The race to drink waste ...

Looks like the Toowoomba City Council were stung by the report in The Australian on 24 February (Recycling cops a spray).

Some opposing views are expressed in this article in The Australian today (annotated).

The clear message from the Federal government is that the community needs to be on side - and that is not the position in Toowoomba.

The race to drink waste

As their dam levels drop, two cities are competing to be the first in Australia to recycle sewage into drinking water.

March 02, 2006

FORMER Toowoomba mayor and erstwhile National Party politician Clive Berghofer is concerned Queensland's largest inland town will become known as "shit city".

Berghofer, a local millionaire land developer, is leading a vocal group of opponents he says represents the majority against well-advanced plans to make Toowoomba the first town in Australia to recycle effluent into drinking water.

"No one will want to come and live here, people are already making jokes, thinking we are drinking the stuff now," Berghofer protests. "Why do we have to be the guinea pigs? Let's test this system somewhere else and check it is safe, or perhaps just use the water for parks and gardens."

The race is on between Toowoomba and Goulburn in the NSW southern highlands, two parched inland cities with critical water shortages, to be the first in Australia to recycle sewage into drinking water as is already done in other countries across the globe, such as Japan, the US, Britain and Singapore. [Incorrect - the only city in this group which has a similar system is Singapore which recycles 1% - Toowoomba's would be at least 25%. CH2M Hill stated in their report - "this ratio of recycled water is high by international standards and will need detailed review and further studies.”]

Both Toowoomba and Goulburn applied for funding in June last year under the $1.6 billion Water Smart Australia program managed by the National Water Commission. The final decision on funding approval lies with Prime Minister John Howard, who will announce a round of successful applicants soon.

The NWC, CSIRO and new parliamentary secretary with special responsibility for water policy Malcolm Turnbull believe it is safe to drink properly treated sewage. [Others disagree.] But they also agree that any successful recycling system needs to be backed by the local community.

In Goulburn, one hour's drive from Canberra, the three local dams are filled to just 37 per cent capacity. The town's 37,000 residents have been on level-five water restrictions for two years and local businesses have cut use by 30 per cent. So little water is running through the system that the sewer pipes are drying up and becoming blocked. But still the dam levels drop.

Goulburn Mulwaree mayor Paul Stephenson is finalising plans for an emergency water trucking service that will cost the town $1million a week and require 40 semi-trailers to work almost around the clock.

He believes his shire's survival depends on recycling waste water and is confident most of his constituents agree, although public support has not been formally tested.

"People are open to the idea because they are desperate, they have gone through the most severe drought in 100 years," Stephenson says. "They know we have exhausted our other options: [Toowoomba has not - it needs to examine the other options properly.] we have increased the height of the dam wall, put in bores and pipelines, and we have been very open with them. Apart from recycling, the only other option we have left here is to get down on our knees and pray for three months of rain."

Under the $32 million proposal, which he hopes will be in place within four years, 20 per cent of the town's effluent will be reclaimed, treated and returned to the Sooley Dam via a chain of ponds, wetland, bores and aquifers.

It will be treated again before it is used by residents. The advanced treatment will probably involve micro-filtration and ultra-filtration to remove larger solid particles and bacteria; reverse osmosis filtration to trap smaller pollutants such as salt, drugs, chemicals and viruses; and ultraviolet light disinfection and oxidation, which passes the water through intense light, hundreds of times stronger than the sun.

"Out of adversity comes progress," Stephenson says. "The water will be so clean it could be used for kidney dialysis."

He hopes funding for the project will be split equally three ways between the council and the federal and state governments.

Goulburn is also about to embark on an extensive community discussion campaign to sell the project. "Even if it rained like hell tomorrow we wouldn't stop this effort," Stephenson says. "The city is growing, there will be another drought. If we can get this thing going a lot of other places will follow suit. They have exactly the same lack of options we have."

But Goulburn may not be the first to recycle waste water in Australia as Toowoomba appears further advanced in its plans for treating effluent to drinking standards.

Toowoomba mayor Di Thorley says if she receives funding approval from the federal Government's Water Smart program, it will take 18 months to construct the treatment plant. [But recycled water would not be introduced until 2011-2112.] Thorley already has $24 million promised from the Queensland Government to pay for one-third of the project and has budgeted to ensure the council can pay its $24million for the $70 million project, which requires more infrastructure than the Goulburn version. [The numbers are estimates only - expect cost over-runs up to at least an additional $70 million over the life of the project.]

