in?
WATER EXPERT: Well, it's going to help the environment and, yeah, the demand on our water supply and it's also...it eventually will pay itself off.
A few kilometres down the road Keela Lamb sees things differently. She installed heavy-duty pipes and a 22,000 litre tank a few years ago.
KEELA LAMB: This serves all our water needs within the house.
REPORTER: For five people?
KEELA LAMB: Five people in the house and about two people in the little cottage.
Keela boils the water to make sure it's absolutely safe. Her wastewater gets purified through gravel and reeds before feeding the garden. Urine goes into that water, but not solid human waste.
KEELA LAMB: Well, Peter, this is our waterless toilet. It's a Rota-Loo and we've got one upstairs and one downstairs.
The solid human waste drops without water into a compost bin under the house.
KEELA LAMB: When you're finished with the toilet we always put a little bit of hay, you can use sawdust but we use a bit of hay and just drop it in on top and you can put all your vegetable scraps in there as well and then it just becomes like a normal compost bin.
It's good enough compost to garden with. And the bill?
KEELA LAMB: Well, this is our last water bill, July to September this year and as you can see, your average daily usage last bill was nil and this bill is nil. No water.
But Keela Lamb isn't off the hook. She still has to pay for the water connection because it's illegal not to be connected.
KEELA LAMB: This bill is $106.05 and that's for the services that we still pay for in spite of the fact that we're avoiding sending any sewage into the sewage treatment system or having any water.
How do you feel about paying for a service that you don't use?
KEELA LAMB: Well, probably they should pay us, it should be the other way round.
JENNY BROCKIE: Well, David Evans, of Sydney Water, why should Keela have to pay a bill even though she uses none of your water and she doesn't put any of the sewage into the sewers?
DAVID EVANS, DIRECTOR SYDNEY WATER: It's terrific to see people doing what they're doing. And the diversification, the community education Ian referred to is really fundamental. But in answer to your specific question, there is a cost to the community for making the service available for a future user or that user, fire protection, things like that. So we try and keep that fixed component as small as possible and we're winding up what we call the pay-for-use component.
JENNY BROCKIE: But it's not really encouraging people to do what she's doing. I mean, there she is saving water more than just about anyone in the country probably, why should she have to pay for this connection?
DAVID EVANS: Well, as I say, we've changed over the next four years the proportion between the fixed and the variable component to give people more incentive to save, and that fixed component she referred to there will fall. But there are a lot of resources tied up with bringing the water to the door.
JENNY BROCKIE: Malcolm Turnbull, you've recently been on a parliamentary committee looking at water use. Now you have five water tanks at home, is that right?
MALCOLM TURNBULL, MP FEDERAL MEMBER FOR WENTWORTH: That's right, yes. That's about 22,000, 23,000 litres worth.
JENNY BROCKIE: And why is that?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I wanted to conserve water, I wanted to be able to water my garden so I don't use any Sydney Water water, any town water for my garden.
JENNY BROCKIE: And how much did that cost to put those five tanks in?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, you wouldn't want to know. It's not economic. You cannot justify it.
JENNY BROCKIE: Well, I do want to know, Malcolm. How much was it?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: I've blotted it out, I promise you. It was very expensive.
JENNY BROCKIE: Tens of thousands of dollars?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Yes, yes, definitely. The reason for...the argument for having tanks in Sydney - there's an idealistic reason - but in addition, of course, it enables you to water your garden when...not withstanding that there are water restrictions. So, you know, I think gardens are very important and I'd hate to see Sydney, you know, lose its greeness.
JENNY BROCKIE: But it is an option for the well-off, isn't it? I mean, it is only an option for people who have that kind of money. And I take it you don't have a waterless loo, Malcolm, is that correct?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, no - you're getting very personal here - I don't. Jenny, let me cut to the chase with water tanks, and I think David Evans would probably endorse this. Retrofitting water tanks into an existing house is very expensive unless you've got enough open ground that you can just put the tank in the garden next to the house like you'd see in the country. But finding space to put tanks under houses and in voids and, you know, along walls, obviously, is very expensive. But in terms of new houses, the cost of incorporating a water tank is very much less and there I think it is economically worthwhile.
JENNY BROCKIE: Do you think we're paying too little for our water, Malcolm? Do you think we should be paying for more it?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: I think it's worth more but there are very big social inequities associated with a too large a rise in the cost of water. You're not going to reduce water usage in the cities by increasing the price. I think the better approach is to increase the supply of water by engaging in large-scale recycling. You know, that's the tragedy of Sydney, the folly of Sydney, that we have known this water shortage has been coming for years for more than a decade, and yet nothing has been done to address it. We haven't built a new dam, not that I'm sure that would have been the answer, but most importantly, we have not undertaken large-scale recycling. Sydney Water is the biggest polluter in Australia. It pumps 450 billion litres of barely treated sewage into the ocean. Now that water, that sewage, that wastewater should be recycled and it isn't.
