Fuel, acid tipped into sewers ...

Excerpt from the Courier Mail:

Fuel, acid tipped into sewers

7 February 2008

About 20,000 litres of diesel fuel, petroleum products and acid have been illegally dumped in Redland Shire sewers in the past six months.

About 10,000 litres of fuel was dumped in a sewer at Capalaba, east of Brisbane, in the early hours of January 5 and the acid in August last year.

Environmental Protection Agency staff are investigating the incidents, which have cost about $22,000 to clean up.

In the latest incident about 20 tanker loads of polluted water had to be removed from the sewage plant.

The influx of contaminants caused the plant to break its EPA licence conditions.

Shire chief executive Susan Rankin said it was only the third such event in six years but was disappointing because of its potential impact on Moreton Bay.

"The nearest place to recycle such material is at Caboolture (north of Brisbane), so they might have thought that if they dumped it in the dead of night they might get away with it," Ms Rankin said.

An EPA spokesman said about 100 incidents of material being dumped in the environment were reported over the past 12 months but almost all related to vehicle accidents and pipeline and machinery failures.

See - Sewer dumping.