Water Recycling in Australia

San Diego Update

2009-05-28T19:35:00.001+10:00

As many readers of this blog would be aware, the City of San Diego has been toying with the idea of indirect potable water recycling for at least a decade now. However, as the city generally credited with having popularised the term ‘toilet to tap’, it may be no surprise that negative public perception has been a major obstacle.

I came across an excellent article today in the San Diego News Network. It’s a fairly solid article providing a good current perspective on the situation. It’s worth reading if –like me- you’re interested in this kind of stuff... and if you’re not, you’re really reading the wrong blog site!

Overcoming the stigma of ‘toilet-to-tap’ water

From water officials to academics, and private business experts, all agree that the reuse of water for drinking is safe, affordable and necessary. But what about the yuk factor?

By E.A. Barrera, SDNN
San Diego News Network
Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Water resource specialist Chris Reilly would often take his sixth grade students to waterways - streams, ponds, estuaries - when he was a teacher for the Boulder Creek YMCA in Santa Cruz. A 1985 graduate of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and a future water resource specialist with the San Diego County Water Authority, he would take the kids on field trips to discuss nature, water and the life-cycle of all living things on the planet.

“I would have them look at the life in the water and think about the water they were playing in or drinking,” said Reilly, who spent 12 years with the San Diego County Water Authority and now serves Northern California’s Indian Valley as Water Master for the California Department of Water Resources. “I would remind them that the water they were studying was the same water the dinosaurs had once drank and lived on. All water is recycled and the same water that was around 5 million years ago is still with us. There is no such thing as new water.”

With the city of San Diego declaring a Level 2 drought alert and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issuing a water shortage emergency, water specialists like Reilly feel it is critical communities across the state develop as many water retention, conservation and reserve capabilities as possible.

“We can’t afford to take anything off the table and that includes indirect potable reuse water that is very safe when the proper filtration systems are in place,” Reilly said.

For almost two decades, San Diego has debated the use of Indirect Potable Reuse (IPR) water as a source of replenishing the reservoirs in the city and county for its drinking supply. From water officials at the San Diego County Water Authority (SDCWA) and the local water districts within the county, to academics, and private business experts, all agree that the reuse of water for drinking is safe, affordable and necessary.

But buttressing this argument is the “yuk factor” associated with the concept of drinking treated sewage water, and the belief by many that trying to blend sewage water into the drinking supply is a recipe for disease and a public health disaster. The term “toilet-to-tap” has become the rallying cry for opponents to IPR, who include San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders.

“Mayor Sanders is concerned with the public’s perception of indirect potable reuse and feels there are other priorities which the city should focus on - mainly in the area of conservation of water,” said Bill Harris, deputy press secretary to Sanders.

In San Diego County, water is delivered and collected through three primary sources: The Sacramento/San Joaquin River, the Colorado River, and the many reservoirs built within the region. But more than 80 percent of the county’s water comes from the Colorado River, with less than 15 percent collected through local sources. According to the Southern California Metropolitan Water District (MWD), most water supplies in Southern California begin as snowmelt or rainfall that flows into rivers. However, 75 percent of that runoff occurs in the northern parts of the state, while the majority of California’s population lives in the south.

In order to bring that water supply down to residents in Southern California, the water is carried through aqueducts that are several hundred miles long. Whether from the Colorado River - that has a point of origin just north of Colorado’s Grand Lake in the Rocky Mountains - or snow melt and rain runoff transported south via aqueduct, MWD notes both federal and state rules protect the drinking water along its journey.

Under Title 22 of the California Code of Regulations, water safety is monitored and regulated so that it will be safe before coming in human contact. Several agencies - including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the State Water Resources Control Board, the California Department of Health Services, and of course, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California - keep an eye on water, even before it reaches a treatment plant.

Nevertheless, millions of people also make use of the river water and other sources, fueling the complaint by IPR advocates that there is something inherently cleaner about water originating from these sources over supplies already being used.

“There seems to be a myth that water coming down the Colorado is ‘pure Rocky Mountain spring water.’ In fact, nothing could be further from the truth,” said San Diego State University professor Phillip Pryde in 2004.

Pryde, who served as chairman of the San Diego County Water Authority’s Reclamation Committee, noted that water from the Colorado River passed through several towns and cities on its way to San Diego.

“Tens of thousands of recreational users of the river make direct use of it for ‘fast, fast relief’ while floating down it or swimming in it (as do, in some cases, their pets),” he said. “A portion of this water goes directly into our drinking water plants without prior treatment. It may be argued that it’s highly diluted, if that makes people feel better, but it still contains untreated human wastes.”

The process for treatment of water involves a multi-phase filtration system broken down into nine steps.

During the first two steps, the water passes through various screens and sedimentation, including beds of anthracite coal, which removes most suspended solids from the water. According to experts familiar with the process, the water at this point is safe for irrigation and other non-drinking uses.

After these initial steps, the water is sent through a treatment called “microfiltration” which further filters out any remaining solids. Water is then run through a procedure called reverse osmosis, which pumps the water through special membranes whose pores are so small, only water molecules or something smaller are said to be able to pass. During a 1998 debate on the topic, the SDCWA issued a pamphlet describing the differences in size between water molecules and other molecules, by claiming that if a water molecule were the size of a tennis ball, a virus would be the size of a semi-truck, a bacteria the size of a pyramid, and a protozoa the size of a volcano. The SDCWA further stated that even the molecules of microscopic metals and other inorganic compounds, as well as organic compounds, would be too large to pass through the Reverse Osmosis membrane.

After the Reverse Osmosis procedure, the water is further cleaned by introducing Ion Exchange, which reduces nitrate concentrations to negligible levels, much as a water softener works. Then Ozone, a disinfectant, is released into the water for further cleansing.

In the next phase, the recycled water is blended into the surface water reservoirs of San Diego, where it is mixed with the raw water supply. From the reservoir, the water is once again run through the normal filtration process before being distributed to the general public.

“The re-purified water is cleaner than the water that comes out of the tap,” Reilly said. “Then that water is blended in with the reservoirs and run through the normal filtration process, so that nobody should be worried about the safety of that water.”

Former Ramona Municipal Water Water Disrict manager Tom Brammell agreed.

“Personally, drinking recycled water is OK with me,” Brammell said. The filtration and dilution make the water extremely clean.”

San Diego River at Alpine County supervisor Bill Horn, an avocado rancher, said re-purified water was so clean he often had to add components into the mix before using it for his crops.

Horn’s board colleague - Pam Slater-Price said it was important the region look at every option for sources of water.

“We definitely have to do it. We no longer have the luxury of not using Indirect Potable Reuse water and in fact are already doing it,” said Slater-Price. “People have the conception of water coming from the Colorado River or other natural sources as pristine and they may be repulsed by the thought of sewage water being reused for drinking. But when you understand that all water is reused and the system of treatment in place cleans the water so thoroughly that it is cleaner than when it comes out of the tap, then you realize it is something we can do and is necessary.”

Yet worries about the health of the water persist and memories of the 1993 cryptosporidium outbreak in Milwaukee fuel continued fears about what can happen when sewage water is mixed into a drinking water supply. Cryptosporidium is a virus which passes through the intestines of animals, mostly cattle, and exits through their fecal matter. It can cause severe stomach flu-like symptoms, such as diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, fatigue and low grade fever. The disease is particularly susceptible to waterborne delivery.

In healthy persons, the infection can last up to two weeks, according to Dr. William R. Mac Kenzie in a 1994 article for the New England Journal of Medicine. But in people with weak immune systems, such as the elderly, babies and those diagnosed with other illnesses such as the HIV virus, cryptosporidium infection can be deadly. During the Milwaukee outbreak, 50 cryptosporidium-associated deaths were reported, according to the Wisconsin Bureau of Public Health. The outbreak resulted from flooding which overwhelmed the Milwaukee sewage system.

“A heavy snowfall followed by spring flooding and a heavy storm contributed to sending record amounts of overflow from the Milwaukee Harbor into Lake Michigan,” Mac Kenzie wrote. “This caused sewer overflows and a sewage bypass which created an overworked waste water treatment plant system and sent the cryptosporidium virus into the water.”

San Diego does not suffer flooding problems from heavy snow and ice, but other natural disasters do occur, including wildfires and even the occasional earthquake. But, Reilly said, what happened in Milwaukee resulted from older technology that has been improved in the last 15 years.

“That outbreak was a result of mechanical failures within the treatment plant and it is always possible mechanical devices will break and some portion of the treatment process will fail. But there are so many backup systems and safety procedures in place, that you have to trust they will work in the case of a natural disaster,” he said.

Mike Espiritu, the former water quality superintendent with the Helix Water District, shares Reilly’s view. During San Diego’s debate over reusable water a decade ago, Espiritu said that what happened in Milwaukee would not happen in San Diego.

“Milwaukee was an aberration. They were ill-prepared. Every one of their multiple barrier systems broke down. San Diego’s system is much better. The safeguards we have in San Diego would prevent such an accident,” he said in 1998.

Slater -Price said that before she ever voted on a system for using IPR water, she would discuss the safety conditions with all available water experts and would tour the treatment plants, making sure health safeguards were in place.

Yet the term “Toilet-to-Tap” persists and registers in the public arena very easily. Originating from Gerald Silver, an angry Encino homeowner’s association president who used the phrase in 1995 during a debate over IPR in Los Angeles, the phrase quickly became the term most opponents used to refer to the idea of IPR.

In San Diego, when the plan was put to public review in 1998, angry protestors including then city councilmember George Stevens, assemblymember Howard Wayne, and former San Diego city councilmember Bruce Henderson used the term to state their opposition to IPR.

Bernie Rhinerson, who served as chair of the SDCWA in 2003, said inflammatory language such as phrases like “toilet-to-tap” were more for political purposes than scientific ones.

“It’s used because the public is still against it,” he said. But all the science I’ve read says (IPR) is a viable source of potable water. Diversity of water supplies has to be at the center of our commitment to provide enough water for residents.”

During an October 2007 water conservation summit held at the University of San Diego, mayor Sanders spoke to a large collection of academics, engineers and other water experts. While he supported their efforts on conservation and the use of non-drinking recycled water for agriculture and landscapes, his opposition to IPR created frustration with many of the other speakers.

Among them was James Stayer, Division Manager for the PBS&J West Water/Wastewater Group, which is based in Carlsbad. The firm works on water and water reuse projects tin California, Nevada and Arizona. Stayer blamed both politicians and the media for the continued use of the term toilet-to-tap.

“This is a drought proof water supply and the media is to blame for creating this image of toilet to tap. It does not allow any room for meaningful discussion of the subject,” said Stayer.

But Slater-Price, in assessing why an idea that so many agree works well is still not in use after more than a decade of debate, said the blame for the lack of support among the public was universal.

“There are a lot of people living with ignorance on this subject and it is not just politicians. We have not done a good job of explaining this, but neither have those in academia and professional circles. A lot of them were way ahead of the public on this topic and they don’t seem to understand that. It is incumbent on all of us who care about this and want to see IPR put in place to do a better job educating people why it is needed.”

Western Corridor Mothballed

2009-05-08T10:21:00.002+10:00

The following article is from today’s Courier Mail newspaper.

It is following up on the Queensland Government’s decision to delay adding recycled water from the Western Corridor Recycled Water Project to drinking water supplies until those supplies dip below 40% of capacity. The projection here is that that figure will not be reached until December 2010 at the earliest. A few apparent pieces of missing information seem to be:

Who’s projection is this? The Queensland Water Commission? The Courier Mail? Someone else?

Are there plans to actually produce and productively use the remaining 120 megalitres per day of recycled water?

Water Recycling Pipeline in Mothballs
The Courier-Mail
Craig Johnstone

May 08, 2009 12:00am

A 16km pipeline of recycled water is ready to pump the liquid the final 100m into southeast Queensland's drinking supply but that may never happen.

The pipeline leading to Wivenhoe Dam, the main source of the region's drinking water, has been built, tested and commissioned as part of the Bligh Government's $2.4 billion Western Corridor recycled water project.

But the pipeline, meant to carry purified recycled water from Lowood to the dam, was effectively mothballed as soon as it was built due to the Government's decision to put recycled water into the drinking supply only as a last resort.

Completed before the Government backflipped on its recycled water policy last November, the pipeline was still commissioned, with the operator, Watersecure, testing it for leaks and signal faults.

The 1.2m-diameter pipe is now full of recycled water, ready to deliver it down a 100m cascade into the dam.

Premier Anna Bligh last November reversed her position on putting recycled water into the region's drinking water.

After insisting for months during the region's drought that there was no other option than to top up southeast Queensland's then shrinking dam system with recycled water, she announced the Government would only use it as a last resort.

The Queensland Water Commission has recommended that the Government consider adding purified recycled water to the drinking supply when dam storage levels drop to 40 per cent.

On current estimates, this will not happen until December, 2010, even if the region suffers a repeat of its worst rainfall period on record.

The Swanbank and Tarong power stations remain the only consumers of purified recycled water despite the Government spending $2.4 billion on the western corridor project.

The project is designed to produce up to 232 megalitres of recycled water a day but is currently only delivering an average of just over 112 megalitres a day to the two power station companies, with no new customers for its product in the offing.

A spokesman for Watersecure said the pipeline, which has been specifically built to supply recycled water to the dam, had been "dry and wet commissioned", but no recycled water was released into the dam during any testing.

Californian IPR wins Engineering Award

2009-04-30T10:08:00.003+10:00

As many readers of this blog will know, the largest planned indirect potable water recycling (IPR) scheme in the world is the Groundwater Replenishment (GWR) System in Orange County, California.

I was interested to read this morning of the GWR winning the “Grand Conceptor Award” in this year’s American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) Engineering Excellence award competition.

A quick Google search reveals plenty of previous “Grand Conceptor Award” winners, but still I may have to establish an award for anyone who can tell me what a “Grand Conceptor” is. I have still not quite learnt how to speak American…

Groundwater Replenishment System Wins ACEC Award
Water World, 29th April, 2009

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts, April 29, 2009 — The 70 mgd Orange County Groundwater Replenishment (GWR) System, designed by the engineering firm CDM, recently won the Grand Conceptor Award in the 2009 American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) Engineering Excellence award competition. This groundbreaking $480 million project, which converts highly treated wastewater into an indirect potable water source, officially went online on January 25, 2008. The award was formally presented to CDM at the official ACEC awards gala on April 28, 2009.

Orange County Water District and Orange County Sanitation District hired CDM to design a solution that would meet an increased demand for potable water while minimizing the impact of extended area droughts. The expandable GWR System treats effluent with a multi-barrier approach — microfiltration for pretreatment, reverse osmosis for purification, and ultraviolet light for disinfection — removing bacteria, emerging contaminants, chemicals, and viruses.

Following treatment, the purified water is injected into an underground seawater barrier or percolated into aquifers before becoming part of the drinking water supply for the county's residents. This solution takes advantage of water that was formerly discharged into the ocean, helping to protect the environment and providing a new water source for the county.

As part of the project, CDM also designed supporting chemical systems, buildings, an electrical substation, three water pumping stations, more than 13 miles of transport pipeline, 3 miles of barrier pipelines, and 16 injection wells on eight different sites. CDM provided bidding support and construction services, operations and maintenance services, and assisted with operator training and facility startup.

This pioneering advanced water purification and groundwater replenishment system helps drought-proof Orange County while providing safe, potable water to a growing population in an environmentally friendly and energy-efficient way.

Drugs in Fish

2009-04-13T06:23:00.005+10:00

Sometimes you can wind up on the front page of the Canberra Times just by answering a phone call from a journalist...

There was a very interesting research paper published recently in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. The details (for anyone interested) are:

A. J. Ramirez et al (2009). "Occurrence of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in fish: Results of a national pilot study in the U.S." Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry DOI: 10.1897/08-561.1.

The paper describes how “a national pilot study was initiated in the USA to assess the accumulation of pharmaceuticals and personal care products in fish sampled from five effluent-dominated rivers that receive direct discharge from wastewater treatment facilities in Chicago, IL, Dallas, TX, Orlando, FL, Phoenix, AZ, and West Chester, PA”.

For some years now, scientists have been reporting the presence of pharmaceuticals in waters receiving effluents from wastewater (sewage) treatment plants. So it is not terribly surprising to now learn that some of those chemicals are bio-accumulated and can be measured in the tissue of fish swimming in effluent-receiving waters.

Anyway, I received a call from the Canberra Times to ask whether such a situation could occur in Australia. I pointed out that it certainly could, but that we have not yet done sufficient research to know the extent of any impacts to Australian wildlife. The next thing I know, I’m on the front page of the Canberra Times with an old file photograph from 2005!

Chemical sewage causes fish to flounder
By Ewa Kretowicz
Canberra Times
6 April 2009

It's enough to make a fish gasp. Australian scientists fear that Canberra's sewage treatment plant could be filling the Murrumbidgee's fish with prescription drugs like Prozac.

Fish swimming below the Lower Molonglo Water Quality Control Centre could be high on a mixture of uppers and downers after American studies found fish from five US rivers were tainted with traces of medications and common chemicals, which are not removed by water purification.

Chemical contaminants in water expert Dr Stuart Khan said Canberra effluent was treated then released back in to the Murrumbidgee.