JENNY BROCKIE: David, response from you to that, the biggest polluter?
DAVID EVANS: Well, you could argue we're the biggest cleaner-up of pollution as well. We are in the water cycle to take waste from the community and treat it properly. You have to be able to persuade the community to introduce the wastewater, treated wastewater directly into the supply, and worldwide experience shows us that communities take a lot of persuading about that.
JENNY BROCKIE: We're going to get on to that just a little bit later. I just wanted to stick with price for a moment, though. Do you think we're paying enough for our water?
DAVID EVANS: Well, the payment is... ..has recently been increased to about $1.20 a kilolitre with an increased charge for those people who use more than 100 kilolitres a quarter. But there is an increase in price for use above 100 kilolitres a quarter and that's designed to say to people who have large gardens and pools or whatever, "Well, you can have your water but you do have to pay more for it."
JENNY BROCKIE: You've got to pay for it. Jim, what do you think are we paying enough for water?
JIM GILL: Well, actually, Jenny, I brought along my standard prop here. This is my jerry can this is my 20-litre jerry can. This is how much water you get out of your tap, in Perth at least, for the sum of one cent, which is incredibly cheap. In some places sometimes it will cost you two or three cents, depending on which pricing taper you're on. But that is amazing.
JENNY BROCKIE: How much more should it be then?
JIM GILL: Well, you know, look, this is my other prop, Jenny, that's a teaspoon. And if you buy a popular brand of bottled water, then that's about how much water you're getting for one cent. I don't think we should be bumping up the price of water, though. I think we can work with the community, educate the community, we can become a lot smarter at the way we use water, plus we can get into recycling desalination and so on. You know, I think the task before us is to keep the price down but be smarter about it.
JENNY BROCKIE: What do other people think? Camilla, what do you think? Do you think you should be paying more for water or do you think you're just entitled to it?
CAMILLA SHERIDEN: No, I think we're entitled to it. But I've installed a tank that I know I've got clean water if the time comes when I have to drink out of it and I have no hesitation to drink out of it.
JENNY BROCKIE: And why did you put that tank in? What motivated you'd to do that?
CAMILLA SHERIDEN: Firstly it was to fight fires because I live on the bush. But since we put it in, the water problem has got worse and now we look at it that it's going to be for our drinking water later on. And we also would like to add more tanks. And it didn't cost us tens of thousands of dollars to put in either. We got a nice rebate. It cost us all of about $400.
JENNY BROCKIE: Yes, Ian, yes.
IAN KIERNAN: I put in a rainwater tank at home which I use for watering the garden and flushing the toilet. The next thing I'm going to do is put a solar pump on it and I'm going to reticulate water over the iron roof of our terrace house so that I don't have to air-condition. So that's another benefit and a cost benefit.
JENNY BROCKIE: But again it's an option for people who are well-off, isn't it? If you're struggling on a pension somewhere or you're unemployed or you know, you just don't have much money, it's not an option?
IAN KIERNAN: It's going to dramatically benefit me economically because I don't have to buy an air-conditioner, I don't have to consume all of that power to run an air-conditioner and yet I will have a comfortable room.
JENNY BROCKIE: Stuart Bunn, I wonder whether... You're you're an ecologist at Griffith University. Are city dwellers to blame for overuse of water because that's what we've been talking about?
STUART BUNN, ECOLOGIST, GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY: Well, certainly our city dwellers are big users of water. You know, the interesting thing with this debate is that we... ..a lot of the things we're talking about of installing rain tanks are about maintaining our current levels of consumption of water, and really we need to be sending a much stronger signal to reduce our urban water use. But in terms of our national water use, the urban centres make up a very small part of that. I mean, it's about 8% of the total water used in the country.
JENNY BROCKIE: Is that right, 8%? So where else is it going?
STUART BUNN: So about the other two thirds... The big user of course is agriculture.
JENNY BROCKIE: And what particular types of agriculture?
STUART BUNN: A whole range of agriculture, but particularly in the irrigated sector, the cotton, rice, sugar are big single-user industries.
JENNY BROCKIE: And do you think those industries should be allowed to continue in this current situation?
STUART BUNN: It's not a case of not being allowed to continue but certainly one of the things you'd hope is that we start to see a much better appreciation of the true costs of providing water for those industries. And, you know, when we talk about the costs of delivering water for the urban centres, the cost of delivering to agriculture is much, much lower again.
JENNY BROCKIE: I wonder knowing what you know about those industries, do you, for example, buy Australian rice?
STUART BUNN: No, I don't. And part of the reason for that is that when you look at the amount of water that it takes to produce a kilogram of rice and you know what it costs you in the supermarket to buy it, the full cost of producing it can't be in the product that you're buying. And one of the things - and I talk to my son about this - is that although it's really good to buy Australian products, part of the problem is I'm not convinced that the full cost of producing that kilogram of rice is in the product that we're buying, and a whole lot of the other external costs associated with, you know, degraded river environments and so on is not in there as well.
