SEQ - Support wavers for recycled sewage water ...

The Australian continues their barrage against Anna Bligh ...

Excerpt from the Australian (annotated):

Support wavers for use of recycled sewage water

1 November 2008

When former Queensland premier Peter Beattie cancelled a referendum for southeast Queenslanders on whether they wanted recycled sewage put in their drinking water, he said it would be added only when the three dams that serviced the area had a capacity below 40 per cent.

But as Beattie's successor, Anna Bligh, prepares to turn on the taps to allow recycled water into southeast Queensland's water supply in only three months, the dam levels yesterday were at 41.2 per cent full, and have been over 40 per cent for the past three months.

It's a change in policy that has happened by stealth and will make permanent the supply of recycled sewerage into the drinking water of the 2.6 million people who live in one of Australia's fastest-growing areas.

The process of sewage and waste recycling being used in southeast Queensland is not used anywhere else in the world and, while the Government strongly defends the integrity of the process, there are doubters.

This week, two academics from the Australian National University, Patrick Troy and Peter Collignon, cast doubt on whether the recycled water scheme was safe.

Professor Collignon, one of Australia's leading infectious disease experts, argued that the technology did not exist to prevent recycled sewage from contaminating the water supply.

Professor Troy, whose expertise is in planning, said the safety of recycled water had not been proved in any long-term epidemiological studies. "It will not be possible to remove all biologically active waste molecules from the system," he said. "The probability is that something like 8 per cent of these impurities will get through, and that is assuming the system is working properly."

Ms Bligh responded with a statement to parliament that detailed the seven stages the Queensland process would involve, including putting the recycled water into Wivenhoe Dam - none of the other dams - and then undertaking the standard cleaning procedure for dam water before it is put in the drinking system.

[Note - Remember Barrier 1 doesn't exist - the concept that people won't pour anything down the sewers.]

Ms Bligh also said that recycling was common in other parts of the world: notably Singapore and Orange County in California. But both of those schemes are different from that proposed for Queensland: the Singapore system involves having only 1 per cent of the water supply as recycled water, as opposed to the 10 per cent in Queensland, while the scheme in Orange County involves leaving the recycled water for several months underground before putting it in the drinking water system.

She said she welcomed debate on the matter, and said that cancelling the referendum was "one of the single most popular things this government ever did".

This was probably true at the time, but the context then was completely different from what it is now. When Mr Beattie cancelled the referendum in January last year, the dam levels in southeast Queensland were at 22 per cent and falling fast to a low of 16 per cent. At that stage it looked entirely possible that the area would run out of water by the end of this year.

There was considerable political pressure on the Government to do something, and calling a referendum would draw out a process that was widely seen as inevitable. Recycled water was proposed along with several other measures.

But after several dry summers, last summer finally saw the heavens open in southeast Queensland, and a week of heavy rain in late January pushed dam levels up by 10 per cent. Steady rain over the next few months pushed dam levels over 40 per cent in late July, and if there is another good summer of rain, it is entirely possible the area's dams will be more than half full by the time it comes to add the recycled water at the end of February.

There is a considerable "yuck" factor in the drinking of recycled sewage, but last year, with dams down to under 20 per cent and the real possibility of running out of water, there was strong support in southeast Queensland for the measure. Now, with dams at over 40 per cent and a state election due next year, public support is nowhere near as strong.

See - Bligh under pressure over recycled sewage water.

The QWC must be scratching their heads this weekend wondering how their expensive PR strategy just blew up in their faces.

Maybe if QWC Chairperson Nosworthy wasn't grappling with Babcock and Brown and spending her 'spare' time hiding behind pillars ...