''[Canberra] would be an obvious place to look for high concentrations of pharmaceuticals in rivers and therefore potential concentrations accumulating to fish as reported in this study,'' Dr Khan said.

The common antihistamine diphenhydramine (Benadryl), an anticonvulsant and two antidepressants were among the seven types of pharmaceuticals found in the tissue and livers of fish from waterways in or near Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Orlando.

In Australia, as in America, federal standards exist for treated waste- water, but they do not address pharmaceuticals or most personal care products, and little is known about the effects they have on the environment and wildlife.

Actew's Ross Knee said Canberra's water treatment plant did not specifically target pharmaceuticals.

''In Australia it's never been identified as an issue ... we tested our effluent for over 200 parameters recently and it included a lot of organics and pharmaceuticals, pesticides and herbicides, a lot were below detection limit but all were within the drinking guidelines.''

Dr Khan is urging a national water survey to investigate and resource poor quality waste water discharged into river environments.

He said Australia's largest cities, like Sydney and Melbourne discharged effluent into the ocean, but lower inflow into our rivers could be compounding the problem.

The results of the US study were very concerning.

''We know these are biologically active chemicals and they are designed to have effects on the human body.''

He said no conclusion about the effects of exposure to very low concentrations of pharmaceuticals not prescribed to the person had been reached. '

'I would say the consensus would be that there is no evidence of ill effects of those chemicals but there is certainly widespread concern

That there are cancer-producing chemicals accumulating in biological organisms is certainly a concern for its own sake for the health of the ecosystem and if they become part of the food source for humans then I think there are obvious implications there as well for exposure to those chemicals.''

Just some of the medications and chemicals found from among the 36 tested for were the cholesterol drug gemfibrozil (Lopid), which researchers say had never before been found in wild fish; diltiazem (Cardizem), a medication that helps control high blood pressure; carbamazepine (Tegretol), a drug used for epilepsy and bipolar disorder; and norfluoxetine, an active ingredient in the antidepressant fluoxetine (Prozac).

Water Quality Data for Western Corridor

2009-03-23T15:09:00.003+11:00

The first interim water quality data for the Queensland Western Corridor Recycled Water Project (WCRWP) were released this month.

The full report and an evaluation of it by the Expert Advisory Panel are available from the website of the Queensland Water Commission.

The interim report presents final water quality data (presumably after the advanced oxidation and lime stabilisation) from the advanced water treatment plant at Bundamba. These cover the three-month period of plant validation and verification from 22 May to 25 August 2008 and all subsequent results during normal operation up to December 2008 (an additional four months).

I recommend that interested people download and read the actual interim report. But for those who may care, my own personal comments and interpretation are as follows:

Scope of the water quality analysis

On the range of chemical and microbial contaminants monitored, I think the report is very comprehensive and by far exceeds any water quality monitoring program that I have seen previously from anywhere in the world.

I’m not sure whether the intention is to sustain this level of monitoring. But if that can be done, it will provide a valuable source of knowledge to improve risk assessment and planning for many future advanced water treatment processes.

My only real disappointment with the way that the data are reported is the failure to include analytical detection limits for measurements that were below the analytical detection limit. To report data simply as ‘not detected’ (ND) provides very little information unless the detection limit is known to the reader. From the way that the data are presented, it is clear in all cases that ‘ND’ means that the concentration was less than the Public Health Regulation Standard, but it would be helpful to have some indication of how much less it may have been.

While I understand that this is a summary report (and it is intended to be highly readable to a wide audience), it would also be helpful to have some additional statistical description of the water quality parameters. In some cases, means and standard deviations may have been determinable (where there were sufficient data). In others, the data may have been well presentable as a cumulative probability distribution or other similar means of description.

It would also be helpful to know the concentrations of the chemical constituents earlier in the treatment process. This would allow an assessment to be made regarding the treatment performance of the various treatment ‘barriers’. Such information is useful to give an indication that the individual treatment processes are doing what they are expected to do and thus to properly validate the ‘multiple barrier’ concept.

Physical characteristics

It is a little difficult to interpret the physical parameters without an explicit description of the water sampling location. However, I presume that the water has undergone final stabilisation, which involves the addition of ‘hardness’ (calcium ions) and alkalinity (bicarbonate ions). This explains the relatively high pH (7.5 – 7.8) and total dissolved solids (110 – 170 mg/L) that would both otherwise be expected to be lower directly after reverse osmosis and advanced oxidation treatment.

The stabilisation process is important since ultrapure water is quite ‘aggressive’ and leads to corrosion of pipes. This has the effect of picking up other (less desirable) dissolved substances along the way.

Inorganic compounds

Sixteen cations and four anions were monitored. Of these, the heavy metal cadmium, was observed to exceed the Public Health Regulation Standard on one occasion at the beginning of the validation process. A concentration of 0.0023 mg/L was recorded, compared to a standard of 0.002 mg/L. The explanation given in the report is that cadmium is found is small quantities in the lime that is used for stabilisation and that imprecise lime dosing led to the presence of the dissolved cadmium. This has now been corrected and no such exceedence was again identified following the validation phase or during the operational phase.

Disinfection byproducts

The advanced water treatment process includes a number of disinfection steps, which normally (almost certainly) lead to some formation of disinfection byproducts. The key disinfection processes that may lead to byproducts include chloramination prior to microfiltration, UV/H2O2 advanced oxidation and final chlorination.

The monitoring program included three types of disinfection byproducts. These were inorganic byproducts (bromate and chlorite), organic byproducts (trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids), and nitrosamines (NDMA and NDEA).

One exceedance of bromate (0.04 mg/L compared to standard of 0.02 mg/L) was reported and this was explained to have been the result of a short-term excessive chlorine dose. Corrective action was undertaken on the chlorine dosing system and no further incidences of bromate exceedance have been observed.

Three exceedances for bromodichloromethane reflect the difficulties in regularly complying with the relatively stringent standard of 6 ug/L. There are many drinking water supplies throughout the world that would rarely comply with this standard. From what I understand from the interim report, this standard was introduced in July 2008, after the validation period for the advanced water treatment plant had commenced. As a result, plant operations were adjusted in order to comply with the standard and since then, all subsequent results have been in compliance.

While the NDMA results are technically not an exceedance of Public Health Regulation Standard, the maximum concentration was reported to be 10 ng/L, which is precisely equal to the Standard. In this case, it would certainly be helpful to have a more detailed description of the NDMA concentration distribution. For example, was it commonly within 10% of the Standard, or was this a single aberrant outlier? This is important to help understand the likelihood of exceeding the Standard during future operations (as well as for understanding overall long-term exposure).

Hormones

Eight well-known steroidal hormones were monitored. These included four estrogens (17-alpha-ethynylestradiol, 17-beta-estradiol, estriol and estrone), three androgens (androsterone, etiocholanolone and testosterone) and one progestin (norgestrel).

Many people will be more interested in the results for hormones than I am. In my opinion, the fact that none of the hormones could be detected was inevitable given the source water quality and the nature of the advanced treatment processes.

The issue of risks associated with hormones in advanced water recycling schemes has been severely exaggerated by certain politicians who apparently don’t mind looking foolish for the sake of whipping up a little hysteria.

Nonetheless, the results for the hormones provide a useful illustration of my earlier comment regarding detection limits. The Public Health Regulation Standard for 17-alpha-ethinylestradiol is given as 1.5 ng/L. Depending on the analytical method used, it is quite likely that this value is very close to detection limit. Thus it would be helpful to have an indication of how far below the standard we can be confident of being.

Other organic chemicals

None of the five chemicals presented in this category were reported to have exceeded the Public Health Regulation Standard on any occasion. Those chemicals for which actual numbers (as opposed to ‘ND’) were reported indicate that a very significant gap exists between the standard and actual measured concentrations.

Microbiological water quality

Results for Escheria coli and clostridium perfringens spores indicate excellent disinfection of bacteria across the multiple barrier system. The more difficult micro-organisms to manage are viruses. The non-detection of somatic coliphages is an indication of good control of viruses, but the two exceedances for F-RNA phages do raise the eyebrows.

The interim report describes how these results were further investigated and states:

“On balance, it is concluded that these two detections were the result of the analytical method used and did not indicate the presence of bacteriophages in the purified recycled water.

In line with the findings of the investigations, the following corrective actions have been implemented:

duplicate samples are being taken, to provide greater certainty of results;
the number and frequency of water quality tests will be increased where an initial positive result is returned; and
changes have been made to the sampling and analysis process.

“False” positives will continue to be reported even if duplicate analyses return a negative result. Continuous monitoring, plant shut down controls, and additional water quality testing are part of the ongoing plant operation and form part of the robust risk identification and mitigation practices.

I’d suggest keeping a close eye on this parameter in order to improve our understanding of both the analytical reliability and the nature of its removal/inactivation by the various individual barriers of the advanced treatment processes.

Additional PCR testing for a range of specific viruses (rotavirus, astrovirus, noroviruses, adenovirus, enteroviruses, hepatitis A and reovirus) provides some assurance of the absence of these highly pathogenic organisms.

Herbicides, pesticides and phenols

Thirty five herbicides, pesticides and phenols were monitored, but none of then exceeded the relevant Public Health Regulation Standard. Without reported detection limits, it is difficult to interpret how low expected concentrations may be for most of these contaminants.

I would be interested to compare this result with current water quality in Lake Wivenhoe…

Pharmaceuticals and personal care products

Fifty five pharmaceuticals and personal care products were monitored, but again, none of them exceeded the relevant Public Health Regulation Standard.

Some of these results would be particularly useful to relate to concentrations prior to individual treatment processes. Some, such as caffeine and salicylic acid can provide a very good indication of reverse osmosis treatment performance and thus it is useful to monitor their removal (even if they are well below Public Health Regulation Standards).

Radionuclides

No exceedance of radioactivity was observed.

QWC Expert Advisory Panel comments

The Interim Water Quality Report is preceded by a letter of assessment by the QWC Expert Advisory Panel. The letter states that:

“Based on the testing results in the report, the commissioning of the Western Corridor Recycled Water Project is proceeding well, providing confidence it is capable of consistently producing purified recycled water that is safe to be used to supplement Wivenhoe Dam.

The results indicate that the treatment process barriers are effective in controlling water quality hazards and reliably producing purified recycled water suitable for release into Wivenhoe Dam. No exceedances of the water quality standards have been measured in this testing data after normal operations commenced.”

I agree with this assessment. However, I'd like to see some more raw data, purely for the purpose of trying to draw some further information and insights from it.

I think it is very important not to get carried away with monitoring end-point water quality. In my opinion, much more important information can be gleaned by carefully observing individual treatment processes and ensuring that they are each operating effectively. This is the whole basis of the multiple-barrier treatment philosophy. Without closely monitoring each individual barrier, it is not possible to have confidence that if one barrier fails, then another will provide the necessary redundancy to ensure safety.

I’m not suggesting that suitable multiple-barrier monitoring is not being undertaken, -I presume that it probably is. However, I’d like to raise awareness that this is the type of data that we should really all be interested in, -rather than just long tables of ‘non-detects’… more on that topic soon!

A note from Meredith Jayne

2009-03-17T14:29:00.003+11:00

I received the below note from a reader by the name of Meredith Jayne. At the end of her note, Meredith states "Since everyone is entitled to an opinion, I would appreciate my comments being posted on your website".

I am happy to post Meredith’s views here since the person most likely to sue myself for libel in this case is myself.

Its clear that Meredith is opposed to indirect potable water recycling...and I don’t think she likes me very much either! She is, of course, entitled to express both views.

But for the record, I reject the suggestion that I have "vested financial interests in the recycled sewage scheme". Nor have I "been highly paid by the Government to provide data that support their views on recycled sewage". I consider myself to be an independent and ethical researcher with high standards for scientific integrity, openness and transparency.

Meredith's Message...

Khan, (Chief sewer sipper and propaganda minister.) Something stinks in Queensland and it's not just the sewerage. Government and corporate greed is driving the water crises. The Government is hooked on using waste to raise revenue and is just using the public drinking water supplies as cash cows (and a cheap means of disposal), failing for decades to invest in new water infrastructure and failing to maintain existing infrastructure. Government greed counts more to making profit from the sale and production of recycled sewage than the safety and health of the consuming public. The assets of the people are being exploited by the Government. Health concerns are not a priority of this greedy Government, profiteering is. After the name change and marketing was put in place the next step in the sewerage shenanigans was to hire industry friendly scientists. The Government hired their own 'independant experts'to defend and promote their recycled sewage product who were bought in various ways to manipulate and shape science. The Government set out to build a body of science around the notion that hazardous highly toxic, industrial and hospital diseased wastes are rendered harmless by simply passing the material through a sieve. The public is too smart too believe that nonsense. The Government and their propaganda hit men have used every opportunity to discredit emminent scientists and dismiss information associated with consuming recycled sewage. Because it is clear and odorless recycled sewage is being fraudently marketed as a safe user friendly product without revealing that it is full of highly toxic chemicals and diseases. The Government routinely runs massive multi million dollar advertising campaigns, complete with graphic images to warn smokers of the dangers, yet strangely enough the public has not received any warnings or informtion on the same, (plus many more) cancer causing agents being discharged to the sewerage system--our new drinking source. What was once viewed as a nuisance and a liability is now being recast as a valuable resource. The Government has decided on recycled sewage as they just love a good project that will splash lots of tax-payer money around. The arrogant, lying, self serving, contemptuous Bligh Government and their science-for-hire know-it-alls as well as their spin doctor friends in the media have insisted that recycled sewage is 'safe'to drink and is not a threat to human health, with no supporting evidence to back their absurd claims they have continually given the public their assurances in regards to it's so called 'safety'. We were once told that asbestos was safe, too, with no threat to human health. Australia now has the highest rate of mesothelioma in the world. The Government also once recognised that working with recycled sewage was an occupational health hazard, then approved it's use for drinking purposes. If they all believed in the so called 'safety'of their recycled sewage product so much why did the Bligh Government find it necessary to introduce a new law that absolves themslves as well as the water service providers and operators in the event of any health problems arising from consuming recycled sewage? They cannot be sued, do not have to pay compensation and therefore are not accountable to the people. The onus is on the public. This is just another demonstration of utter contempt that this greedy, self serving Government has for the people they are being paid well to represent. The claims that recycled sewage is done all over the world is absolute rubbish. The announcement of the introduction of the Governments bizzare recycled sewage experiment made major world news headlines, a good indication no other country in the world deliberately adds recycled sewage to their drinking water supplies, One of the many lawyer firms representing the Government has said that recycled sewage is a new product and that the effects on humans and the environment of it's long term use is not fully known. The act further recognises the need to offer some form of protection from the potentially huge liability that water industry players could be subjected to through the use of recycled sewage. Does'nt sound too safe, now does it Khan? If it was so safe there would not be the need to introduce a new law that protects the Government, water service providers and operators from law suits. The Government and the cash strapped water researchers as well as their spin doctor friends in the the media have gone to great lengths to promote recycled sewage and to conceal information on the tens of thousands of highly toxic chemicals which are being allowed to be routinely dumped into the sewerage. No information on the drug resistant diseases or the health risks or consequences of drinking from a highly contaminated source. Since recycled sewage is an extremely high risk area the public is entitled to all relevant information that has the potential to cause serious illness and death. The Government has no right to withhold that vital information. The Government has ignored public health concerns while the so called 'yuck factor' has been exploited for all it's worth. We all know the (shonky) polls have been designed to elicit answers favourable to the governments cause. It is a well known fact that the vast majority of the public is strongly opposed to being poisoned. Get off your soap box Khan and stop grandstanding. You have no doubt been highly paid by the Government to provide data that support their views on recycled sewage. I am considering becoming a researcher too. All I need to do is plagiarise and falsify data, just like you Khan. You can stop the pretence now. I think most people would be well aware that you and Paul Greenfield to name a few have vested financial interests in the recycled sewage scheme. By the way Khan, for your information Bligh did in fact say that the public will be drinking 100 percent recycled sewage. That information was contained in reports tabled in parliament. The media news sources as we all know, especially the trashy tabloid, the Courier mail work only in the best interests of the Government and are being handsomely paid to support the Governments views on recycled sewage. They will not publish anything negative they view as having the potential to de-rail the Governments bizzare recycled sewage scheme. Since everyone is entitled to an opinion , I would appreciate my comments being posted on your website.

Meredith Jayne.

Fluorescence for monitoring recycled water

2009-03-12T12:31:00.008+11:00

Four years ago I had an idea for a potential new application for monitoring recycled water systems. The idea was to use fluorescence spectroscopy to try to distinguish different ‘types’ of waters such as drinking water, secondary treated municipal sewage, reverse-osmosis treated water, etc. I had two main applications in mind:

1. to be able to detect ‘cross connections’ in dual reticulation (purple pipe) non-potable water recycling systems with the adjacent potable water supply.

2. to allow real-time ‘on line’ monitoring of reverse osmosis treatment performance with increased sensitivity compared to current techniques.