Toowoomba, a 90-minute drive west of Brisbane on the edge of the Great Dividing Range, has about 100,000 residents who have endured water restrictions for 14 years. "For too long we have believed that we would be saved by rain, but it just doesn't rain like it used to and our population continues to increase," Thorley says. "Our dam is at 25 per cent capacity. In the past 15 years it has run over once." [The dams have enough water until mid 2008 - assuming no further rain.]

Toowoomba's plan is to divert 5000 megalitres (25 per cent) of waste water a year from Toowoomba's sewage works to an advanced treatment plant and pipe it back into Cooby Dam to supplement supplies. It would be treated again before use.

Some of the partially treated water will go to a nearby coalmine that is using bore water to wash coal. [What happens when the coal mine closes in 2020 - where will the RO waste stream go? $70 million for 600 hectares of evaporation ponds?] The same reverse osmosis advanced treatment system proposed for Goulburn will be used to clean the water, but it will not go through a wetland filtration process. Thorley says the "hospital standard" water will be of a better quality than is available now. [What about the 30mgs/L of TDS - what's in that - will it be tested for the over 87,000 chemicals in existence?]

Despite Berghofer's vocal opposition, Thorley believes 70 per cent of the community support the plan. [The Mayor has no basis for saying this - she cannot point to a single survey which shows this. If she is so confident of support, she should resign and run again for the position of mayor at a by-election.]

"This is tried and true technology," she says. "It is safe, reliable and sustainable." [Tried and true - where?]

The former head of the CSIRO's water research flagship, Colin Creighton, agrees. "Studies have shown the technology that would be used in Toowoomba would provide cleaner water than that currently used and in storage," Creighton says, adding that recycling waste water is significantly cheaper than desalination. [Can Mr Creighton please explain the residual chemicals.]

Ken Matthews, chairman and chief executive of the NWC says the science and health issues are "unambiguously manageable". "There is no scientific question about the health and safety of drinking recycled water," he says. "If there is any country in the world that ought to be seriously looking at recycling and reuse, it is the driest continent in the world, Australia. But it should not be forced on communities."

Creighton believes waste water recycling is a social rather than a technical issue: people need to feel comfortable drinking recycled waste water, even though we already do it in a sense.
"People have been drinking recycled water since the beginning of human history. The perception is that because it has been in a river and through natural processes it is clean, but that water has been reused many times," Creighton says.

Towns downstream of Canberra, such as Wagga Wagga, are accessing treated water put back into the Murrumbidgee River at the capital. "All the way to Adelaide along the Murray and Murrumbidgee people are accessing a cocktail of treated water from upstream. And then that water is added to by run-off from farms, industrial estates." [This is bad science - just because others have unplanned indirect use, why does Toowoomba need to?]

Turnbull points out that there are "plenty of places" already drinking recycled water. "Of course to some extent the debate is a little bit specious because people have been drinking recycled water forever, particularly if they live next to rivers," he says. "Is it safe to drink? Yes. Is it compulsory? No, it's not. And the decision as to whether a particular community wants to put recycled waste water back into the drinking water stream has to be a decision for that community. The reality is that a project of this kind will not succeed without community support." [The Mayor should take note.]

John Anderson, former deputy prime minister and a key force behind the establishment of the NWC, says Australians must accept that in some circumstances there will be no alternative but to drink recycled waste water. "People need to be prepared to embrace recycling, including for potable purposes," he says. [Toowoomba has other alternatives - the Council refuses to consider them.]

Opposition water spokesman Anthony Albanese will not be drawn on drinking waste water specifically but says: "Climate change means water recycling has gone from being a useful addition to being an absolute necessity to sustain future water supply."

But ultimately it's Howard's view that will matter most. The NWC has given a recommendation to the Prime Minister on the Toowoomba proposal and will give him a recommendation on Goulburn later this year.

Howard is a known supporter of recycling over other water reclamation techniques. [Howard has not declared his stance on drinking recycled sewage, particularly where the community does not support it.] In late January he criticised the now-dumped Sydney desalination plant and said recycling would be a better option for the city.

Western Australia may follow Toowoomba and Goulburn in recycling waste water. [See - WA to investigate things Toowoomba City Council already knows.]

Last October premier Geoff Gallop announced a $4 million project to examine options to pump treated waste water into depleted aquifers and reclaim it as new water for irrigation and drinking.

A study by the WA Environmental Protection Authority found Perth residents generally supported the proposal. [But not for drinking]

See - Race to drink waste.