JENNY BROCKIE: What about other industries, though, Stuart? What about the cotton industry, for example?
STUART BUNN: Our cotton industry fellows are over here, they'd give a better appreciation of the amounts of water used, but certainly again, big users, I guess, as an industry, a bigger user than rice. Certainly the amounts that each of those industries use, are about on par with the consumption that we're seeing in the cities.
JENNY BROCKIE: Mike Logan, you're a cotton farmer, your response to that?
MIKE LOGAN, COTTON FARMER: It's a bit perplexing. I can only talk about my own farm but my own farm had a very, very good year last year and we produced about two and a bit bails a megalitre, well over $1,000 a megalitre in production. And for me that was a big step forward - we'd really improved in our water use efficiency. So there is one view that we should be paying more for water but there's other views that, you know, there's a great economy and regional activity out there that's really dependant on it.
JENNY BROCKIE: Malcolm Turnbull, your response to that. Is there a case politically for making it tougher to grow crops that use so much water like rice and cotton?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, I think you've got to remember that water is not completely fundable. You know, if you take Sydney, for example, Sydney does not have the ability to buy the water that is used by the cotton growers at Narrabri. So certainly you can make the case that people in the cities are paying a lot for water and agriculture is paying a much smaller amount but it's important to remember, in defence of agriculture, that the food that is grown with relatively cheap water in the bush is then largely consumed in the cities so the city dwellers are getting the benefit of that cheap water. It would be interesting to know what David Evans thinks can be done to redesign our Sydney water system. And he might tell us, for example, why he is so opposed to a private company - Services Sydney - being able to compete with Sydney Water and provide the sort of recycling that our city deserves.
JENNY BROCKIE: What about this question of recycling, David? Malcolm's saying what's happening with recycling?
DAVID EVANS: OK, the recycling, as Malcolm says, is a bit of a horses-for-courses activity. It's most easily done where you've got new suburbs and you can design the new suburb around a dual-pipe system to get it in for watering gardens, like at Rouse Hill, and you can do that as the new suburbs roll out. But to create dual-pipe systems in the built-up suburbs in the rest of Sydney is tremendously expensive, would involve lots of dislocation in digging up the suburbs, and then the individual householders would also have to build dual-pipe systems. So, yes, you can do it to a degree but it gets to be a little bit like the rainwater tanks - It's very costly and therefore you have to pick the opportunities to recycle where they'll work for you - industry, new subdivision and the like.
JENNY BROCKIE: And you mentioned before you don't think it's acceptable to people, recycled water.
DAVID EVANS: Well, this is a big debate and I think there are two ways in which householders can use recycled water. One of them is watering their gardens, and that particularly works well with what we call the dual reticulation systems, which, as I said, work best in new suburbs. The other way householders have to re-use water is to put it into the water distribution system, mix it up with your other sources of water and then deliver it as a shandy to householders.
JENNY BROCKIE: A shandy.
DAVID EVANS: Now shandies are many things to many different people.
JENNY BROCKIE: That's a particularly unusual shandy.
DAVID EVANS: One person's shandy might be a joy to them because they feel they're making a contribution to the environment, etc. But we serve the whole population and we find there are quite significant segments of the population who find that idea particularly unappealing.
JENNY BROCKIE: What do you think of this Malcolm?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, Jenny, I think the fundamental question to ask David is this - is it not the fact that wastewater can be treated to a level of the highest purity? Now we know that can be done and it is done in many places and there are many cities in the world, particularly in Europe and North America where in effect recycled water is being drunk because they live on rivers. But we know we have the scientific means to turn wastewater into the purest possible drinking water. Given that we have that scien... that technical capacity, why are we continuing with this nonsense of talking about shandies and frightening people? Why don't we just get on with the job and capture that 450 billion litres of wastewater, make it as pure as possible and ensure that Sydney has a sustainable water supply for the decades ahead?
JENNY BROCKIE: Let's have a look at a place where they're doing just that. The citizens of Toowoomba, west of Brisbane, are preparing to drink their own recycled sewage. Their mayor says that she's showing Australia the way, and her opponents, though, are saying that Toowoomba is already being labelled turd town. Here's Peter Martin.
TOOWOOMBA RECYCLING STORY:
REPORTER: Peter Martin
DI THORLEY, TOOWOOMBA MAYOR: They're going to have me for wasting water, you know that, don't you, eh?
Toowoomba's mayor, Di Thorley, thinks a lot about what goes down the drain.
DI THORLEY: Well, I drank it in Singapore, I drank it in America, I don't see a problem. I think it's more a problem with people's view of what... ..talking about drinking sewage.
Toowoomba, inland from Brisbane, hasn't had significant rain for five years. Its dams may have only two years of water left. One is stagnant.
CHIEF ENGINEER: OK, we are upgrading the Wetalla Wastewater Treatment Plant and we'll have that commissioned by September 2006.