So during 2005-2006 I made a lot of phone calls and sent a lot of emails to water companies. I managed to secure the support of eight major Australian water companies with a keen interest in (potable and/or non-potable recycled water). These were:

• Gold Coast Water (QLD)
• City West Water Ltd. (Vic)
• Melbourne Water (Vic)
• South East Water Ltd. (Vic)
• Sydney Olympic Park Authority (NSW)
• Sydney Water Corporation (NSW)
• Water Corporation (WA)
• Yarra Valley Water Ltd. (Vic)

This strong industry support gave me the bargaining power to be able to apply for an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Projects Grant. To do this, I recruited a few co-researchers to build a strong research team. These were Prof Richard Stuetz (UNSW), Dr Michael Storey (Sydney Water) and Prof Andy Baker (University of Birmingham). I went all the way to Birmingham to meet Andy and ask him to participate since he is the world expert on fluorescence analysis of freshwater samples.

Our first application was in 2006, but this was not successful so we had another shot at it in 2007. On the second application we were awarded the grant for a three year research project which began at the end of 2007.

In addition to the necessary equipment and consumables, the grant allowed us to hire a full time post-doctoral researcher as well as a second part-time researcher. It also included two PhD scholarships. The full-time post-doc, Rita Henderson came from Cranfield University in the UK and now manages the project on a day-to-day basis. The part-time researcher is Dr Kate Murphy (from UNSW). The PhD scholarships have been awarded to Adam Hambly (from University of Sydney) and Sachin Singh (from University of South Pacific).

During the last year, Rita, Adam and Sachin have been undertaking intensive research with water samples collected from some of the above listed water companies. This work is on-going and no results have yet been published (apart from a few conference papers).

However, the first major paper from the project was recently published (Henderson, et al., 2009). This is a review of previous literature assessing, as best as we could, the question of whether fluorescence has the potential to be used as a monitoring tool for recycled water. It presents what we consider to be the evidence for why it does, as well as highlighting some of the areas that require further investigation. You can read the abstract of the paper by clicking on the image below.

I’m really keen on this project (and really proud of the team we have assembled and the progress made so far), so I hope to be able to report some exciting updates during the next two years.

Reference:

Henderson, R. K., Baker, A., Hambly, A., Murphy, K. R., Stuetz, R. M. and Khan, S. J. (2009) Fluorescence as a potential monitoring tool for recycled water systems: a review. Water Research. Vol 43, Issue 4, Pages 863-881. (available here).

Gold Coast Water also have a short description of this project on their website.

Matt Laffan

2009-03-02T15:15:00.030+11:00

My cousin, my playmate, my childhood, my best friend, my confidante, my co-conspirator, my accomplice, my flatmate, my teacher, my inspiration, my awe, my idol.

I just can’t say how much I’m gonna miss ya.

Richard Matthew Laffan
11 September, 1970 - 1 March, 2009.

Matt Laffan
Matt's website

News and Obits:
ABC Radio News, 2 March 2009
The Australian 2, March 2009
The International Herald Tribune, 2 March 2009
Accessibility.Com, 2 March 2009
The Sydney Morning Herald, 3 March 2009
The Daily Telegraph, 3 March 2009
HeavensGame.Com, 3 March 2009
Intenational Rugby News, 3 March 2009
ADCET
USA Today
Sport24

Some blogs:
The Chipolata
Pure and Applied
Cafe Grendel
Dreams in Colour
Backin15

Some history:
Coffs Harbour Advocate, 31 October 2008
Enough Rope, 15 March 2004
Australian Story Reunion, 21 June 2004
Australian Story, 26 April 2001

Oh, and the water recycling connection? Matt’s policy from his run for Sydney Lord Mayor in 2004, as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald:

Matt Laffan, independent Laffan, a lawyer with the NSW Department of Public Prosecutions, would convene a meeting to develop a planning strategy for the city for the next decade. He would establish council-funded precinct committees with a diverse membership.

Laffan wants a new land-rating system to provide landowners with incentives if they achieve environmental sustainability. He would also push for recycled water for every home. Sydney Harbour foreshore land should be protected. Street lighting would be improved, council patrols of parks and retail areas increased and the graffiti program upgraded.

He has also pledged a major focus on public transport development. Laffan will direct preferences to the Democrats followed by the Greens.

Sewage Treatment Plant by Night

2009-02-01T10:46:00.006+11:00

I’ve just returned from an interesting field trip at the Old Bar sewage treatment plant (STP) not far from Taree on the mid-coast of NSW.

One of our research group’s PhD students, ‘Nhat’ is investigating the fate of some antibiotic drugs during biological sewage treatment processes. In doing so, he is comparing how well the drugs are removed during conventional activated sludge treatment with removal by an experimental membrane bioreactor.

Old Bar STP is operated by MidCoast Water, with whom we have an on-going research relationship. So in order to characterise the performance of the STP and simultaneously obtain some useful data for Nhat’s project, we decided to undertake a ‘diurnal investigation’ of the plant.

This means that we monitored the performance of the STP in removing a wide range of chemical contaminants (mainly pharmaceuticals, hormones and pesticides) over a 24-hour period. This can be a useful step in characterizing an STP since a number of factors can change over this diurnal period.

For example, the flow of water into the plant changes according to community sleeping habits. We see a peek flow around 7-8am when people are showering and another later in the evening for bath-time and dishwashing. We have also previously observed that the concentration (and the ‘load’) of pharmaceuticals in sewage changes over 24 hours, presumably as a consequence of factors such as when particular drugs are taken, the rate of metabolism and when people go to the toilet.

We collected samples from the influent to the STP every two hours and samples from the effluents of the activated sludge process and the membrane bioreactor every other hour. Since we were sampling in triplicate, this meant that we had to collect, filter and extract over 100 samples during the 24 hour period.

It will probably take a month to analyse the samples and process the data, so we won’t have any results until then. However, I took the opportunity to take some slightly unusual ‘sewage treatment plant by night’ photographs, which I thought I’d like to share... Who would have guessed that an STP could look so pretty by night!?

Nhat with our equiptment

Solid phase extraction in the lab

Hard at work...of course!

Our 5-star accomodation

Activated sludge by night #1

Activated sludge by night #2

Activated sludge by night #3

Sampling the untreated sewage influent at 2am

Secondary clarifier at night

The ultraviolet (UV) disinfection system glows by night

Secondary clarifer at dawn

Mission accomplished!

Cashing in on the Scare Campaign

2009-01-27T22:40:00.001+11:00

I recall discussing recycled water scare campaigns on this blog a couple of years ago. So I was interested to read this article from a Queensland local newspaper. It seems there’s money to be made from playing on people’s fears...

Should I really be surprised?

Water Wise see Beyond Sales Pitch
By Christopher O’Leary
South West News
29 January, 2009.

SOUTHWEST: Door-to-door water purifier salesmen are reported to have told residents that they were risking diseases including cancer by drinking town water.

The salesmen were reported in Gailes, Goodna, Springfield, Collingwood Park and Redbank Plains, claiming the area’s water was recycled.

Eight people complained to Ipswich City Councillor Paul Tully’s (Div 2) office about the traders, who were trying to sell water purifiers and coolers by direct debit from residents’ bank accounts.

Cr Tully said at least two people signed up and one complained to the Office of Fair Trading after trying to contact the company behind the products to cancel the sale. Fair Trading officers are now investigating reports in Ipswich.

This month foul-smelling, dirty-tasting water flowed through southwest taps due to an algae outbreak at Mt Crosby Weir.

Gailes resident Julie Fullarton said two people from the sales group said the local water was recycled, and from Toowoomba.

“I said we don’t get Toowoomba water, then my husband Howard shut the door on them,’’ she said.

Goodna resident Maryanne Reynolds was frightened when one salesman named “David” arrived at her door last week.

She said “David” showed her a picture of a woman’s breasts that were covered in blisters.

He told Ms Reynolds the blisters were a symptom of breast cancer, which she could develop from drinking tap water.

“I was frightened,’’ she said.

“I was horrified to look at it even as a nurse.

“Imagine if they showed that to someone who had breast cancer.”

“David” provided Ms Reynolds with his phone number but refused to talk when the News contacted him on Friday.

The company believed to employ the salespeople declined repeated requests for comment about the complaints.

According to the Queensland Water Commission, purified recycled water will only be introduced into Wivenhoe Dam when South-East Queensland’s combined dam levels reach the 40 per cent trigger level.

Queensland Health maintains that water fluoridation has been endorsed by the World Health Organisation and poses no known health risks.

It has also been endorsed by the Australian Medical Association and American Academy of Pediatrics.

Traders caught breaching the 1989 Fair Trading Act faced fines of up to $54,000, and $270,000 for companies.

Upper Occoquan Reservoir

2009-01-08T14:09:00.002+11:00

The Upper Occoquan reservoir in Virginia, USA is a commonly cited example of indirect potable water reuse. An excellent description of the scheme was reported in the newspaper ‘The Voice of San Diego’ this week.

As previously reported on this blog, the City of San Diego has been considering the development of a potable water reuse scheme for a number of years. Thus this article was written to provide a practical example of how water can be safely recycled as a drinking water supply. The example applies equally to Australian cities considering potable water recycling.

I’d be interested to know your thoughts on how the Upper Occoquan scheme compares with the Western Corridor Recycled Water Project currently under development in South East Queensland.

Purified sewage flows down a spillway into a tributary of the Occoquan Reservoir in Northern Virginia. Photo: Rob Davis

Where Water Reuse Isn't a Dirty Word
By Rob Davis
Voice of San Diego
January 7, 2009.

Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2009 | Centreville, Va. -- Tucked behind evergreens, down a long lane in an otherwise anonymous stretch of this Washington, D.C. suburb south of Dulles International Airport, sits a facility that provides San Diego with the best evidence that it's safe to fill drinking water reservoirs with purified sewage.

Here, a treatment plant has been purifying sewage and dumping the clean water into the Occoquan Reservoir, a source of drinking water for 1 million residents of Northern Virginia's densely populated suburbs in Fairfax and Prince William counties.

And they've been doing it 30 years.

The sewage arrives here at the Millard H. Robbins Jr. Water Reclamation Plant from the toilets of 275,000 nearby residents. A day-and-a-half later, after being disinfected and stripped of its contaminants, it washes down a wide concrete spillway into Bull Run, the Occoquan Reservoir tributary made famous by its Civil War battles.

In dry weather, that purified sewage spends three months meandering and mixing in the sprawling tree-lined reservoir, making its way 17 miles downstream to a dam, where a local water provider draws it out, treats it to be safe for human consumption -- it picks up contaminants along the way from urban runoff -- and pipes it to homes.

The facility's existence directly counters one of the talking points Mayor Jerry Sanders has frequently recited as a reason for objecting to the City Council's plan to recycle sewage as a drinking water source. Sanders has claimed that San Diego would be the first municipality anywhere to pipe purified sewage into a drinking water reservoir. He made that claim in October and again in December when articulating his opposition to the council's $11.8 million pilot study of recycled sewage.

"I want to make it very clear," Sanders said at a Dec. 4 press conference. "No one else has done what we're being asked to do. People confuse us with Orange County, people confuse it with a lot of other places. No one else has ever talked about putting recycled water into a reservoir and then using it for drinking water. That's what we'll be doing testing on to see if that can even work."

In Northern Virginia, that conversation happened in the 1970s. And the region found that recycling sewage is effective and safe, said Charles Boepple, executive director of the Upper Occoquan Service Authority, which operates the sewage recycling facility.

"We have been doing exactly what San Diego is exploring for 30 years," Boepple said.

Bill Harris, a Sanders spokesman, said the mayor was referencing San Diego's place as the first in California to use recycled sewage to fill a drinking water reservoir.

"If you add the two words -- in California -- it becomes perfectly relevant," Harris said. "That's the background understanding of what we're up against. We've always had to talk about getting approval from [the state Department of Health Services].We will clarify it from this point forward and make certain those two words get added."

Sanders' opposition could be softening. Bruce Reznik, executive director of San Diego Coastkeeper, a sewage recycling supporter, said he is optimistic the mayor will support the concept once the city's pilot study advances. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently urged San Diego to develop a long-range plan for reusing sewage; Coastkeeper is negotiating with the city about that plan.

San Diego would be the first in California to fill a drinking water reservoir with recycled sewage. The city has frequently been contrasted with Orange County, which moved forward with the technology without being tripped up by the polarizing toilet-to-tap label that ended San Diego's 1990s recycling effort. While San Diego and Orange County would use a similar purification method, it's more appropriate to compare San Diego's concept with what Virginians decided was acceptable back in the mid-1970s.

In Orange County, which began recycling sewage last year, the purified sewage filters into the ground and winds up in an underground aquifer. It stays at least six months, mixing with the water that naturally fills the basin, before getting sucked out, treated and, ultimately, swallowed again.

In Virginia, the purified sewage goes straight from the plant into the reservoir. San Diego is studying the same idea: Pumping straight into the San Vicente Reservoir.

Virginia turned to recycled sewage in the 1970s as a way to improve water quality in the Occoquan Reservoir. In the late 1960s, gooey algae began growing in the reservoir. Too many nutrients were feeding the water, the result of 11 small sewage-treatment plants that dumped partly treated sewage there.

Officials needed a solution to the bad color and gross taste that residents got from the reservoir water. Those residents were already drinking partially treated sewage; with state approval those smaller plants were closed and an improved sewage purification plant was opened. Officials had debated other less-desirable alternatives: Limiting housing growth or pumping the treated sewage outside the area. But water is a precious resource even in Northern Virginia, which averages 41 inches of rainfall annually (San Diego averages 10 inches but imports most of its drinking water). Ultimately, they settled on purified sewage.

"Some fairly bold thinkers said: I think this resource is too valuable," Boepple said. "You can help supply the population increase with water because you're reclaiming. Otherwise this region would have a tough time."

The plant offers a double benefit. It provided needed sewer service to residents at the same time helping meet the water demands of Northern Virginia's exploding population. Since opening in 1978, the plant has expanded three times. A 2005 upgrade brought the treatment capacity to 54 million gallons a day -- just more than the planned Carlsbad desalination plant would produce.

"This has been a monumental success," said Tom Grizzard, director of the Occoquan Watershed Monitoring Laboratory, an independent agency that studies the reservoir's water quality. "When you develop a supply, the cardinal rule is to go to the water of the highest quality. It's the highest quality available. It's better than natural drainage in every respect."

While the plant's 30-year success has attracted visitors from 70 countries, no other localities in the United States dump purified sewage in their drinking water reservoirs. Boepple blames the "yuck factor" -- the visceral reaction people have to the idea of drinking sewer water.

"The focus needs to be on the science and what we've achieved," Boepple said. "If they separate the irrational fears, they'll see it's a viable alternative for water-short areas."

On a typical day, about 5 percent of the Occoquan Reservoir's flow comes from the sewage recycling facility. Boepple said the facility has provided as much as 80 percent of the reservoir's flows during prolonged drought. The rest comes from rainfall. In a watershed filled with cattle farms, homes, roads and agriculture, that rainfall is dirtier than the recycled sewage -- it washes contaminants such as cow manure, brake dust and herbicides into the reservoir. The sewage plant's water is so clean it actually gets dirtier as it mixes in.

The facility has spilled raw sewage into the reservoir during storms. Boepple said early 2003 was the most recent problematic time. Heavy spring rains and a contractor's failure to complete an expansion on time led to a sewage spill that totaled several hundred thousand gallons, he said.

Sewage recycling in San Diego wouldn't be subjected to that same problem. If heavy rains were overpowering the system, the flow could be diverted to the existing sewage plant at Point Loma. San Diego would have the luxury of filling the San Vicente Reservoir only when conditions were right. The city estimates it could create enough water to supply 52,000 homes for a year.

San Diego's recycling system would also include an additional safeguard that the Virginia facility doesn't: Reverse osmosis membranes. With that, sewage is forced through thin membranes with holes so small that water molecules are about the only things that get through. It's the same technology used to desalinate seawater and stops just about everything. (The handful of chemicals it doesn't stop is destroyed in a final disinfection stage.) The technology wasn't commonly available when the Virginia facility opened.

The Virginia plant also offers evidence that sewage could be recycled for less than Sanders has estimated. The Orange County sewage recycling facility produces water for $850 an acre foot (enough to supply two families for a year). Grants and subsidies cut the cost to about $550 an acre foot, close to the price of pumping in imported water from the Colorado River and Sacramento Delta, San Diego's two main sources.

The Upper Occoquan facility produces water for about $700 an acre foot. That figure, which does not include past construction costs, is borne by sewage customers, who pay about $40 a month.

Sanders has estimated that San Diego's cost to recycle sewage may be as high as $1,882 per acre foot. Those figures, originally drafted in 2006, are being revised as part of the city's ongoing sewage recycling pilot study.

boire l'eau des égouts

2008-12-15T07:11:00.003+11:00

Queensland’s indirect potable water recycling plans, and the controversy surrounding them, made it all the way to France’s largest daily newspaper Le Monde this week.

Not only that, but I see that I have been promoted to ‘professeur au centre de recherche sur l'eau de l'université de Nouvelle-Galles-du-Sud’. Hmm…I must get those business cards reprinted!

I, of course, do not speak français. Thus I can only assume that the article is a close reflection of the debate as we know it in Australia. If it does say something a little unusual, I’d be pleased to know about it...

Assoiffée, l'Australie répugne à "boire l'eau des égouts"
By Marie-Morgane Le Moël
Le Monde
11 Dec 2008

En Australie, un projet d'usine de recyclage de l'eau provoque la controverse. Dans l'Etat du Queensland, le premier centre de traitement du pays destiné à produire de l'eau potable à partir des eaux usées sera prêt à fonctionner d'ici quelques mois. Il pourrait produire 60 millions de litres d'eau purifiée par jour, par un traitement en sept étapes, avec un procédé de pointe incluant osmose inverse et oxydation accélérée.

