Toowoomba Water Futures website misleads once again ...

The Council has added some interesting comments to the Toowoomba Water Futures website.

They have copied some of the emails from an archived circulation list maintained on the Department of Natural Resources and Mines website.

See - Excerpts from experts.

Naturally, they have been very selective in the emails they have chosen to list.

If the Council had been less selective, some of the comments they could have included are:

- I do accept that there are many issues regarding trace chemicals that we don't fully understand and that we will certainly discover new significant deleterious environmental effects of some chemicals in the future.

- I must agree that we really don't know enough about endocrine disruptors to make informed statements on the true effects they have.

- We are constantly told that there have been no illnesses traced to the use of recycled water for irrigation in California. What we are not told is that there have been no epidemiological based studies on illness and the use of recycled water for irrigation. Recycled water is a necessary component of the water equation in California and other areas of the world, but much of the science concerning risk and use simply has not been done. The regulations for treatment and use in California are based on virus studies completed in the late 1970s. I strongly believe in the precautionary principle and the necessity of doing the science - by third parties with no vested interest in recycled water such as the university systems. Until that is done and the studies say that recycled water is no different than potable water, recycled water can not be used by the end users in the same manner that potable water is used simply because of the unknowns.

- It is, of course, not directly related to drinking treated sewage but it does show that chemical residuals are present in effluent even after tertiary treatment, and that we are not aware of them because we don't normally test for them.

- Singapore opened Asia's largest water desalination plant in Tuason Tuesday.

- I congratulate the Redwood City Recycled Water task force for finding a solution that keeps recycled sewer water away from schoolyards and playgrounds.

- It is time to face the fact that unplanned indirect reuse occurs and start to document it and determine if problems do exist. The "experts" says that unplanned reuse causes no harm but this is anecdotal. I have never seen a report that investigated this issue. Probably, the cost of undertaking an epidemiological study is prohibitive. On the other hand many reports have outlined the environmental harm that occurs downstream from sewage discharge.

- I strongly believe that the present reasons for undertaking indirect drinking water reuse are lazy arguments. I believe we should strive with vision and imagination to make the best use of our natural resources and to reduce the amount of waste we discharge back to the environment. I support effects to make continual improvement to our environment. I am not sure if returning even highly treated sewage back to the environment is an improvement.

- We know that: Sewage contains nutrients that cause downstream water quality issues. Reverse osmosis does not remove nitrate and has limited removal of orthophosphate; Sewage contains many anthropogenic substances at low levels, that, through various toxic end-points, are causing harm to the creatures living in the water. The treatment to remove these substances is difficult. In addition, anecdotal evidence suggests as our life expectancy increases, we become more likely to experience a chronic life threatening disease caused by some anthropogenic substance we have come in contact with during our lifetime.

- One reason I have not commented much on the reuse of treated sewerage is a lack of data on what exactly is contained within treated sewerage.

- Data can be obtained from sewerage works on contamination that is controlled i.e. rates of fecal coliforms, Biological oxygen demand and a few other major pollutant worries. The point here is that we know in those narrow fields what the water does not contain. What does it contain?

- Data is not available on what other pollutants are in the water released as 'treated' by sewerage works across the country. Where are the scientists who can tell us exactly what this water does contain. Are there traces of medications, human and agricultural? traces of industrial chemicals? traces of the myriad of sublimated chemicals from manufactured goods, detergents, paints? cosmetics? Surely your sewerage treatment outlets are the first place we should be looking to comprehensively analyse our waste water to gain data that we can use to help decide whether reuse of sewerage treatment outflows for any given situation is appropriate or prudent.

- On the public end, there are three possibilities: opposition, neutrality (complacence/apathy) and support. There will of course always be a range of opinions and the middle group of folks will most likely always be the largest. The trick is to get the positive folks to be (or appear to the politicians to be) a more vocal majority than those opposed. It seems to be that it tends to be a rare politician that will stand up and champion a potentially risky cause, but if that can be found there is great potential.

All comments made by other forum "experts".

At the risk of the email forum participants becoming very circumspect in their future comments, here is the link so you can read all the emails:

DNR Water Recycling Mailing List Archive.