With her chief engineer, she plans to treat the town sewage, pump it into the stagnant dam and then after testing, release it to make up a large part of Toowoomba's water supply.
DI THORLEY: 25%.
REPORTER: Recycled water?
DI THORLEY: Yes.
REPORTER: In some people's language, recycled sewage.
DI THORLEY: Yes.
It would be an Australian first. Amongst the fears raised at this public meeting, the impact on men who've ingested small quantities of excreted female contraceptive.
LAURIE JONES, CITIZENS AGAINST DRINKING SEWAGE: What happens is that there's been shrivelled penises, there's been...
REPORTER: Of fish?
LAURIE JONES: Feminisation of fish and alligators overseas where they've come into contact with these chemicals. Men, obviously, were never intended to take the pill.
REPORTER: So what have you got here?
LAURIE JONES: I've got a whole lot of information that's been sourced on what's been happening over the last eight years.
Laurie Jones has been fighting plans to recycle sewage in towns all over Australia for the best part of a decade. He says it's instinctive.
LAURIE JONES: My father was a plumber and I was brought up as a plumber and I've always been brought up with the knowledge that you separate your sewage system from your drinking water system. This is an emotional argument...
He's up against impressive foes. Dr Greg Leslie has worked on the water recycling schemes in both Singapore and Orange County in the US. He says he'd let his 5-year-old son drink the water they produce. He's come to Toowoomba to reassure these doctors that it's practically disease free.
GREG LESLIE, ENGINEERING, UNSW: The relative risk associated with this is less than or at worst equal to what we are doing right now.
But it's perception as much as reality that has the locals worried - the so-called yuck factor. Clive Berghofer is Toowoomba's biggest land developer. He says a few months back business dried up.
CLIVE BERGHOFER, DEVELOPER: Whether water's safe or not the perception is there that it's sewage water, that's the perception.
Toowoomba's best known factory makes ice creams. Home brand ice creams are sent from Toowoomba to homes throughout the country. They're made with pure bore water, not town water but the firm says it now couldn't use Toowoomba's town water no matter how safe it turns out to be.
DON DUFFUS: We would never use that water. Whether it was proved to be 100% or not, you can't take that concept to market. You can't have the people of this country thinking a product has some question mark over it.
But Toowoomba's mayor is determined to press ahead. Di Thorley says in one sense Toowoomba will be doing nothing new.
DI THORLEY: Everybody that's lived downstream of anywhere that has tipped their sewage into... ..partially treated sewage into a creek and sent it down to someone else, we've been doing that since time immemorial. Local governments have just been dropping it in and letting someone else take it out and just put it through an ordinary process.
JENNY BROCKIE: Well, Laurie Jones, I'm interested in asking you what evidence you have for the claims you were making earlier on in that piece about shrivelled penises and feminisation of alligatorsWHERE does that come from?
LAURIE JONES: That information actually came from the book 'Our Stolen Future'. It was also..it came from another book called the 'Feminization of Nature'. And it was based...the first book was based on evidence that was actually obtained from overseas where pesticides and endocrine and disrupting chemicals had ended up in rivers and lakes.
JENNY BROCKIE: But that's different from treating things, isn't it? It's different from recycling water and treating it and purifying it before people get it?
LAURIE JONES: Well, the problem with the purifying, and my biggest concern, is that the impact of drinking treated sewage wastewater will have on my family and all other families. And I'm concerned because there is no guarantee, there is absolutely no evidence that the treated sewage wastewater is free of all contaminants. And along those lines, in Australia, there's no health department that approves it presently.
JENNY BROCKIE: Greg Leslie, it's not a new idea though, is it? I mean, you've worked on both the Singapore and the Orange County systems recycling schemes, Orange County in the US. Is it safe? Is recycled sewage safe to drink?
GREG LESLIE: Absolutely.
JENNY BROCKIE: How can you say that so confidently?
GREG LESLIE: I guess when I started working there, it was 1993 and the agency that I worked for had been doing it since 1976. Basically our fears come down to two factors. Are we going to drink something from the wastewater that will make us sick tomorrow - that's what's called an acute risk - and that has been the basis for sanitary engineering design going back to the 18th century. And in defence of David, the system that he's inherited in Sydney has been based on the concept of keeping wastewater separate from drinking water because you break the fecal-oral spread and you prevent disease. So that's the system that we've got. The acute risk is due to pathogens - giardia, bacteria and virus. Now our wastewater systems are designed so that when that water is released to the environment we've already mitigated that risk. What we're talking about with these schemes is that you completely filter out the bacteria, the virus and the protozoa before you put the water back into a body, be it a ground water or a reservoirWHERE it's abstracted at some time later, treated and distributed.
JENNY BROCKIE: Snow Manners, you live in Toowoomba. What are people in Toowoomba saying about this scheme that we just saw in that film?