Originellement, l'eau purifiée devait alimenter le réservoir principal de Brisbane et de sa région, pour subvenir à entre 10 % et 25 % de la consommation des 2,6 millions d'habitants. Les besoins sont importants : la population de la région pourrait doubler d'ici cinquante ans. Mais la perspective de boire de l'eau recyclée effraie. Divers groupes se sont donc créés pour rejeter l'idée de "boire l'eau des égouts", multipliant les pétitions sur Internet.

"TIREZ LA CHASSE ET ENSUITE, BUVEZ !"

Des médias s'en sont mêlés et des articles aux titres tels que "Tirez la chasse d'eau et ensuite, buvez !" ont attisé les peurs. Des universitaires ont également fait connaître leur opposition : "Le procédé d'osmose inverse ne suffit pas : à Brisbane, on a pu voir que seuls 92 % des antibiotiques présents dans les eaux usées ont pu être supprimés", affirme Peter Collignon, microbiologiste à l'université nationale australienne (ANU).

Pourtant, boire de l'eau recyclée se pratique ailleurs dans le monde. Ainsi, à Singapour, 1 % de l'eau recyclée est utilisée comme eau potable. Plusieurs centres de traitement existent également aux Etats-Unis et en Belgique. "En Australie aussi, de l'eau recyclée est utilisée pour la consommation humaine, mais de façon indirecte : l'eau usée est rejetée dans un fleuve ou un réservoir, avant d'être ensuite traitée et réutilisée par une autre ville en aval", remarque Stuart Khan, professeur au centre de recherche sur l'eau de l'université de Nouvelle-Galles-du-Sud.

Mais tous les arguments en faveur de l'eau recyclée n'auront pas suffi à convaincre le public. Après avoir affronté une campagne d'opposition durant plusieurs semaines, Anna Bligh, premier ministre du Queensland, a fait savoir que l'eau recyclée ne serait utilisée que lorsque le niveau des réservoirs descendrait à 40 % de remplissage.

Ce qui risque d'être le cas d'ici quelques mois. Et désormais, les Australiens pourraient bien ne plus avoir le choix. Car dans le pays le plus sec au monde, la sécheresse s'aggrave au fil des ans. "Traditionnellement, les précipitations sont très variables ici. Mais on a noté ces dernières années une baisse durable, avec des flux correspondant à entre 43 % et 65 % des moyennes de longue durée. C'est une situation nouvelle", explique Tom Mollenkopf, directeur de l'Association australienne de l'eau (AWA).

Dans beaucoup de villes, comme Melbourne, les réservoirs ont diminué, atteignant des niveaux de remplissage de parfois 30 % seulement. Du coup, l'Etat australien investit massivement dans de nouvelles infrastructures pour l'eau. Quasiment toutes les métropoles du pays se dotent d'une usine de dessalement d'eau de mer, et les habitants sont incités à installer des citernes chez eux, par des mesures fiscales favorables. Enfin, beaucoup de villes ont dû mettre en place de sévères restrictions d'eau. Cela a fonctionné : dans le sud-est du Queensland, les habitants sont passés d'une consommation de 300 litres d'eau par jour à 140 litres. "Cela ne suffit pas ; la situation est telle qu'il faut désormais bien plus que des restrictions", prévient M. Mollenkopf.

In Conversation

2008-12-14T10:39:00.006+11:00

I was invited to be interviewed for the ABC Radio National Program ‘In Conversation’. Of course, the main topic of discussion was potable water recycling. If you’re interested, you can listen to the interview online here. Or if you prefer to skim for the controversial parts, the transcript is below...

I can’t quite believe that I suggested that there was a good case for damming the Mary River, -I must have been nervous!

Robyn Williams: Good evening, Robyn Williams with In Conversation, and this time a wet one; it's about the paradox of planet water. Now let's be serious, if you saw us from space you'd hardly want to call us the planet earth when such a very small fraction of it isn't blue; it should be the planet water, shouldn't it? And the paradox, well, that is the fact that so little of this water, barely 2%, is freely available for drinking, washing or putting in your vase. So much water, so little to drink, as the poet remarked.

And to obtain more we need the science, not least the science and technology of recycling, and don't forget that it's the same water going around and around from millennia. Here's In Conversation producer Nicky Phillips with Dr Stuart Khan at the University of NSW.

Nicky Phillips: Stuart, there's a fairly big debate at the moment going on in south east Queensland about recycled water, there's going to be a recycled water plant in use as of February next year. But 12 months ago it was quite a distressing situation with the water suppliers in Brisbane and the Gold Coast. Can you tell us just how bad the situation was?

Stuart Khan: Yes, I think in around March last year, March 2007, the Queensland government had released some projections on where their water supply would be and they were really quite startling projections. They were assuming that Queensland would stay on very, very tight water restrictions, level 5 water restrictions and that the inflows to the dams would be the same as they were in 2006/2007, which of course didn't turn out to be the case; we've had much better rain than that. But looking at those projections, they were looking at situations of pretty much running out of water, being less than 5% of capacity of the dams by around about this time, or early next year if they did not go ahead and build a number of major pieces of infrastructure—including the indirect potable water recycling scheme that they're building and also including the desalination plant down at the Gold Coast at Tugun River, as well as the new dams they are building on the Mary River. So without building all three of those components to the water supply system, really it was looking like a serious situation to running out of water. And even with those, the possibilities of having very, very low water supplies ongoing into the future were quite stark. So there was a lot of pressure on the Queensland government to do something.

Nicky Phillips: So that the indirect potable reuse centre is going ahead?

Stuart Khan: Yes, it's recycled water, it's water I think from I think six waste water treatment plants around south east Queensland, of which the water is then taken to three new advanced water treatment plants where they undergo advanced treatment processes including membrane filtration through a reverse osmosis membrane, and advanced oxidation, which is an oxidative process that breaks down any remaining chemicals that may make it through the reverse osmosis process.

Then some of it going to power stations, two major power stations in south east Queensland, Swanbank and Tarong power stations, and the left over water available from that will then be used to recharge Brisbane's main drinking water supply, which is at Lake Wivenhoe, or Wivenhoe Dam. And from there of course it will be mixed with the natural inflows of water into that dam, flow around 40 kilometres downstream to the Mount Crosby water filtration plant where it will then be treated at the conventional drinking water treatment plant, undergoing filtration and chlorination before being redistributed back as a clean drinking water source to the residents of south east Queensland.

Nicky Phillips: For all the hysteria that surrounds recycled water, do people realise that they drink unplanned potable reused water?

Stuart Khan: I think awareness of that fact is increasing because of the debate surrounding planned indirect potable water use. Unplanned water recycling is a situation where we have waste water treatment plants, sewerage treatment plants, discharging conventionally treated waste water that was never meant for drinking and not prepared in a way that's supposed to be suitable for drinking into rivers, or into catchments upstream of where other towns will take their drinking water supplies from that particular river.

So there are examples all over Australia of unplanned indirect potable water areas and there are examples all over the world. Some of the classic Australian examples are in Sydney. We have...our drinking water supply is Warragamba Dam and we have influence coming into that dam from sewerage treatment plants such as Lithgow sewerage treatment plant, commonly Goulburn discharges its water into the Wollondilly River which then flows down and becomes part of our drinking water supply. I think at the moment there is so little water available in Goulburn that they are actually reusing most of that water themselves for irrigation.

Those are two of the sewerage treatment plants that end up as part of Sydney's water supply. In Queensland the water that's already flowing into Lake Wivenhoe comes from a number of sewerage treatment plants including at Esk, Lowood, the list goes on and it's the same all over the world. It's a normal situation and it's called unplanned indirect potable water reuse.

Nicky Phillips: Opponents of recycled drinking water suggest that there could be dangerous bacteria or virus outbreaks but I'm assuming that that could also happen in non-recycled water?

Stuart Khan: Yes it can also happen in non-recycled water and it does also happen in non-recycled water. There's a professor in Canada actually called Steve Hrudey who released a very, very interesting book about four years ago called Safe Water Drinking. The book was essentially a review of all of the water borne illness outbreaks that had occurred in developed countries in the last 10 or 20 years and there are many examples. So we've seen outbreaks from organisms like cryptosporidium and giardia which are protozoan organisms causing illnesses in cities like Milwaukie in the US and very famously Walkerton in Canada where a number of people died because of those outbreaks. And they are conventional drinking water treatment processes, they are not water recycling schemes, they are drinking water treatment processes which in hindsight had been shown to be relatively poorly managed or not optimally managed and it shows us the importance of really taking a lot of care and a lot of attention in the way we manage risks associated with drinking water production and drinking water distribution. Because the risks are real, there are real possibilities of people becoming ill and people dying if things are not done properly.

Nicky Phillips: So what are the advantages of using recycled water?

Stuart Khan: Well there are a few advantages of using recycled water, in fact if you actually look at the way that we've started to use recycled water in Australia the major driver in the 1990s was environmental protection. We started to have the development of the EPAs, the state based EPAs around Australia which started to impose tighter restrictions on pollution that could be discharged. And so that put a lot of pressure on water utilities to start finding alternative ways of disposing of the water. And we started to see water recycling projects that included things like watering lots, and lots of golf courses around Australia are watered by recycled water and airports, and we started to see a little bit of industrial use but essentially they are ways of avoiding discharging water into rivers and streams.

But then in the last decade the driver really changed because since about 2000/2001 when we went into a long term El Nino phase on the east coast and we saw some similar evidence of climate change on the west coast of Australia the driver for all water management in Australia became finding new sources for drinking water supplies for major cities, or preserving those drinking water supplies for major cities. So we started looking at opportunities to recycle water in a way that would take pressure off current drinking water supplies and we started to see a lot of new industrial water recycling developments.

Now a lot of the low-hanging fruit, so as to speak, has been picked and a lot of those easy industrial processes have been identified and we are starting to see that the next best way to be able to preserve water supplies, actually to use that water as an indirect process for refilling our drinking water catchments. So that requires a lot more investment in the way that we treat water to ensure that we are treating water to a very, very high quality suitable for a drinking water source. A lot of change in the way that we manage recycled water once it becomes the drinking water supply. We recognise that new guide lines are required in Australia which have been developed and endorsed by the National Health and Medical Research Council that impose a very strict risk assessment and risk management regime on the way that water is prepared, delivered and managed in general in terms of understanding what could go wrong in the processes of supplying that water and how those problems can be avoided.

The philosophy that has generally been imposed is a multiple barrier of philosophy where if you have a human error, if you have a problem in the water treatment process, or a water supply process that there's a large degree of redundancy built into the system where there are subsequent barriers that can handle that water and produce high quality water anyway even if things go wrong upstream. So it gives us the opportunity to be able to deal with problems as they come up but still be able to produce a very reliable supply of drinking water into our catchments.

Nicky Phillips: So if it's so reliable why do you think the public is so concerned? Is it still that we haven't got over the yuk factor of recycled water?

Stuart Khan: Yes, that's a big question and there's a lot of research going on trying to understand the way we think about water, trying to understand why we have a yuk factor, so as to speak. I mean the yuk factor is real, it's not some way of criticising people who take a less rational approach to their attitudes towards water. My own opinion is that it's something that we evolved with and the yuk factor actually served us very, very well. It tells us that keeping away from our own faecal excrements etc. is a really, really good idea and we're repulsed by the idea of going close to it. And that's because people who did get too close to human excrements in the past were more likely to catch diseases and less likely to survive. And there's evolutionary pressure there for us to exhibit that kind of behaviour, or not to exhibit that kind of behaviour.

So it's a real leap for us to be able to go from a real natural instinct to not want to have anything to do with our own bodily excrements and waste water that carries those excrements to suddenly actually being able to say we can treat that water very, very well, very reliably, to a very, very high quality and to produce a much cleaner water that what we are currently drinking. I think that's a leap for a lot of people including myself but the fact is it can be done, it is done, there's plenty of evidence for it, there are plants across the USA that are doing exactly that and there's no reason why we can't do it just as well in Australia.

Nicky Phillips: As well as the public's concerns about recycled water it's also got scientists debating. Now microbiologist Peter Collignon and town planner Patrick Troy have been quite vocal in their opposition to recycled water. Is it a subject that has divided scientists or is it just a few people speaking out against it?

Stuart Khan: I think without wanting to put words in the mouths of other people my understanding of most of the comments that have been made by people such as Professor Collignon are that there's a general acceptance that these water treatment plants, advanced water treatment plants can be built and designed to do a great job, to produce very clean water. And when they're doing what they are supposed to be doing they do indeed produce very clean water. I think the major concern that has been expressed is how reliable is that, can things go wrong, and what happens if things do go wrong? That's probably the area where there is a bit of division in the scientific community with a number of people taking the position that the risk management regime that's been imposed by the new Australian water recycling guidelines is a very effective regime, it's a regime that's been adopted from the food industry largely. I think that the concept that if things go wrong it will necessarily lead to human health implications is wrong.

Generally if we're talking about reverse osmosis membranes for example if a reversals osmosis membrane breaks down what generally happens is you can't supply the water, you can't get water through the membrane if it's not working properly and that water needs to be discharged. So you run a risk there of course of not being able to produce the water that you want to produce but you don't produce water that's of a lower quality, that water remains either there at a very high quality or not available at all. One of the comments that I've heard recently that Professor Collignon made on the radio was that he was suggesting that major developments in public health in the last 200 years have really come about because people have learnt to separate their drinking water supplies from their waste water discharges.

It's actually factually incorrect, because we've never been able to separate drinking water supplies from waste water discharges and usually when people are thinking about major advances in the control of cholera and other water borne diseases we are thinking about situations like London in the 1800s where there were endemic cases of typhoid and cholera and largely they were related to waste water being in the drinking water supply. However we never, ever were able to really separate them, the London drinking water supply, a large part of it comes from the Thames River and there are 380 sewerage treatment plants that discharge water into the Thames River and it becomes part of the London water supply.

What we've done is we've increased treatment, we've improved the treatment of that water, we've developed techniques like media filtration, flocculation, coagulation, activated carbon absorption, disinfection most importantly and chlorination and it's these processes that have been effective in making sure that water, even though it hasn't been separated from our drinking water resource and is our drinking water sources and even though it is recycled water it's actually safe to drink. So it's not about separation it's about treatment and I would go so far as to say that those major public health advances of the 1800s, the people we can thank for those are not the medical profession at all, it's the engineers, it's the water treatment engineers that have provided safe drinking water to cities like London that really should get the credit for the major advances in public health.

Nicky Phillips: Another aspect of your research is on hormones in water. Have we always been concerned with hormones or organic material in water or is this just come up because of the recycled water debate? I mean hormones are excreted by everyone in their urine, is it just because we are now talking about using recycled water that it's an issue?

Stuart Khan: Yes, the fact that we're talking about water recycling has definitely raised the profile of the issues associated with chemicals like hormones in water in the community. However, the issue itself of being concerned about trace organics such as hormones in water certainly precedes potable water recycling schemes and is much more relevant really to environmental systems because that's where we've actually seen impacts. In about the mid 90s was when people started to ask questions about what was going on in some environmental systems people were catching fish that were showing very unusual qualities and these were referred to as herm fish because they had some part male and part female qualities. The reason for that was not clear at the time but from some investigations that took place in the UK it was traced back to the impact of chemicals that were coming from the sewerage treatment plant being discharged into rivers in the UK. Largely they were hormones but there were also lots of other industrial chemicals and some natural chemicals that mimic the effect of hormones. What they found is that if they put fish in a cage in a river just downstream of a sewerage treatment plant discharge those fish eventually exhibited those qualities of being feminised.

And it was related back to the presence of the particular hormones such as oestrogen, a hormone called 17 beta oestradiol which is a natural oestrogen and a hormone called ethanol-oestradiol which is a synthetic oestrogen that's used in the contraceptive pill. That was traced back to discharges from very poorly treated sewerage that was being discharged into rivers in northern England. Since the 1990s a lot of research has been done in that particular area looking at different organisms, different types of fish in different places around the world and we see now that it's a worldwide phenomenon.

Nicky Phillips: What about its effect on humans, have there been any research on that?

Stuart Khan: Yeah, it's a controversial topic on which it's definitely true to say that the scientific community is divided but there have been suggestions that exposure to different chemicals, not necessarily hormones themselves, but other chemicals that mimic the action of hormones, plasticisers, industrial chemicals, polychlorinated biphenyls etc. have caused similar types of effects in humans, or at least effects related to our sexuality or to our endocrine systems. The main focus has been on sperm counts and sperm mobility and there are been a few epidemiological studies that have suggested that male sperm counts have been decreasing around the world over the last two decades and that evidence has more of less been brought together with observations of endocrine disrupting chemicals, hormones etc. in wild life. People are essentially putting two and two together and saying well you know we're seeing effects on humans, we know that these chemicals have effects on animals; could the chemicals be responsible for the effects that we are seeing on humans?

And that's a perfectly valid hypothesis that they may well be. However, the general scientific consensus is that we haven't actually been able to identify a conclusive link between the presence of these chemicals in our environment and effects on humans even though I think it's well accepted that we keep on looking and we keep on researching the issue we will find links.
Nicky Phillips: Hormones are very small, are they easily removed from water?
Stuart Khan: Yes, there are a number of different treatment processes that we use that are very effective for removing hormones from water, even conventional waste water treatment plants can be very effective if they are designed and operated well. Some studies that were undertaken recently in Queensland show that it's related to how we manage the activated sludge process, the biological process and if that sludge process is managed in a way that optimises the removal of organics we can end up with water where we cannot measure hormones in the effluence at all. And in fact that is very consistent with a lot of studies that are now being undertaken around Australia. But poorly operated waste water treatment plants we can definitely measure concentrations of hormones down around the milligram per litre concentration but well operated plants are very effective in removing those.

Then if we're talking about advanced water recycling processes reverse osmosis is extremely effective for rejecting any additional hormones that may be present or may not be present, they offer a multiple barrier essentially for the removal of any hormones that may theoretically be present in effluence going into an advanced water recycling treatment plant. And then, if you're talking about drinking water, an advanced drinking water treatment plant where you are actually using advanced oxidation as is the case in south east Queensland as a subsequent treatment process, then advanced oxidation is extremely powerful again at degrading hormones. So I think it's important to be clear that hormones in sewerage doesn't equal hormones in recycled water. One is a source water to a water recycling scheme and the other is a final product of water and of course the millions and billions of dollars that we are spending in between is supposed to achieve something and what it achieves is effective removal of a lot of trace organic chemical contaminants.

Nicky Phillips: So has there been any research on the effect of hormones or hormone-like chemicals on the Australian environment?

Stuart Khan: Very little, in fact there was a meeting in Canberra about 12 months ago that scientist from all around Australia came together and we decided to put together a document called the Black Mountain Declaration and put together a document that describes the consensus is on the implications of hormones and hormone like chemicals in the Australian environment. And it was well agreed that there's reasons to be concerned because when we've done surveys of Australian rivers we find that you'll see similar concentrations to those concentrations that have been reported from Europe. However, nobody has really gone out and done a systematic survey of impacts on Australian native species and we've not seen these sorts of feminisation processes that we've seen across Europe and across the USA in Australia. But it's because we're not looking and I think that's a key part of the Black Mountain Declaration is that we require research, it's a research priority to start saying well, you know we have all the evidence to suggest that there will be impacts to Australian wildlife if we can actually be bothered to get out there and look for it. That's an important part of our research agenda now.

Nicky Phillips: Now I understand your background is in chemistry, why did you get involved in water treatment?

Stuart Khan: I was working at Sydney University, I'd actually started a PhD in organic chemistry at Sydney University which I didn't end up finishing, but I was looking around for an alternative option for a PhD at the University of NSW and I was introduced to a professor that was a visiting professor from the US. And he had a background in microbial water treatment, or water engineering, looking at organisms like cryptosporidium and giardia.
My background being in chemistry, we sort of came together over a cup of coffee and we talked about what each of us could bring to a particular PhD project and we decided that the issue was just emerging in the time, in the mid to late 90s, that people were starting to report early occurrences of pharmaceuticals and hormones in water and so we were keen to have a look at whether the water treatment processes that my PhD supervisor was studying looking for microbes could actually have an effect on some of the organic chemicals as well.

And so we ended up doing a large number of surveys at some sewerage treatment plants in Sydney, looking at removal through conventional waste water treatment processes and there was also a pilot water recycling plant that was available up in Queensland at the time that we did some surveys looking at the removal of pharmaceuticals through processes like reverse osmosis and micro filtration, ozonation, advanced oxidation etc. which turned out to be some of the earlier studies on the removal of those chemicals by advanced water recycling processes. There are plenty, plenty more of them now that are much more comprehensive than the ones I ran ten years ago but that's very much what sparked my interest in the whole area of advanced water treatment.

Nicky Phillips: What do you like the most about studying water treatment?

Stuart Khan: I love chemistry, I love understanding how chemicals react to each other, how chemicals are removed, how chemicals are degraded by biological processes and physical processes, that's my interest. I am also interested in risks associated with chemistry and toxicology, I love discovering new pollutants I like what's actually a headache to a lot of people finding new pollutants, new byproducts from treatment processes that we are using and getting a good handle on the significance of those by-products and those chemicals and if they do present a risk to human health, if they can be degraded by different processes, or if we can prevent forming some of the by-products in the first place by operating processes in a different way. Anything to do with chemicals in water I'm generally interested in it.

Robyn Williams: Dr Stuart Khan at the University of NSW. And what exactly goes ahead in Queensland is as much to do with politics now as it is to do with science. He was with Nicky Phillips. Next week at this time I shall be In Conversation with the distinguished mathematician Freeman Dyson from Princeton.

Freeman Dyson: Sea level rises may or may not have anything to do with global warming, it's not at all clear. Sea level rise has been going on much longer, long before global warming and it probably has very little to do with human activities. All we know for sure is that sea level has been rising steadily for about 10,000 years and we'll have to do something about that.

Robyn Williams: Freeman Dyson at the Institute for Advance Studies at Princeton— that's next week on the Galapagos, climate and much else. I'm Robyn Williams.

IPR for Melbourne?

2008-12-08T07:03:00.001+11:00

There is an interesting editorial from The Age in Melbourne today. It calls for indirect potable reuse (IPR) of water to be considered as a component of water supplies in Victoria. The editorial identifies the ‘yuck factor’ and timid politicians as the reasons that this approach is not really an important part of the public discussion in Victoria

Potability should be probable, not just possible
Editorial
The Age
December 8, 2008

IN LAST week's disturbing report on Victoria's environmental health by Sustainability Commissioner Ian McPhail, one crucial paragraph (water recommendation No. 5) summarises the dilemma facing the state between social and political choice and the necessity of making that choice swiftly and decisively: "The Victorian Government should engage with the community to get a better understanding of values, aspirations and fears related to urban water supply, including drinking purified recycled water supplied through indirect potable re-use."

The next recommendation, which underpins the urgency of the issue, says that the Government should support research into the effectiveness and viability of such alternative sources of water.

Thus, with admirable economy and common sense, Dr McPhail not only brings the water-recycling issue back into public prominence, but ensures that it remains there. It will be a foolish government that chooses to downplay or ignore these particular recommendations.

Judging from the evidence presented in the state-of-the-environment summary, the case for implementing water recycling is no longer one of discretion but of absolute necessity. It is also long overdue. The gloomy prognosis shows, in essence, supply unable to keep up with demand. Consider, for example, the projection that by 2070 flows in the state's rivers and streams will be reduced by half; or that drought frequency is likely to increase between 10 per cent and 80 per cent in the southern half of the state and between 10 per cent and 60 per cent in the north. Consider also the decline in the health of our existing water systems, which, when last assessed four years ago, showed that only one-fifth were in good or excellent condition. As the report says, although the drought has been a contributing factor, much of our water system was already significantly damaged.

The abiding problem with water recycling — even with the prospect it might be discussed — is its public image. The words "drinking water" and "sewage" do not coexist with any sense of pleasantry, and politicians often do their best to avoid making the connection. As a result, the matter has remained a political issue instead of a practical one, with proper policy taking precedence.

The Age has long argued that the state needs to engage in the debate on the viability of recycled water, especially for domestic use. It is cheaper, more energy-efficient (it uses less than half the energy of desalination) and would use billions of litres that otherwise go down the drain and out to sea.

Although water recycling is an accepted part of life in Singapore, London, Namibia and parts of California, Australia still seems tentative. Only last week, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh reversed Government plans to use recycled waste water in the south of the state; two years ago, residents of Toowoomba voted against using recycled sewage for drinking water. Therefore, is it surprising that the "yuck factor" still holds sway in Victoria?

It is perhaps worth recalling that a poll commissioned by this newspaper in February last year showed that 78 per cent of those surveyed were in favour of the use of recycled sewage in home-use water supply, with only 19 per cent against. It could be argued that instead of the population being sensitive, the Victorian Government has exercised over-sensitivity on its own behalf and has steadily refused to take the risk of entertaining even the idea of water recycling. At the same time, it has embraced other forms of conservation it previously rejected. For example, in October 2005, then premier Steve Bracks referred to desalination, with its high energy use and cost, as "a fool's paradise". In 2007, Mr Bracks rejected the idea of recycling sewage, saying, "It's not required under our 50-year plan." Since then, there has been no public comparison of feasibility, costs, or energy use between recycling and the options the Government did announce: the controversial north-south pipeline and the construction of a desalination plant — each of which has its problems in relation to climate change.

What has to happen now is for the Government to re-open the debate on water recycling. It should explain the basis of its opposition, consult the community accordingly, and instigate appropriate comparative research. Victoria's environmental future is at stake. We need to investigate the best of all potable worlds.

Water for Western Sydney

2008-12-07T21:20:00.001+11:00

An article from the Hawkesbury Gazette this week turned my focus back to Western Sydney for a bit. It reported on a community forum hosted by the University of Western Sydney on the topic of ‘Water for Western Sydney’.

The article, copy-and-pasted below, speaks for itself. It is good to see a range of water recycling ideas being discussed and a positive attitude for improved water management.

Water debate highlights importance of recycling
By Amanda Perry
The Hawkesbury Gazette
3/12/2008

Water recycling was the hot topic at Saturday's community forum 'Water for Western Sydney - Who Will Miss Out?'

The forum, which was held at the University of Western Sydney's Hawkesbury campus, featured presentations by State and Federal agencies and councils, as well as a lively hypothetical debate chaired by ABC TV's Ticky Fullerton.

Hawkesbury Mayor Bart Bassett addressed the forum on behalf of Hawkesbury City Council, highlighting both the pros and cons of water recycling.

"I have long been a public advocate of more water recycling wherever feasible and practical," Mayor Bassett said.

"Promoting water recycling can help free us from the reliance on rainfall for a large percentage of our water needs.

"I am concerned, however, that we have not been fully consulted about our views regarding the use of recycled effluent as drinking water.

"It seems the Government has assumed that the idea would be unpalatable without seeking the opinions of the public."

Mayor Bassett said once freshwater environmental flows from Warragamba Dam were replaced by treated effluent through newly-constructed treatment plants, residents would "by default be consuming a more concentrated level of recycled water".

"I'm not sure this fact has been fully explained in the government's plans to promote water recycling," he said.

"Given that, the success of the household water recycling scheme at Rouse Hill has paved the way for similar schemes for future large scale housing developments and water recycling will be the way of our future."

Mayor Bassett said he would like to see more recycled water used for irrigation in both commercial and household applications.

The hypothetical with Ms Fullerton also put the focus on water recycling, including the use of recycled stormwater and effluent.

It leapt forward to 2010 and proposed that Sydney faced a severe water shortage, with level four water restrictions in place and less than three years supply left in our dams.

Panel member Les Sheather, a former Hawkesbury councillor, was in support of using recycled stormwater but said recycled effluent would be better.

"The outcome is better for the whole community," he said.

"Storm water is insecure, when it doesn't rain we're back to the situation a few years ago with the drought.

"With recycled effluent, it's permanent, there's a guarantee of supply.".

The hypothetical also asked panel members to consider what we should do when we do have good rainfall and excess of water.

Following the hypothetical audience members had the chance to ask questions of the panel.

Former councillor Ted Books raised the question of whether we should build more dams.

Ted Gardner, a professor from the Queensland University of Technology, said the general consensus among society was we shouldn't because of the environmental impacts, and said the effects of climate change had made dam storage unreliable.

One audience member asked those on the panel to say whether they were optimistic or pessimistic about the future of Western Sydney's water supply and why.

Hawkesbury Councillor Paul Rasmussen was one of those who said he was optimistic.

"Because I believe we don't have a water supply problem, we have a management problem," he said.

QLD Water Polls

2008-12-01T15:11:00.012+11:00

An article in today’s Courier Mail reports an opinion poll that was undertaken in Queensland by the independent company Galaxy Research. The survey was administered on the evenings of 26-27 November and is based on the opinions of 800 voters.

Three of the questions that were asked were on the topic of urban water management in South East Queensland. I managed to obtain a copy of the results (by asking nicely!) for a closer look. Here’s what they found...

Galaxy Poll:

In your opinion, is the Premier Anna Bligh doing enough to ensure the continued supply of water or not?

This week Anna Bligh announced changes to the government’s water plan, including the decision to delay the building of the Traveston Dam near Gympie, possibly for several years. Overall, do you support or oppose this decision to delay the building of the dam near Gympie?

In February the first part of the government’s water grid is due to come on line. This will include the recycling of waste water in South East Queensland. Do you support or oppose the inclusion of purified recycled water in the new water grid?

Would you support or oppose the inclusion of purified recycled water in the new water grid if it was only to be used as a back-up when dam levels dropped below 40%?

Queensland Water Commission Research:

Interestingly, the Galaxy Poll was somewhat different to the more pessimistic polling undertaken by the Queensland Water Commission this week. I also managed to obtain these results (more asking nicely!), as summarised below.

A 1000 person phone poll was conducted across South East Queensland over the week ending Monday 24 November.

Q. Do you think the drought in South East Queensland is over or not?

• 69% of people think we are still in drought

Q. Do you support or oppose adding Purified Recycled Water to our water supply?

• 55% support
• 39% are opposed

Tracking:

January 2007: 75% support
September 2008: 67% support
November 2008: 55% support

Breakdown:

M: 63% Yes, 32% No
F: 48% Yes, 45% No
18 – 29 Years old: 63% Yes, 29% No
70+ Years old: 44% Yes, 51% No.

Q. Do you think Purified Recycled Water should always be included in the water supply or should be excluded if the dams reach a certain level

• 66% believe it should be excluded if it reaches a certain level

• Of those 66%, 30% say the dam should be 50% full before we should stop adding Purified Recycled Water

• Of those 66%, 29% say the dam should be 75% full before we should stop adding Purified Recycled Water

• Of those 66%, 8% say the dam should be 40% full before we should stop adding Purified Recycled Water

• Of those 66%, 9% say the dam should be 100% full before we should stop adding Purified Recycled Water

Q. Have you seen or heard anything in the media about purified recycled water over the past few weeks?

September 2008: 78% No, 21% Yes.
November 2008: 29% No, 70% Yes.

Q. What can you recall hearing or seeing? (November)

• Most of the discussion was basically about the safety of the water and it was all basically negative.
• That the hospital waste was going to go into it, which I don’t like.
• That it’s no good for you, that there are problems if something happens that there will be disease in the water.
• A lot of hysteria and garbage about safety particularly the expert from ANU, who is whipping up negative publicity, seems to be mostly what you hear.
• Safe water, that the water purification will be alright/ safe according to the experts.
• It was going to be added to the water supply, that it’s perfectly safe and that you’ll be able to drink it
• They’re trying to tell us there will be no issue and it will be really healthy. Others are saying it will be safe, but there’s a lot of opposition to it.

I'd be interested in your interpretations and conclusions!

Reuse09 – Call for Papers

2008-11-30T09:22:00.003+11:00

Reuse09 is the 7th International Water Association (IWA) World Congress on Water Reclamation and Reuse. It will take place at the Convention Centre in Brisbane during the 20-25 September 2009.

The first announcement and call for papers was released this week. Papers are invited on each of the conference themes, which include:

• Potable reuse
• Public health and environmental impacts
• Emerging pollutants
• Aquifer storage and recharge
• Novel technology developments
• Demand/supply management
• Closing the water and nutrient loops
• Public perceptions and community engagement
• Water and energy efficiencies
• Environmental flows

Papers for this conference can be submitted in either Extended Abstract of 3 pages or Full Papers of 8 pages format. Both formats will be considered for Oral presentation if submitted no later than 3 April 2009.

Papers for poster presentation will be accepted until 7 August 2009. Papers will be reviewed by no less than 2 persons from the Local Organising or Scientific Program Committees. Extended abstracts and full papers selected for either oral or poster presentation will be published in the REUS09 conference proceedings.

Authors who wish to have their paper published in Water Science and Technology should submit their full paper simultaneously to the journal for consideration according to their guidelines.

For submission details and guidelines for the REUSE09 submission please see the conference website http://www.reuse09.org

Important Dates:

Paper submission open: December 2008
Paper due date (Oral consideration): 3 April 2009
Registration open: 1 February 2009
Paper acceptance notification: 29 May 2009
Early bird registration closes: 26 June 2009
Paper due date (Poster only): 7 August 2009

Although Reuse09 will be an international IWA Congress, it is also the 4th Australian Water Association (AWA) Conference on Water Reuse & Recycling, following on from Reuse07 which took place at UNSW (as previously described on this blog).

Rain on Bligh’s Parade

2008-11-26T09:23:00.001+11:00

A thoughtful editorial this morning from the Courier Mail in Queensland. I think it’s a fairly accurate comment on the role of politics and populism in decision-making. The suggestion is that the Western Corridor Water Recycling Project may not be used for supplementing Brisbane’s drinking water supplies, -at least not until reservoir levels drop again to what they were a year or two ago.

It is unfortunate when something as crucial as sustainable water management becomes a political football. But politics is politics and elections must be won at all costs. I’ll be interested to see how this pans out over the next few days…

Rain on Bligh's parade: editorial
The Courier Mail
November 26, 2008

THE Courier-Mail has long been a strong advocate for long-term policy thinking. We have regularly encouraged the State Government to think to the future and not simply be captive to the emergencies of the day.