SNOW MANNERS, TOOWOOMBA RESIDENT: Well, just before I go to that, Toowoomba is going to go on file as a case study in how not to introduce potable recycling of water and that's because it's been an absolute fiasco from day one. It was first mooted speculatively in 1996, The mayor at the time in 2001 was seeking funding in Canberra for a $50 million recycling project and we now have, you know, a nine-year history and public consultation began on August 28 this year.
JENNY BROCKIE: So you're saying people haven't been asked whether they want it. But what does the community want? What do you think the community wants?
SNOW MANNERS: Well, it's hard to determine. The community wants to go on the journey in the decision-making process. The community wants accurate information.
JENNY BROCKIE: But are you saying the community's fearful, that basically it doesn't...
SNOW MANNERS: Very fearful, very fearful because there's been no transparency in the decision making to this point.
JENNY BROCKIE: Diane, no transparency? But as mayor and are you out of step with what your constituents want?
DI THORLEY: No, but I'm just trying to check up that all the blokes in Dalby don't get really cheesed at us saying they've got small penises and they're feminised because we've been putting this water down for 70 years so I'm really worried that when I get home they're going to belt me up because I let it go through. So let's put it out there that the boys are fine in Dalby. I'll just stick up for them here. And they're not growing boobs so they'll be happy with that. Look, no, I don't think I am. And it is really simple for them to sit here and come up with some of the stuff - I hear about a project I took in 2001 and that was one that was to take water to the irrigators and water to Ackland coal, it was not about cleaning up any water at all. And at the time, the minister, our minister said that it wasn't a project that stacked up, they weren't going to put water in pipelines to irrigators and that was it. But to go back to the community...
JENNY BROCKIE: But how are people reacting to this because there's obviously concern about it?
DI THORLEY: Yes, you see you actually hear two sides of the story. I mean, I'm listening to their side of the story but we've also got the other one where you're getting a whole lot of feedback from the community. Was it a great way in which to do public consultation? I can tell you if you went out there and you spent 20 years talking about recycled water, before you even put a project up to the prime minister then there are going to be a certain number of people that are going to feel distasteful about redrinking their own sewage, so do I. I'm not going to drink effluent and I'm not going to drink sewage. What I'm drinking is water that is purified. We shouldn't be... Because we've been dumping it not just in a few places in Australia, but everywhere in Australia where there's a sewage plant and there's a river, we've been dumping it in. And this is the myth perpetrated by local governments and water groups - we've been dumping it in and we've been leaving all these endocrine disruptors and everything else in and we've been sending it down and we go, "No, no, three bends in the river and a mile down the river "this water's going to be clean." That's bullshit. It's not so. Toowoomba has dumped 13,500 tons of salt every year, year after year after year at the head of the Murray Darling. I can take you to where the Darling River in Toowoomba starts under a rubbish dump with springs. We never cared. So we just pour it all in and where for the first time, someone's going to clean it out.
JENNY BROCKIE: David, what do you say... You're drawing up some national health guidelines, aren't you, for the consumption of recycled sewage?
DAVID CUNLIFFE, WATER HEALTH EXPERT: I'm part of the team that's helped develop the draft national guidelines for water recycling that were issued late last week, they're out for consultation. At this stage they don't specifically deal with indirect potable re-use.
JENNY BROCKIE: But what did you want to say about...
DAVID CUNLIFFE: That will happen in the second round. There were some points there that got mixed up, some of which I agree with. I think we should separate out this argument about bad practice - that is that we're putting effluent into streams or livestock waste goes into streams and then comparing indirect potable to that. Indirect potable re-use or any type of recycling should be judged on its own merits. Is it needed and is it safe?
JENNY BROCKIE: It's an interesting perception issue though, isn't it? Because people think drinking recycled sewage is unacceptable, completely unacceptable, but they don't think about what is going into those rivers and into that system that is in fact ending up in their taps.
DAVID CUNLIFFE: You're right, they don't but that's historical, it's not good practice, we shouldn't encourage it. And I agree with the last comments that we should be looking to clean that up and stop it.
JENNY BROCKIE: And what do you think of that action?
DAVID CUNLIFFE: I think David made a good point before that in different situations there's going to be different solutions. I think there are some substantial challenges, Greg raised a number of them.
JENNY BROCKIE: Every time I'm asking this question we're going sideways around it.
DAVID CUNLIFFE: I'll try and answer your question directly. Substantial challenges with micro-organisms, substantial challenges with, in particular, organic chemicals, they're not insurmountable, they can be met but in the case of Toowoomba, you have to get acceptance by the Toowoomba public.
DI THORLEY: I'd like to say something. It's about the number of barriers that you put in place. It is alright if this was America where they've done X amount of plants or whatever. But we're saying we want to put in as many checkpoints as we can. Is it overdoing it? You can bet your sweet bippy it's overdoing it. But isn't that better to do that, to be able to at the end of it when the CSIRO or whoever the independent auditors are of this, that they can get there and say, "This is what it was, This is what it was before, this is what it is." But if you put the barriers at any given time, you can stop water going through, at any given time.