Many of the challenges and crises we have faced in Queensland, particularly in the southeast, have, in part at least, been caused by a failure to plan ahead, be it in health care, or traffic congestion or in making sure we do not run out of water.

We therefore applauded the State Government when it finally decided to build the southeast Queensland water grid to ensure the region's water security.

And we welcomed its commitment, at last, to recycling as a way to reduce the amount of potable water going to industrial use, particularly power generation.

And two years ago, in the midst of the worst drought on record, we accepted the argument for mixing recycled water with drinking water, as long as public health could be assured.

The water grid is undoubtedly more expensive than it needed to be if some early and sensible long-term planning had been in place. But here, at last, was government action designed to address current and future challenges with a long-term, albeit very expensive, strategy.

But now, suddenly we have a Government making decisions based not on long-term or thoughtful planning but rather on nothing more than crude populist politics. Premier Anna Bligh and her team have apparently decided that forcing people to drink recycled water unless they absolutely have to is bad politics and so they have turned to the Queensland Water Commission, looking for some wriggle room.

Not so very long ago, the State Government was telling us that not only was it perfectly safe to drink recycled water but it was a vital part of the state's overall drought-proofing strategy.

Nothing has changed since then except for the fact that we have had good early summer rains and suddenly the whole sense of emergency has faded away as our dam levels return to something approaching normal levels.

No new science has emerged to suggest that the purification and safety systems in place for handling recycled water are in any way inadequate. And there is no suggestion that, summer rains or not, the problems we faced a year ago of growing population and increasingly uncertain weather patterns have eased.

Ms Bligh clearly started her premiership trying to distance herself from the populist, three-ring-circus style of her predecessor by concentrating on the nuts and bolts, and pipes and hard hats, of getting much-needed infrastructure in place.

But now that the infrastructure, and the next state election, are almost here, she has dramatically reverted to a style of populism that would have done Peter Beattie proud.

But there is more to this than simply despairing of politicians acting the way politicians normally do when their future is at stake. There are also potentially serious economic consequences for the state if the Government eventually decides to make less than full use of the about-to-be-completed $2.5 billion recycled water scheme.

Imagine if the State Government decided to solve traffic problems by building an eight-lane toll road and then, just as it opened, decided to open only two lanes.

How do you pay for the project? Do you bump up the toll on the two lanes or do you spread the cost among all of us by way of higher taxes or cutting costs somewhere else? The state faces the same problem unless it fully utilises this expensive new piece of infrastructure.

We acknowledge that many of our readers have reservations about the idea of adding treated recycled water to our drinking supplies. But equally, we believe that the scientific safeguards provide maximum protection. And clearly the State Government believes that as well. But when it comes to politics, science will always take second place to opinion polls.

A break from hysteria

2008-11-25T16:50:00.007+11:00

I’ve been away for the last week (hence my lack of responses to comments on the previous post...I’ll try to address a few of the questions when I get a moment). However, I have been keeping one eye on the attempted hysteria-whipping kerfuffle in Queensland courtesy of The Australian.

For those who missed them, last week’s stories featured suggestions that more recycled water should be used for industry, suggestions that the QLD Government agree with such suggestions, more of the same, suggestions that South East Queensland no longer has a long-term water supply problem, suggestions that the potable water recycling scheme may be scrapped, suggestions that it wont, and suggestions that the University of Queensland have a conflict of interest in undertaking research since they receive funding to do it.

Don’t get me wrong... I love all this stuff and I love Queensland (and I like Billy Moore). But somehow the news from Melbourne this week just seems a little less hyperventilated.

Billy Moore: Queenslander!

Take for example the article below, which was published as an Opinion piece in The Age on Thursday. As described below, an ex-Managing Director of Melbourne Water sees water recycling as an economically sensible and environmentally preferable alternative to seawater desalination. It’s worth a read between gasps.

Why is water recycling being overlooked?
By Kenneth Davidson
The Age, November 20, 2008

JOHN Morgan, the managing director of Melbourne Water from 1995 to 1998, sent me an email complaining that my most recent article on Melbourne's water options was "almost there but you missed the most important issue — recycled water". He wrote: "This is the answer in my view. Cost effective, safe and environmentally correct. I have no axe to grind. I would like to talk to you about the options."

So I did. Morgan was appointed by the Kennett government. His record managing water was good. He managed to cut prices and increase the dividend to the government. He was completely puzzled about why the current Government was committed to the desalination plant and the north-south pipeline. He said he supposed it was because "some merchant banker had got the ear of Brumby".

Morgan pointed out that the Queensland Government had a similar water supply problem to Victoria but the failure of the recycling referendum in Toowoomba hadn't stopped Queensland from undertaking recycling in the south-east of the state.

To underline the point, Morgan said that on a trip to Europe to look at how these countries managed their water supplies he was taken to a water purification plant near Paris and, after he had drunk some of the purified water from a fountain, he was told by his guide that the water had been drunk 13 times before in towns further up the Seine.

He couldn't remember who owned the purification plant but it would have most likely been Veolia or Suez, two of the biggest multinationals leading the corporate charge to privatise water in markets such as Australia, where water is still publicly owned. Macquarie Bank is part of the consortium with Suez (known as Degremonte in Australia) and ABN Amro is part of the consortium with Veolia in the final bidding for the proposed desal plant at Wonthaggi.

According to Morgan the desal plant is a waste of money. He pointed out that at the sewerage treatment plant at Carrum, 70% of the purification work to bring the water up to potable standards has already been done. This alternative would cost only a fraction of water from the desal plant. If this class A water was cleaned up to potable standard and pumped into the Silvan reservoir, which distributes water to 80% of Melbourne, it would cost a fraction of the water from the desal plant.

Plans to keep upgrading water produced from Carrum were apparently delayed after the decision to proceed with the desal plant.

If the upgrade had gone ahead it would have added about 25% to Melbourne's water, sooner than the desal plant and at about a third of the cost. As I understand it, the decision not to proceed is not due to consumer sensitivities: Melburnians in the north of the city have been drinking recycled water for 28 years from the Sugarloaf Reservoir, which is partly supplied from the middle Yarra on the sound assumption that what you don't know won't hurt you.

Environment Victoria, partly Government-funded but independently staffed, made a courageous submission to the Victorian Parliamentary inquiry into Melbourne's Future Water Supply. It said: "The Government's approach to Melbourne's water need is risky and a poor environmental outcome … (its) emphasis on very large-scale augmentation will undermine incentive for continued efforts to improve water use efficiency.

"Environment Victoria's plan for an alternative water vision (is) focusing specifically on improved use of underutilised resources such as storm water and recycled water."

The Government commitment to what Environment Victoria called "more expensive and environmentally damaging augmentation options" is hindering the development of more sensible recycling options being put up by Australian investors who apparently don't have the clout of French multinationals and their financial partners.

One of my correspondents, who is an investor in small-scale recycling plants and who, for understandable reasons wants to remain anonymous, says "management have noted to me that NSW, Queensland and WA are seeking to be pro-active in their approach to water re-treatment and encouragement thereof, which is the identification and implementation of a practical regulatory framework in a timely manner. We cannot say the same about policymakers here in Victoria based on experience to date.

"The key commercial drivers to this business are the rate at which regulatory change occurs to enable such businesses to operate and the price of water, which dictates the payback on capital of those parties that acquire a plant of this nature.

"There would appear to be a disincentive for government and policymakers to encourage water re-use when it has committed large chunks of money to a questionable pipeline and an even more questionable desalination plant.

"Don't get me wrong, the introduction of high-cost water only serves to enhance the economics of our plant, but a government water strategy developed with a view to addressing water certainty in 20, 30, 50 years, I don't think so." Who benefits?

A return to balance?

2008-11-15T10:37:00.005+11:00

It was nice to wake up to a somewhat more balanced article on the topic of recycled water from The Australian today. I noticed that it even used the term “recycled water” rather than the usually preferred alternative “recycled sewage”.

If I hadn’t sat through a series of increasingly ridiculous headlines during the last fortnight, I may have thought The Australian was interested in a balanced analysis of the facts regarding water supply issues for South East Queensland. Though, fortunately any such misunderstanding was quickly resolved by headlines like “flush then drink in the sunshine state” and “cyanide to be recycled for drinking”.

Andrew Bartlett commented that he hadn’t “seen such a single-minded, prolonged determination from The Australian to manufacture a major controversy since they used a minor issue as the spark for launching a two week long series of grossly distorted attacks against Griffith University’s Islamic Research Unit earlier this year”.

Maybe today’s article will signal a return to the balanced water supply reporting we once expected from The Australian by journalists such as Asa Walquist.

Squeamish opposition to a treated supply
Greg Roberts
The Australian , 15 Nov 2008

JUST 5km from the imposing spillway of Wivenhoe Dam, Brisbane's main water source, is a lesser known storage. Atkinson Dam was built in 1970 to ensure a regular supply of water to the Lockyer Valley, one of the country's prime fruit and vegetable growing centres, but it has been empty, or nearly so, for several years because of the drought.

Nestled midway between Atkinson and Wivenhoe dams is the township of Coominya, population 1750. Coominya is typical of many once quiet rural backwaters that are booming as the population of southeast Queensland continues to skyrocket. Although Coominya residents can see Wivenhoe Dam from their verandas, they, like tens of thousands of other southeast Queenslanders, manage adequately with rainwater tanks because they are not connected to a town water supply.

The water histories of Atkinson Dam and Coominya say much about the debate over whether water supplies to Australia's fastest-growing region should be augmented by recycled industrial effluent and sewage.

The Queensland Government insists that when 60 million litres of recycled waste water a day are pumped to Wivenhoe Dam starting in February or March, rising to 230 megalitres later next year, it will be safer than presently available water after being going through a seven-stage treatment process.

Critics say there is a risk of viruses, bacteria and chemicals entering the drinking supply and that recycled water should be used only as a last resort. The safety debate aside, the key question the Government struggles to address is whether it is necessary to use recycled water at this time.

Says Canberra Hospital microbiologist Peter Collignon: "I'm not against drinking recycled water. That's not the point. The point is that it should be used only if absolutely necessary. I do not believe it is currently necessary to use it in southeast Queensland."

Levels in the region's main drinking water storages have doubled since the Labor Government announced its recycled water plan. Forecasts suggest further heavy falls this summer in the catchments.

The state Opposition and other critics argue that under these unexpectedly encouraging conditions, the Western Corridor Recycled Water Project could be completed in the new year as planned, but with the tap to Wivenhoe Dam turned off. If Wivenhoe returned to a critically low level, the tap could be turned on.

In the meantime, recycled water could be used by power stations, as it is now, industry and farmers. A short feeder pipeline to pump the water to Atkinson Dam would do much to provide relief to hard-pressed primary producers.

Australian National University emeritus professor Patrick Troy says the recycled water plan has been sold to the community on the false premise that the climate outlook is so dire there is no choice. He claims that with each Brisbane household receiving 200,000 litres of water a year from the skies, there is no need for it. "There is plenty of rain to meet domestic needs with tanks," Troy says.

Deputy Premier Paul Lucas this week rejected the option of retro-fitting all homes with rainwater tanks on the basis of the $3.2 billion cost - $700,000 more than the recycled water plan - and because it would "jeopardise the future", a reference to the logistical difficulty of guaranteeing a healthy water supply to a large population with tanks.

In January last year, when the capacity of the region's three main storages averaged 23 per cent, then premier Peter Beattie announced that a planned referendum on recycled water for its 2.6 million residents would be abandoned - he had promised the water would be used only in an Armageddon situation - because the option was inevitable.

Beattie and his infrastructure minister, Anna Bligh, who has succeeded him as Premier, said they were advised by the Queensland Water Commission that a combined dam level of 40 per cent should trigger the emergency use of recycled water. Beattie and Bligh said that with continued below-average rainfall, it would take five to 10 years for the level to reach 40 per cent, even with recycled water.

The only significant development relevant to the debate since then has been that it has rained. Yesterday, the average level of the three storages was just over 41 per cent, above the supposedly critical cut-off point.

Asked why recycled water is needed if dam levels are not at critically low levels, water commission chief executive John Bradley says it is the rational option because there is no risk. "Given that all evidence from the plant's design and testing is demonstrating it is a safe and reliable source, it makes sense to use recycled water as part of our integrated strategy."

The first flows of recycled water to Wivenhoe coincide with the likely timing of the state election, with opinion polls suggesting the Bligh Government is in trouble.

Sensing an opportunity, the Liberal National Party Opposition signals that recycled water will be a key campaign issue.

But the Opposition is treading warily. Bligh ridiculed the LNP in parliament this week for supporting "kooky, wacky voodoo science". Labor will be helped in efforts to counter the LNP by outlandish and baseless claims from the leaders of vocal community groups that are campaigning against recycled water.

A statement this week by Citizens Against Sewage spokeswoman Aileen Smith asserted that "babies, children and old people will suffer most terribly". A video circulated on the internet by Gold Coast campaigner Ray Sperring alleged a Labor conspiracy to spread disease; Sperring claims falsely in the video that University of Queensland vice-chancellor Paul Greenfield, who heads a committee advising the Government on the issue, had expressed concerns about recycled water. Toowoomba campaigner Snow Manners helped prepare a booklet that quoted experts in presenting the argument against recycled water, but four scientists said they were misrepresented.

These campaigners, who also oppose the fluoridation of Queensland's water supply, have organised public meetings in Brisbane and on the Gold Coast this weekend to protest against recycled water.

The Government insists that experience overseas shows it is safe. Collignon says there are important differences between the Queensland plan and the overseas schemes highlighted by the commission.

While recycled water will constitute between 10 per cent and 25 per cent of Wivenhoe's supply, it makes up less than 1 per cent of Singapore's drinking water. Orange County in the US uses recycled water to replenish underground aquifers, not open dams. London and other cities use recycled water from rivers, but it has been diluted over long distances. "It's just not reasonable to compare what Queensland is doing with overseas," Collignon says.

The Government agrees there are differences, but says this misses the point that properly treated water is safe: "Under Queensland government regulations, purified recycled water will be the most thoroughly tested and consistently safe town water supply in Australia," says Queensland Health's Linda Selvey.

Media scrutiny of those regulations is another matter. Lucas took the extraordinary step this week of refusing The Australian permission to photograph waste disposal at the publicly funded Bundamba water treatment plant near Brisbane.

A perception of government secrecy does not help facilitate an informed and comprehensive debate about recycled water.

Water Factory 21

2008-11-13T09:00:00.005+11:00

I was searching through some old news articles when I came across this one from California in 1988.

It provides a useful historical perspective on the Orange County Water District’s water recycling scheme known as Water Factory 21. This was the precursor to the recently opened (and much larger) Groundwater Replenishment System in California.

The danger: Barriers keep ocean at bay and freshwater supplies safe
Frank Mickadeit
17 January 1988
The Orange County Register

The biggest threat to the potability of Orange County's tap water lies just to the west, waiting for water-district officials to let down their guard.

Unchecked in the past, it has sneaked in, rendered freshwater wells useless, and quietly retreated. The intruder? The Pacific Ocean. The Orange County Water District and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works have spent millions of dollars to hold back the sea, which, given a chance, will seep into local freshwater aquifers through underground channels.

Sea water, at about 32,000 parts per million salt, quickly can contaminate a ground-water supply, which, according to state guidelines, should not contain more than 500 ppm salt.

When the ground-water basin is at a high level, sea water cannot get in because the water pressure created by a full basin keeps it out. But when the freshwater basin is low, the pressure drops and the sea water can force its way in.

Numerous wells in coastal Orange County were lost to salt-water intrusion during the 1930s, '40s and '50s, when the water table dropped below sea level. The city of Newport Beach, for example, lost all of its freshwater wells and never has been able to reclaim them. It now imports water from the Metropolitan Water District of Los Angeles.

To stop the intrusion, water officials have built two sets of barriers.

Both work essentially the same way: A series of wells was drilled a few miles inland at points deemed most vulnerable to sea-water intrusion. Into the wells is pumped fresh water, which spills into aquifers located 90 feet to 420 feet underground.

The water helps keep the ground-water basin above sea level, which keeps the sea water out. Strung out over several miles, the wells form an underground blockade against the sea.

Without the barriers, "sea water could go as far as five to 10 miles inland over a long period of time," said James F. Reilly, director of water quality for the Orange County Water District. "Between the coast and five to 10 miles inland, there've probably been hundreds of wells that have been saved."

The first barrier, the Alamitos Barrier, was started in 1965 to cut off what is known as the Alamitos Gap, an underground channel at the point where the San Gabriel River flows into the Pacific Ocean.

Twenty-six injection wells and other facilities have been installed over the years on both the Los Angeles and Orange County sides of the river, at a cost of $3.5 million.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Works, which manages the barrier system, injects 6.5 million gallons of water into the Alamitos Barrier wells each day.

The system is "fairly effective," said Ramesh Doshi, an engineer who monitors the barrier. In general, water on the seaward side of the barrier has several times the saline level acceptable in drinking water, while ground water on the inland side is at or below acceptable levels.

In 1976, the Talbert Barrier was built to keep sea water from entering the gap where the Santa Ana River empties into the ocean.

The Orange County Water District drilled 23 water-injection wells along Ellis Avenue between the Santa Ana River and Newland Street in Fountain Valley.

Between 6 million and 7 million gallons of fresh water are injected into the Talbert Barrier wells each day.

Rather than use water from a source that could dry up in drought years, the district taps an unending supply: Orange County sewage.

At Water Factory 21 in Fountain Valley, the district takes treated sewage from the nearby Orange County Sanitation Districts and subjects it to a sophisticated cleansing process that includes reverse osmosis, in which the water is filtered through a microscopic membrane.

The result is water that meets state drinking-water standards and actually has only about one-fifth as much dissolved solids as water from the Colorado River. Instead of being sent to customers, however, that water is injected into the aquifers, where it mixes with the ground water that eventually is pumped out and sent to homes and businesses.

Water Factory 21 and related facilities cost the district nearly $21 million.

"It's a fairly costly source of water, but it is necessary to protect a very large quantity of cheap water," said Gordon Elser, spokesman for the water district.

Despite their successes, officials are concerned that sea water may be intruding in coastal areas where there are no barriers. Traces of sea water have shown up in special test wells in the Seal Beach and Bolsa Chica areas, Reilly said.

Although sea water hasn't appeared in any wells that produce drinking water, the agency wants to head off a potential intrusion and this year plans to look at those areas as possible candidates for barriers, Reilly said.

Not the NHMRC

2008-11-10T10:42:00.006+11:00

Occasionally when you read a news article, the author’s personal position on the topic is all too clear. Today The Australian continues its campaign against sustainable water management in Queensland.

It is unfortunate that the article below gives a (very) strong impression that the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) is opposed to indirect potable water reuse or has issued any type of warning to anyone. The impression that the NHMRC has issued to some warning to the Queensland Government is patently incorrect.

Professor Don Bursill is the Chair of an advisory committee to the NHMRC and he has expressed his personal opinion that he supports recycling, but only where it is absolutely necessary. We have discussed Don’s position on this previously. There is really no new news here. The Water Quality Advisory Committee that Don chairs made some important contributions to the current National Guidelines for Water Recycling and the overall position of the committee is embedded in the fact that such Guidelines exist and have been endorsed by the NHMRC.

The article then goes on (in the same breathless breath) to state that “the Gold Coast City Council launched an investigation into how unsafe recycled waste water was if put into a treatment plant's drinking water”. Yes, but of course they are not referring to water that has been treated and managed as an intended drinking water supply. They are referring to a system that provides a lower-level recycled water intended purely for non-potable purposes. It may seem like a subtle point, but the implications are significant.

Investigating the safety of recycled water and water management in general is a worthy task for any news source. However, it would help us all if the facts could be made clear rather than intertwined in a way that distorts their meaning. Just my opinion...

Recycle Sewage 'as a Last Resort'
Greg Roberts
November 10, 2008
The Australian

THE federal agency responsible for establishing national health standards has warned the Queensland Government it should not proceed with its $2.5 billion plan to recycle sewage and industrial waste for drinking water unless it is "absolutely necessary".

National Health and Medical Research Council water quality advisory committee chairman Don Bursill issued the warning as the Gold Coast City Council launched an investigation into how unsafe recycled waste water was if put into a treatment plant's drinking water.

Sixty million litres of recycled waste water a day will be pumped to the Wivenhoe Dam, Brisbane's main drinking water source, from early next year.

The Queensland Government promised in 2006 that recycled water would be used for the drinking supply of the 2.6 million residents of southeast Queensland only as a "last resort".

Since the undertaking was given, Wivenhoe and other storages in the region have been replenished following good rainfall, but the Government insists recycled water should be introduced now to guarantee future supplies.

Professor Bursill said he supported water recycling, but only if it were absolutely necessary.

"I think that recycling waste water for potable purposes should be a choice of last report," he said.

"There are opportunities for problems to occur and if it can be avoided, I think it should be. The maintenance of public health should be the primary concern."

He said the Queensland Government had prepared itself well, accepting the NHMRC's Australian Water Recycling Guidelines and introducing the Water Supply (Safety and Reliability) Bill. However, the main cause for concern was the potential for human error.

"It is worth reminding people that although technology can achieve recycling for potable purposes, about 80 per cent of the failures that have occurred in conventional water supply systems in affluent countries have been due to human error rather than technology issues," Professor Bursill said.

Human error was being blamed for a mistake at Gold Coast Water's Pimpana recycled water plant that resulted in staff drinking inadequately treated waste water.

The general public was not exposed to the water.

Gold Coast Mayor Ron Clarke said a staff member was believed to have been responsible for mixing up waste-water lines at the plant in September.

A pipeline was disconnected on Friday when the problem was uncovered.

Up to 240 employees and visitors who may have drunk water that was not fit for consumption are being contacted to determine if they had suffered any ill effects.

"Somebody has stuffed up and it should have been cross-checked before it happened," Mr Clarke said.

"If it had happened in the public works, it would have been disastrous. I am told that the checks are there to ensure that cannot happen."

Public meetings have been called in Brisbane on Saturday and on the Gold Coast on Sunday to protest against the recycled water plan.

Citizens Against Drinking Sewage secretary Aileen Smith said the Queensland Government could give no guarantees that a repeat of the cryptosporidium outbreak in 1993 in the US city of Milwaukee would be avoided.

More than 400,000 people fell ill and 100 died after drinking contaminated water from a treatment plant; the cause was never identified.

Recycled water will account for between 10 per cent and 25 per cent of southeast Queensland's drinking water, with the Government insisting it will be safe after treatment through a seven-stage process.

Water comes from rivers

2008-11-06T08:05:00.003+11:00

I was mildly amused by today's installment in The Australian.

It points out that much of the Thames River drinking water supply is sourced from discharged treated effluent. Apparently Stuart Khan reckons this is an example of indirect potable water recycling (albeit with much lower levels of treatment and management compared to SEQ).

However, as Prof Peter Collignon points out, places like London “don't use sewage as a primary source of water… they use rivers as water sources”.

Okay, well, then, excuse me sir, but, um, by that criterion, wouldn’t it be reasonable to say that Brisbane doesn’t (and wont) use “sewage as a primary source of water” either? Brisbane uses a river as its drinking water source. Brisbane takes its drinking water from the Brisbane River at Mt Crosby.

We can all close our eyes to what happens upstream if we want to… but its not the way that I would want to manage a drinking water supply for a large city like London or Brisbane.

Researchers Debate London's Lesson on Reuse of Water
Greg Roberts
The Australian
November 06, 2008

EXPERTS are divided on whether the drinking of recycled water from rivers in London and elsewhere is comparable with what is proposed for southeast Queensland.

University of NSW Water Research Centre contaminants researcher Stuart Khan said experience overseas had demonstrated the safety of drinking recycled water.

"London gets its water from the Thames River and there are 380 sewage treatment plants upstream from London which are putting effluent into the river," Dr Khan said.

"Despite more than 40 years' experience, no clear deleterious health effects from the deliberate recycling of purified water to a dam or river source of an urban water supply system have been observed."

Dr Khan said treatment processes being used in Queensland, including reverse osmosis and oxidation, were highly effective barriers to potential contaminants.

Australian National University microbiologist Peter Collignon said London and other centres that used recycled water from rivers for drinking -- such as Richmond in NSW -- could not be compared with what was planned for southeast Queensland.

"These places don't use sewage as a primary source of water," Professor Collignon said. "They use rivers as water sources, and rivers have much lower levels of potentially dangerous microbes and drugs than sewage.

"Sewage put into the rivers upstream has been in the rivers a long time and it's been heavily diluted by the time it gets to the people who drink the water after it is put through a filtering process. That is a long way from what will be happening in Queensland."

Singapore drinks recycled water too

2008-11-05T10:42:00.004+11:00

An article in The Australian today points out the fact that Singaporeans are drinking recycled “sewage” too. That fact in itself may not seem remarkable since there is treated effluent in most water supplies of most large cities.

However, what is more interesting in Singapore is the high level of treatment used (including reverse osmosis and UV disinfection). This has made the water highly suited for a number of applications including Singapore’s considerable electronic chip manufacturing industry. Only a very small proportion is then left over to recharge public drinking water reservoirs with (to provide about 1 per cent of the island's total potable water supply).

We have looked at the situation in Singapore a few times previously on this blog. One of the most interesting aspects for me was the 'NEWater Study' that was undertaken to investigate the health effects of using highly treated recycled water as a drinking water supply.

An Expert Panel was formed in 1999 to oversee the NEWater Study. This Expert Panel was comprised of both local and overseas members with expertise in human health and toxicology, microbiology, engineering, water technology, epidemiology, water quality and environmental chemistry.

A pilot scale (10 ML/day) advanced water treatment plant, known as the NEWater Factory was constructed and commenced operation in 2000. The NEWater Factory received water from the Bedok Sewage Treatment Works, which produced secondary treated effluent. The technologies employed at the NEWater Factory included microfiltration, reverse osmosis and ultraviolet radiation.

An extensive water quality sampling and monitoring program was devised for approximately 190 physical, chemical and microbiological parameters. Samples were tested from the plant feedwater, individual treatment module effluents, final produced NEWater, as well as untreated and treated traditional drinking-water supplies. Overall, almost 20,000 test results from seven sampling locations, including over 4,500 for NEWater were measured between November 1999-April 2002. The physical, chemical and microbiological data for NEWater were shown to be well within current (2002) US EPA and World Health Organization guidelines for drinking-water quality.

The health effects study was conducted with two components. A mice study was undertaken to assess long-term chronic toxicity and carcinogenicity, while a fish study was undertaken to assess toxic and estrogenic effects. In these studies, NEWater was compared with untreated reservoir water.

A sensitive mouse strain (B6C3F1) was used for the mice study. This strain is widely used for conducting long-term health effects studies of new pharmaceuticals. Groups of mice were fed 150-fold and 500-fold concentrates of NEWater and untreated reservoir water over a period of two years. The testing was undertaken with culls at 3, 12 and 24 months. At the time of publication of the expert review panel findings, the 3 and 12 month results were available and these indicated that exposure to concentrated NEWater did not cause any tissue abnormalities or health effects. The 24-month results were due to be completed in October 2002, but as far I know, remain unpublished. I would really like to see these if anyone is able to dig them up.

Fish studies were undertaken in accordance with a recommendation from a recent US National Research Council report. The purpose was to assess long-term chronic toxicity as well as the estrogenic potential (reproductive and developmental). The orange-red strain of the Japanese medaka fish (Oryzias latipes) was selected for the study due to the availability of an extensive biological database for this species.

The fish testing was conducted over a 12-month period with two generations of fish. The NEWater tests were initially undertaken during 2001 and both generations showed no evidence of carcinogenic or estrogenic effects from exposure to NEWater. The fish study was repeated in 2003 (due to some design deficiencies of the aquarium system, fish husbandry issues and weaknesses in the original study protocol) and confirmed the findings of no estrogenic or carcinogenic effects.

I don’t think that these types of live animal studies are necessarily justifiable for the South East Queensland scheme. However, it would be extremely helpful to see some of the existing data to confirm excellent performance of the advanced water treatment barriers.

Australia Talks

2008-11-03T19:33:00.002+11:00

Australia Talks is a topical discussion program on ABC Radio National hosted by Paul Barclay. As far as I know, it’s Radio National’s only ‘talk back’ program, but don’t let that put you off… it’s generally a forum for a fairly rational debate on issues of broad interest in the community.

Today’s topic was Recycled Water, focusing on the Western Corridor Recycled Water Project in South East Queensland. Guests included:

Professor Peter Collignon, Infectious disease physician and microbiologist, Clinical school, ANU.

Professor Paul Greenfield, Vice-Chancellor, University of Queensland, Chair of Queensland Water Commission's independent Scientific Expert Panel.

Snow Manners, resident of Toowoomba and campaigner against recycled water.

Anton Vigenser, Spokesperson Victorian Water Forum.

I very much enjoyed this program and thought that there were some interesting insights from callers. Both Peter Collignon and Snow Manners have contributed to discussion on this blog over the last two years and long-time readers will be familiar with most of their concerns. But I particularly enjoyed listening to Anton Vigenser and his clear enthusiasm for potable water recycling as an environmentally sustainable solution to address water shortages in Victoria.

I thought the callers were roughly evenly split for and against recycled water, -or perhaps slightly more in favour. That may somewhat reflect the ABC demographic, but there did appear to be a good representation from various states around the country.

If you missed it, you can listen to the program online here. I hope Mark from Brisbane is feeling better...

Greenfield and Lucas on Recycled Water

2008-11-03T07:46:00.002+11:00

The focus on recycled water continues at The Australian today. Unlike the last couple of days, today’s articles are much more positive and aimed at instilling community confidence in the use of recycled water to supplement drinking water supplies.

The first article below is an opinion piece from Prof Paul Greenfield, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Queensland and Chair of the Independent Scientific Expert Advisory Panel to the Queensland Water Commission.

The second is a news story featuring Queensland's Deputy Premier, Paul Lucas, marking the opening of Stage 2A of the western corridor recycled water project. Lucas took the obligatory swig of recycled water and made the obligatory positive remarks about the taste. I guess this is the recycled water version of baby-kissing during election campaigns. Its entirely meaningless, but the cameras need a tangible image.

Based on your existing point of view and underlying prejudices, I expect that you will think that its either about time someone took a proactive stance towards community discussion, or else that its all part of a sinister conspiracy-laden propaganda campaign. In either case, I’d be grateful for your comments.

Don't turn your nose up at purified recycled
Paul Greenfield
The Australian
November 03, 2008

THERE is nothing more fundamental for a community than its confidence in a safe and reliable water supply. Southeast Queensland is implementing a $2.5 billion project to supplement dam supplies with purified recycled water: waste water that has been treated to the highest standard.

As the chairman of the independent scientific expert advisory panel scrutinising the project, I welcome any rational, scientifically based debate on these issues. After all, the panel includes world leaders in toxicology, microbiology, environmental science and advanced water treatment. The panel members, from Australia and overseas, have many years' experience in ensuring that drinking water supplies, regardless of source, are safe for communities to drink.

Some commentators have expressed concerns about the safety of purified recycled water based on information that is manifestly incorrect, not based on evidence and reflects existing prejudices. Such statements, coming as they do from so-called experts, directly threaten the community's understanding of water quality and cause unnecessary worry.

In The Australian last week, microbiologist Peter Collignon and urban planner Patrick Troy incorrectly stated that the Queensland project posed a health risk to 2.6 million people in the region.

I have no doubt the design of the Queensland scheme and its proposed operation meet or exceed international best practice to provide a safe, reliable source of water.

It was claimed by Troy and Collignon that the Queensland advanced water treatment processes, including microfiltration, reverse osmosis and advanced oxidation, would remove only 92 per cent of antibiotics. This is simply wrong. It represents a misreading of a 2007 study.

The present sewage treatment plants achieve reductions of about this level at just one barrier out of seven, even before the advanced water treatment process occurs. The data the panel has reviewed indicates the Western Corridor Recycled Water Project is consistently achieving better than the standards for the removal of antibiotics enshrined in the Public Health Regulations of 2005.

It was also claimed that viruses would get through the treatment process. But there are multiple barriers in the advanced water treatment process capable of removing viruses.

They are at least 100 times larger than the pores of the reverse osmosis membranes used in the production of purified recycled water, which effectively provide a molecular filter.

Purified recycled water is far cleaner than much of the existing water that reaches the dam from run-off over land.

It was further claimed there was "nowhere else in the world" where purified recycled water was being used to the same extent as it would be in southeast Queensland, where it will represent on average less than 10 per cent of supply from Wivenhoe Dam. But the advanced technologies being used (microfiltration, reverse osmosis and advanced oxidation) are all proven and in use across the world.

Similar schemes provide significant volumes in Britain, Belgium, Singapore, Los Angeles and Orange County in California. The most similar scheme has been operating for 30 years in the Upper Occoquan in Virginia, which is a leading water provider to Washington, DC. In that case, purified recycled water averages about 9per cent of the annual inflow to the reservoir and up to 80 per cent during droughts.

Contrary to Troy's claim, extensive studies, including epidemiological research, have been carried out and show no evidence of negative health impacts. Anyone with a dispassionate understanding of recycled water would recognise that treated effluent - straight out of a conventional sewage treatment plant - already supplements our urban water supply in Australia in unplanned schemes.

For example, Sydney's Warragamba Dam receives upstream effluent from Goulburn and Lithgow, Melbourne's Sugarloaf Reservoir receives effluent from the Lilydale Sewage Treatment Plant at Olinda Creek, and Adelaide's Mount Bold Reservoir takes treated effluent from Hahndorf.

Canberra's treated effluent enters the Murrumbidgee system, where it is diluted and extracted into the water treatment plants of towns downstream of Canberra. These systems work because the processes installed are appropriate for the risks introduced.

Clearly, different risks need to be managed in larger, planned schemes such as the Western Corridor Recycled Water Project - where a seven-barrier risk-management system applies and independent regulation occurs - but the same principle applies.

The membrane and ultraviolet oxidation technologies have been tried and tested in many applications worldwide.

Microfiltration is used in the food industry to purify, among other things, bottled water, medicines and fruit juice.

Reverse osmosis is used in desalination and home water-filtration units. Advanced oxidation uses strong ultraviolet light to destroy impurities and is used by doctors and dentists to sterilise surgical instruments.