JENNY BROCKIE: OK, but there are alternatives and the main one is turning sea water into drinking water. Now Sydney and Perth are racing to build desalination plants as we speak, or certainly looking into it. Jim Gill, what's happening in Perth?
JIM GILL: Yes, we're actually... It's about one-third of the way through the construction program so for the summer after this one it will be operating flat strap - a 17% increase to Perth's water supply.
JENNY BROCKIE: And you're also looking at recycling?
JIM GILL: We've got some trials under way injecting treated wastewater into acquifers and ultimately we could use those for drinking water. But we're determined to get the science right before we do that and that's going to take quite a few years.
JENNY BROCKIE: But you're dipping your toes in so to speak?
JIM GILL: We are. My view is that recycling is a potential water source, we've got a growing country, we've got a drying climate and we've got to look seriously at it. But before we go headlong into it we've got to make absolutely certain we've got the science right.
JENNY BROCKIE: David Evans, what are you planning in Sydney in terms of desalination?
DAVID EVANS: Desalination is part of a diversified approach. I think we have to recognise, given the drying of the climate, etc, and the growth, that we don't have a single solution to these water supply issues. We have to attack it on all fronts and desalination is part of the attack but also getting more out of the existing dams is part of it. Doing recycling where you can is part of it, encouraging consumers to fit water efficient appliances is part of it.
JENNY BROCKIE: Ian Kiernan, you're against the Sydney desalination plant. You're on a committee I think that advised the Government against it. Why?
IAN KIERNAN: I'm absolutely opposed to the desalination option. It is going to use more energy, not only to put it through the membrane, but then to pump it inland where we need itWHERE it's coming from in the first place. We've got a number of sewage treatment plants under Sydney Water now that are approaching world's best environmental practice and they're being dumped in the Hawkesbury Nepean and dumped in the ocean. We need new water but the first place to look is from industry - by educating industry to look at recycling. The least favoured option was desalinisation because it's hungry for energy and it's going to produce a brine stream. We want to know what is going to be the affect on Cronulla Beach. Is it going to be affected by the brine stream that's coming out of that plant?
JENNY BROCKIE: Jim?
JIM GILL: Jenny, I don't think we should be ruling out any of these sources. Sure desalination... We're very lucky that desalination technology has improved to the point where just as we need it, certainly in the west it's an economically viable source. The other thing is, with energy we're actually going to power ours with a wind farm, we've already signed the contract. And as far as the saline discharge is concerned, that can be very readily managed. So, you know, we believe that desalination is an excellent source for Australia.
JENNY BROCKIE: What about the cost though, David Evans, it's very costly, isn't it?
DAVID EVANS: Yes, I think we've got to confront the fact that all these alternative sources we're talking about are increasingly costly. Dams built further away and then the water having to be pumped over the ranges back to you is costly and energy intensive. Recycling can be very costly and very energy intensive as well, and so is desalination. We are confronting a world where a lot of the easy choices are gone and therefore we have to optimise the mix of them and that goes to making sure you get your economics right but also your community acceptance right. Don't put all your eggs in one basket, diversify, learn from your experiences and watch the technological change. There's enormous technological change making some of these recycling and desalination techniques much more competitive. In fact, the technologies are really converging and so whilst we have a problem now I think we need to take some comfort from the fact that technology is helping us, giving other options to us. We have to be smart about how we pick them.
JENNY BROCKIE: I would like to go to Malcolm Turnbull now but I can't, unfortunately - he's just been called away to a division in the house. I was interested in asking him about the political implications of all this. Ian, you wanted to say something.
IAN KIERNAN: I agree with both of you that we need to look at all of these options and we did that through the expert water panel. But at the same time, desal was the least favoured option because it will be exacerbating climate change through its energy consumption and we know that from the Saudi example of a major desal plant against the Singapore major sewage recovery plant, that the Saudi plant, even with subsidised oil, was twice as expensive as the Singapore plant.
JENNY BROCKIE: But isn't recycled water the least popular option with the public, Ian?
IAN KIERNAN: That's a matter of education and partnership, I believe. And I'd just like to add to that that if the private sector comes in and does the desal plant - at what cost? Is it going to be another cross city tunnel where we are paying so much more for our water?
JENNY BROCKIE: Alright, well as I mentioned a little earlier, with the help of Newspoll we've conducted our own national survey on water, and we surveyed 700 Australians across five capital cities. Asked whether they would feel safer drinking desalinated water or recycled waste water, the majority, 61% said they would feel safer drinking desalinated water. Only 21% feels safe with the idea of drinking recycled waste water. Interestingly, men feel significantly safer drinking recycled water than women, which in the light of some of the comments about alligators earlier is interesting. And Sydneysiders seem to feel safer drinking recycled water than Australians in other cities. I think those results are pretty interesting, Ian Kiernan. You've got a big job on your hands selling this to people, haven't you?
IAN KIERNAN: Yeah, we believe we can do it.
JENNY BROCKIE: We are talking about drinking recycled wastewater here and how acceptable that is to the public. I mean, how acceptable is it to people here?
SNOW MANNERS: It's not acceptable.
JENNY BROCKIE: Are people prepared to drink it?
WOMAN: What other option do they have? You said that they have a water deficit, they have to get water from somewhere.
SNOW MANNERS: If I could answer that...
DI THORLEY: No, actually I don't think you should, Snow, because you don't know exactly what the answer to it is. No, I will butt in on you, and I don't have much problem doing that at the moment. What we did was, there were a heap of options come up with a lot of people that didn't want to do recycled water and one of them - which the council looked at - and one of those was in three places, looking at taking water out of the bores. The council started to look at the situation with bores over the last 30 years and one particular area, there were 70,000 megalitres allocation on their licences. They're mining it at 45 to 50 and the safe yield is about 25 to 27. Now that is...and that predates all of... ..just what's happening now with the weather.
JENNY BROCKIE: Alright, so that's ruled out. So you're saying there's no option?
DI THORLEY: There's no guarantee with bore water, Jenny. We can't for Australians, for my great-grandkids or anyone else's here, say the bores are going to be the answer forever. Because you know what we're talking about here - stuff not coming out of the sky. We can all sit and talk about desal and recycle and tanks and everything else, but at the end of the day what we're looking at is where it is not coming and going in to where it used to go.
JENNY BROCKIE: OK, can I just get back to this question again of whether people are prepared to drink recycled wastewater. Yes, man up the back.
BILL BOUTHAN, ROUSE HILL RESIDENT: We're from the north-west of Sydney, we're covered by the Rouse Hill treatment plant so we've got recycled water for gardening and toilet use. I find it's absolutely wonderful on the garden, it grows beautiful vegetables. If I start growing hair, I'll start worrying. But I'm just wondering is that going... ..is there a concern for that in using it to grow vegetables? And my wife has been asking is it possible to hook it up to the washing machine?
JENNY BROCKIE: Well, I can't answer that, I'm afraid.
DI THORLEY: I think it's two standards. Recycled is used for the stuff that goes in the purple pipe. The same word is used to clean it up to dialysis standard and this is the issue we're talking about. Yours isn't cleaned up to dialysis standard, I'll bet my sweet bippy, no. So that's the difference with the words.
JENNY BROCKIE: Let's get back to how acceptable it is though. I wonder how many people here are prepared to drink it, to drink... Yes?
JONATHON LARKIN: We're really precious about our water but surely there's billions of people around the world who couldn't dream of turning on a tap and getting water that's even as close as our clean water. So if something's recycled to half the standard that Toowoomba might have, then surely we should be appreciative that we can do that and have some sort of perspective about it.
JENNY BROCKIE: Yeah, Diane, you've got a couple of bottles here, I think, from Singapore. This is recycled wastewater.
DI THORLEY: I wonder how many people would be game to drink this?
JENNY BROCKIE: Justin, you want to try some, up the back?
DI THORLEY: You want to try some? This is recycled Singapore water.
JUSTIN: I'll try some.
DI THORLEY: Right from the people in Singapore.
JENNY BROCKIE: And what about your girlfriend, Eva.
DI THORLEY: You're having a go? Good on you. You can even hang it around your neck. Oh, wow.
JENNY BROCKIE: Don't just look at it. Come on, drink it.
JUSTIN: There we go. Tastes fine.
JENNY BROCKIE: Eva, are you going to try it?
EVA: Oh, OK.
JENNY BROCKIE: You don't mind share a bottle, I gather, girlfriend and boyfriend.
EVA: Yeah. It tastes fine.
DI THORLEY: I think, Jenny, it gets back to again, it's about how pure our water is...
JENNY BROCKIE: Just want a reaction here. It's water.
CAMILLA SHERIDEN: It's water. After listening to that gentleman before... Before I walked in here I thought, "No way," and when that gentleman said it's 100% safe, that sort of made me feel a bit better. And here smell. There's no smell. There's no smell.
JENNY BROCKIE: So you expected it to smell?
CAMILLA SHERIDEN: I did.
JENNY BROCKIE: So you expected it to smell like sewage?
CAMILLA SHERIDEN: Yes, I did.
JENNY BROCKIE: Justin? But this is what we're dealing with public attitudes and people's perceptions.
JUSTIN: If you're constantly focusing on the fact that it's recycled, it's a lot harder to swallow, I guess. But I think also there's a lot of focusing on drinking water. I mean, I haven't measured it but the amount of water I consume a day, I'd say drinking water is a very small proportion of it and because of that I guess recycling gets quite a dirty word. So I'm sure that there's lots of other uses for recycled water that we don't think about because we do focus on the drinking of it.
DI THORLEY: Jenny, can I put a question that I put to my community, not only in Toowoomba, but when I go and talk about water NRM. 100 years ago, or 150 years ago would you have gone down to a creek or a river anywhere in Australia and got a cup of water and given it to your 6-month-old baby? The answer would most probably be yes. If I suggested to any of you today to go out and get a cup and go into any river or any creek in this country that is downstream of any sort of urban development of any description, would you take a cup of water and give it to your 6-month-old baby, and the chances are the answer would be no. And it's not just about sewage. It's about the sprays, it's about everything else. Our mind is now, we have to have everything sanitised, purified, everything we have in our house, we have to put all the chemicals around and everything else and that's the place we are.
JENNY BROCKIE: We are going to have to wrap up. George, I wanted a comment from you on what you think could be done and do you think that industry should be doing more to save water?
GEORGE WARNE, MURRAY IRRIGATORS: I think the cities are going to get the water and for those of us in rural Australia, our concern - particularly those of us whose water sources are quite near to urban water supplies - our concern is they'll just take the lazy approach and they'll take the water out of the farming communities. We've already seen Adelaide take 38,000 megalitres from the lowland dairy farmers and I just think that's the beginning. And the cheaper solution and the one that meets community approval is just going to be to take water either by purchasing it or by stealth from rural communities on the upper Goulburn or the Snowy Mountain Scheme or out of the Murray catchment. It's quite an easy exercise.
JENNY BROCKIE: But what do you think the rural communities can be doing given they're such huge users of water.
GEORGE WARNE: Well, just like you've robbed us of all our young people, now you're going to take our bloody water. I mean, there's just got to be a recognition that water is wealth and if you take it away from the rural communities, you're really robbing them of their future. So it's really quite important to the future of the towns and communities that we live in.
JENNY BROCKIE: David, what do you think could be done. We are going to have to wrap up, I'm afraid.
DAVID CUNLIFFE: Something just to rhyme with that last bit about water being wealth, water's also health. We can use rainwater, we can use recycled water for a wide range of uses, we can use desalinated water and the different solutions everywhere, but we must maintain protection of public health because provision of safe drinking water and sanitation has had the largest impact on public health. It's increased longevity and decreased disease. Could you have drunk water from a stream or a river 100 years ago? Yes, you could have. Would it have been safe? Probably not.
JENNY BROCKIE: Ian, what do you want to see?
IAN KIERNAN: I want to see reform in water management. I think this desal has ignored the public consultation aspect of it. It's been thrust upon us. and I think it's a matter of education, partnership between government and authorities in the community and looking at more intelligent and better management of our precious water resources.
JENNY BROCKIE: And Diane, a final question for you, do you think you'll get re-elected after this?
DI THORLEY: That was never the point, Jenny. I think that I came in from private enterprise and this was something that I've seen. I went overseas a sceptic I've got to tell you. I did not believe in this technology. My director of engineering services and I fought for 21 days. But I do now believe. Will I get re-elected? That isn't the point anymore, Jenny. It is about political courage now. That's the state I believe as an Australian we're in. This is about political courage and it's about having water for this country.
JENNY BROCKIE: We're going to have to leave it there. I'd like to thank you all very much for joining Insight tonight. Enjoy your water, you people up there. Thank you very much for your time.
2:37 AM, November 02, 2005
Full poll results:
SBS Insight
EXCITING NEWSPOLL RESULTS RELEASED!
A majority of Australians (61%) say they would feel safer drinking
treated desalinated water. Only 21% say they would feel safer drinking treated recycled water. A further 18% said neither/don't know to this question.
There were no significant differences of note in the results on the basis of age, marital status, children in the household, education or income. Males (25%) were significantly more likely than their female counterparts (17%) to say they would feel safer drinking treated desalinated water.
Sydney residents (52%) were significantly less likely than those living in Melbourne (66%), Brisbane (70%) or Perth (64%) to say they would feel safer drinking treated desalinated water.
56% of Australians (56%) say they would prefer treated recycled water for non-drinking purposes in their home compared to 29% who express a preference for treated desalinated water. 14% said neither/don't know to this question.
Respondents aged 35-49 (61%) were significantly more likely than those aged 50+ (51%) to say they would prefer treated recycled water for non-drinking purposes in their home.
Respondents with children (70%) were significantly more likely than those without children (49%) to say they would prefer treated recycled water for non-drinking purposes in their home.
Married respondents (60%) were significantly more likely than non
married (51%) to say they would prefer treated recycled water for
non-drinking purposes in their home. Sydney residents (64%) were significantly more likely than those living in Melbourne (53%), Adelaide (45%) or Perth (47%) to say they would prefer treated recycled water for non-drinking purposes in their home.
The comfort level with using treated recycled water for non-drinking purposes in their home increases with income (under $30K: 43%, $70K+:62%).
5:48 PM, November 02, 2005
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