After passing through these barriers, the water will be blended and diluted to a small proportion of Wivenhoe Dam water before being treated in the multiple stages of the water treatment plant at Mount Crosby, and then finally distributed to people's homes.

By law, this water must comply with Queensland's recycled water standards and regulatory framework.

The standards are based on nationally agreed guidelines adopted by state and federal governments, which were set after extensive scientific review and consultation.

When we debate recycled water, the key test we should demand is that it is safe and provides no greater risk to a community than its present water supply.

The independent scientific expert panel reviewing southeast Queensland's purified recycled water scheme has an ongoing role during the project's implementation to provide rigorous independent assessments to ensure this requirement has been met.

Paul Greenfield is chairman of the Queensland Water Commission's independent scientific expert advisory panel and vice-chancellor of the University of Queensland.

Minister takes on troubled water
Natasha Bita
The Australian
November 03, 2008

"BEWDIFUL!" Paul Lucas, Queensland's Deputy Premier, smacks his lips as he skols a glass of crystal-clear recycled sewage. "Absolutely beautiful. Great stuff."

By the time he had repeated the stunt four more times for the cameras yesterday, Mr Lucas had proven his bladder was as strong as his stomach.

"I feel a bit waterlogged now," he quipped, before calling a press conference to spruik the safety of recycled effluent, which will provide up to a quarter of southeast Queensland's drinking water by February.

Queensland Water Commission staff were right behind their minister - drinking bottled water.

But they would not let inquisitive media sample the recycled liquid, because it had undergone only five of the seven stages in the treatment process.

Mr Lucas's public display of support came as new questions were raised about the timing of the introduction of recycled water into the Brisbane, Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast supplies.

A Queensland Water Commission spokesman confirmed hospital waste would be put into the system for recycling into drinking water.

"Hospital waste is very closely regulated, so they have very strict rules about what goes down the drains," he said.

And Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg has broken what was bipartisan support for the scheme.

Mr Springborg told The Australian that recycled water was being added "too soon" to the drinking supply.

The state's Liberal National Party has promised not to add recycled water to the drinking supply of southeast Queensland if the dams were over 40 per cent full, and they currently are 41.2per cent full.

He said that unlike state government policy to have recycled water as an integral part of the drinking supply, a Liberal National government would use recycled water only as a last resort.

"Nowhere around the world are they doing what's being proposed for Brisbane," he said. "We need to go into this very carefully, not the way the Government's rushed into this.

"You don't want to be adding recycled water to the system on a routine basis. It only takes one thing to go wrong and the whole system breaks down."

Mr Springborg said he anticipated that adding recycled water to the drinking water would become an election campaign issue.

The hundreds of families invited to inspect the Brisbane water purification plant at Luggage Point during a public open day yesterday were handed bottles of Coles spring water as they walked in.

"We haven't got any of our own bottled water because there's no place to do that at the moment," a Queensland Water Commission spokesman said.

"There's quite a lot of technical things to go through to put it into bottles."

Mr Lucas, Queensland's Minister for Infrastructure and Planning, brushed off claims that recycled sewage could not be guaranteed safe to drink, saying Queensland's waste-to-water would be better than Sydney and Canberra's drinking supplies.

He said industry was already using the recycled effluent from two other purification plants in southeast Queensland, to generate electricity.

But the effluent - filtered, purified and disinfected in a seven-stage process - would not be introduced into the drinking supply until February or March, after six months of certification and testing, he said.

"We want to make sure that everything is 150,000 per cent right, and it's been going very well," Mr Lucas said.

"If you're in Sydney and drinking water out of Warragamba Dam, it doesn't get any of this treatment. It goes into the river system from sewage treatment plants in Goulburn and Lithgow and goes into the Sydney supply.

"Canberra water waste goes into the Murrumbidgee system."

A controversial week in water

2008-10-31T21:59:00.003+11:00

It has been a controversial week with at least four very negative articles about the safety of recycled water appearing in newspapers across the country.

Wednesday’s focus was Prof Patrick Troy from ANU, quoted in a high profile story in The Australian stating that “it will not be possible to remove all biologically active waste molecules from the system”.

On the same day, Narelle Towie, the science writer for News Corporation’s Perth.Now website, was quoting water experts from Perth and Melbourne calling for potable water recycling as a sustainable measure to address water shortages in those cities.

On Thursday, The Australian had a second story ready to go featuring ANU microbiologist Prof Peter Collignon. Prof Collignon had apparently told the Australian that the “Namibian capital of Windhoek, located in a desert, had the only comparable system” to that proposed for South East Queensland. I’m not sure by what criteria Peter is comparing water treatment or water recycling systems. I’d have said Windhoek was one of the least comparable schemes. This news article is particularly worth reading for the interesting comments left by readers (except for the guy trying to flog his ‘water from air’ technology…there’s always one!).

Fears were somewhat allayed for a while today after Queensland Premier Anna Bligh confirmed “absolutely that she would drink recycled sewage in Queensland's tap water”… presumably not her own words!

But the week was concluded with The West Australian’s story “Recycled sewage can’t be made safe”. The story focused on Prof Collignon’s concerns, translated for a West Australian audience: “Just say it went wrong one day in 365, what do you do when you have all that (contaminated) water in your aquifer?”

The West Australian stated that Prof Collignon’s “views were backed by Don Bursill, head of the Federal Government’s National Health and Medical Research Council water quality advisory committee, who said even if the technology worked, human error, which accounted for some 80 per cent of water-quality incidents, could not be ruled out”.

Well at least we’re all talking about recycled water. Oh... except for us here in Sydney where we apparently have more pressing issues to discus. Can’t wait to see what the weekend brings!

Living and breathing recycled water today

2008-10-29T20:11:00.002+11:00

Today was one of those days where recycled water seems to permeate every aspect. I woke up early wanting to write a blog article on an urban water-themed textiles exhibition that I saw last night (more on that soon).

However, I was quickly distracted by an online news article from the Australian. The article titled ‘Recycled sewage 'will have bugs'’ quoted Prof Patrick Troy from the Australian National University (ANU) raising his concerns about the safety of recycled water. I plan to write an article examining those concerns soon too.

By 8 am I was picked up from home by a colleague for a drive out to Western Sydney to collect some water samples from a pilot-scale water recycling plant at St Marys. This is part of Sydney Water’s ‘Replacement Flows Project’, which I will also write a blog about someday!

Straight after the 9 am news, I took a phone interview with the local ABC Radio program in Ballarat, Victoria. Some members of the Ballarat community have called for a debate on indirect potable water recycling as a means for addressing the city’s water shortages. I may be exaggerating, but I think I spoke for about half an hour about the issues as I see them. I may have raised a few eyebrows by giving the opinion that reverse osmosis would not be a simple technology to implement in such a location (due to the need to dispose of the waste stream) and that I thought alternative treatment processes such as activated carbon treatment were probably more appropriate in that circumstance. I didn’t get around to discussing the likely existing value of the water (treated effluent) as it is currently used or disposed of, but clearly that will also be an important issue to consider.

Still on our way to St Mary’s I received my first of three calls for the day from Queensland. A briefing note on Patrick Troy’s comments was being prepared for Premier Anna Bligh and there was an interest in identifying the source of a figure (8 per cent) which had been quoted. I wasn’t immediately sure of the source, but was able to provide an opinion on a few other aspects of the article.

After collecting our samples from St Mary’s, I returned to my desk and sent a quick email to Patrick Troy. Troy responded that the figure was taken from a research paper that I had previously read by Queensland scientist, Andrew Watkinson. I called Andrew and ascertained that the study that was alluded to in The Australian was undertaken at an industrial water recycling plant (not one designed or managed for a potable water supply). I’ll write some more about the relevance of the findings from that study in a subsequent blog.

By the late afternoon, I read the following article from ABC news in Queensland:

Bligh says academic ill-informed on water claims
ABC Online, 29 October 2008.

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has dismissed the credentials of an academic who has cast doubt on the safety of recycled water.

Australian National University Professor Patrick Troy says it is impossible to remove all biological waste molecules before the water is added to south-east Queensland dams next year.

Ms Bligh says she has had fresh advice from Government scientists.

"I'm very disappointed with ill-informed comments by somebody who has no expertise in the field of water treatment, from someone whose expertise is in town planning," she said.

"His claims relate specifically to current water treatment of sewage, not to the water treatment that will be done in our recycling project."

The State Government will begin pumping tertiary-treated recycled water into dams early next year.

But Professor Troy says there is no guarantee on the osmosis technique.

"Although this reverse osmosis technique is a step up, the fact remains that it's not absolutely guaranteed," he said.

"The fact is that we don't know what the long-term effect will be of the operation of these systems."

I spent the remainder of the afternoon trying to focus on a review of quantitative methods for water recycling risk assessment that I am currently preparing for the National Water Commission. But that’s another topic that I really must catch up and write a decent blog post on one of these days...

The Victorian Water Forum

2008-10-27T18:36:00.003+11:00

A brief article from the ABC today mentions a new alliance of "Victorian protest groups" formed to lobby in favour of indirect potable water recycling (IPR) for Melbourne.

The Victorian Water Forum is made up of the Clean Ocean Foundation,Watershed Victoria, the former Your Water Your Say group and Plug the Pipeline.

As such, they appear to be comprised of an interesting and diverse group of demographics including farmers, surfers, environmentalists and concerned citizens.

The ABC article quotes the spokesperson Anton Visenger saying that:

"the best thing for Victoria would be not to have a massive desalination plant, to not take water from northern Victoria and to recycle the water that we're currently wasting and pumping out into the ocean".

Not having previously heard of one of the alliance members, -Watershed Victoria, I read through a few documents on their website and learned that they are a recently incorporated registered association who's stated aims are to:

Promote environmentally sustainable and socially responsible water policy in Victoria with a low carbon and economic cost.
Promote water policy in Victoria which reflects this state’s unique climate, natural & manmade features and the effects of impending climate change & population growth.
Educate Victorians about responsible water policy at an individual, regional and state level.
Encourage individuals, communities, businesses and governments to make positive changes towards sustainable water policy.
Work positively with other organizations with similar goals of responsible water policy.
Ensure Victorians water and water infrastructure remain in public ownership rather than costly private or publicprivate- partnership control.
Ensure that desalination (due to its massive energy, social, economic and environmental cost) is a last resort option, and then only as strategic supply near point of use while considering applicable planning schemes.

The Clean Ocean Foundation’s support of IPR is explicit, with a current headline on their website stating “Purified Recycled Water: The Smarter Water Option Ignored”.

I’ve become used to assuming that “protest groups” tend to be comprised of those members of our community who are opposed IPR, -not those in favour of it. So it is somewhat refreshing to be reminded that there is in-fact a diverse assortment of equally passionately held points of view.

Finding water for Sydney

2008-10-23T15:32:00.005+11:00

An article in today’s Sydney Morning Herald (online) reports on a speech given by NSW Premier Nathan Rees in Sydney this afternoon. In his speech, Mr Rees justified the construction of the Sydney desalination plant on the basis that the Sydney Catchment Authority (SCA) was sourcing “roughly half” of the water it supplies from the Shoalhaven catchment:

“Later in his speech, Mr Rees told the audience that Mr Iemma had warned him not to speak about something while he was water minister.
"The former premier wouldn't let me say this, but I can say it now: we transfer roughly half of our water supply each day up from the Shoalhaven River in the south.
"In February last year, in the middle of the worst drought in 100 years, if we hadn't been transferring water from that river, and if we hadn't had water restrictions on, our water supply would have been down to 7 per cent.
"Now that's a scary figure. That essentially means people are drinking mud."
He explained that it was vital for a city as large as Sydney to have a guaranteed water supply via a desalination plant.
"If we don't establish a water supply that is independent of rain, we cannot guarantee water supply.
"If you cannot guarantee water supply, you cannot guarantee the economy and if the NSW economy ... gets the wobbles, Australia gets the wobbles.
"The desalination plant enables us to tap into the world's biggest dam - the ocean."

The transfer of water from the Shoalhaven is certainly an expensive, energy-intensive and ultimately unsustainable way to provide water for Sydney. However, the extent of the transfers appears to have been somewhat exaggerated by Mr Rees and his solution simply doesn’t stack up.

A detailed water balance for the 2006/07 financial year is publically available on the Sydney Catchment Authority website (which makes Rees’ alleged gag by Iemma seem somewhat silly).

The SCA water balance shows total transfers from the Shoalhaven to the Warragamba supply system during 2006/07 to be 98 gigalitres (98,000 megalitres). By comparison, total water supplied to customers was 507 gigalitres. An additional 94 gigalitres were lost by evaporation from storages, 56 gigalitres were released under water management licences and 572 gigalitres were spilled from reservoirs or weirs.

By any reasonable calculation, the SCA supplied at least 1,229 gigalitres (507 + 94 + 56 + 572) to either people or the environment during 2006/07. Of that, 98 gigalitres came from the Shoalhaven, which accounts for about 8 per cent. Even calculated as a proportion of the amount directly supplied to customers, this is less than 20 per cent.

Admittedly, these numbers are derived from averages over the entire year and it is quite likely that the proportion supplied from the Shoalhaven during February 2007 was significantly greater. However, that’s why we have such enormous dams as Warragamba, -to allow us to buffer our water inflows and outflows over a period of years.

With Sydney’s dams currently two thirds full, if we really are transferring half our water each day from the Shoalhaven as Mr Rees has stated, he really should demand a stop to it. We currently have plenty of water, its raining cats and dogs and the Shoalhaven should run free.

Now, considering viable solutions to curb some of this pumping back in 2006/07, the NSW State Government’s answer was to build a seawater desalination plant. That plant will supply up to 90 gigalitres of water per year (that’s less than 8% of our total water supply).

Meanwhile Sydney Water discharges around 400 gigalitres of wastewater into the Pacific Ocean every year. Even capturing and reusing half of this would provide more than twice as much as is currently supplied from the Shoalhaven or is intended to be supplied by seawater desalination in the future.

So an expensive, energy-intensive seawater desalination plant may well replace an expensive, energy-intensive inter-basin water transfer to supply Sydney with about 8 per cent of our water. However, a water recycling scheme, treating water from our coastal sewage treatment plants, could actually increase the available water for Sydney, reduce ocean pollution and relieve some pressure from our already stressed natural water supplies. Just a thought...

The Shoalhaven River

Ballarat Businesses Back IPR

2008-10-18T07:55:00.007+11:00

I came across an interesting newspaper article this morning from the City of Ballarat in Victoria.

‘The Committee for Ballarat’, which I understand to be comprised of local community and businesses leaders is keen to investigate indirect potable water recycling (IPR) as part of a solution for the city’s water shortages.

The problem is that the Victorian Government has made a political decision not to support (planned) IPR schemes in that State. Instead, they have favoured alternative solutions for Melbourne such as the construction of Australia’s largest seawater desalination plant and a pipeline to transport water long distances from rural areas in the Goulburn Valley to the city.

I’ll be interested to follow where this story goes...

Treated water: to drink or not?
The Courier
18 October 2008

THE Committee for Ballarat will be leading a push towards recycled water for the city.

The committee's Water Task Team chair Tony Chew said yesterday that recycled water could provide a long-term solution to Ballarat's water woes and discussions were needed to avert a possible crisis in the future.

He said cities such as London, Singapore and Los Angeles had all embraced recycled water and Brisbane was also scheduled to start introducing waste water to their supply next year.

"We just want Ballarat to have a sustainable supply and we think recycled water is an important component of that supply plan. And at the moment the State Government is not entertaining recycled water for Victoria and we want to open that debate," Mr Chew said.

He said Ballarat could still run dry, particularly if low rainfall levels continued in the Goulburn Catchment area which supplies the Goldfields superpipe.

"It's too late to put the infrastructure in once we're down to that critical situation," he said.

The committee plans to approach the water minister and also the premier to get the issue of recycled water back on the table.

"We will bring with us a large body of community and industry representatives, people who are concerned as I am about the long-term sustainability of this city," Mr Chew said.

"We want to get all the debates happening and hopefully get the government and community on side to accept that recycled water is a viable solution."

Recycled water has been a contentious issue across Australia, most notably in drought-stricken Toowoomba where residents voted against drinking recycled waste water in July last year.

Mr Chew said many people considered recycled water as "drinking raw sewerage", but the reality "couldn't be further from the truth".

"Where we can we will introduce factual information into this debate," he said.

Central Highlands Water chair John Barnes said although the State Government had ruled out drinking recycled water he believed there was still a case for cities such as Ballarat "sitting at the top of the catchment".

"We welcome the committee of Ballarat opening this public debate," he said.

"(But) any debate needs to be discussed in a dispassionate and balanced way."

Ballarat Mayor Stephen Jones said the idea of drinking recycled water made him "squirm a bit", but it was definitely an option.

"They do it everywhere else around the world. Why can't we do it here?" he said.

Cr Jones said the Goldfields superpipe only provided Ballarat with a short-term solution.

Purified Recycled Water for Drinking: The Technical Issues

2008-10-01T17:18:00.005+10:00

After more than a year in the making, the Queensland Water Commission recently published a 270 page report titled Purified Recycled Water for Drinking: The Technical Issues.

Associate Professor Greg Leslie and I were invited to co-author Chapter 4 of the report titled ‘Advanced Water Treatment Technologies’. I’d be grateful for any feedback or questions from anyone who takes the time to read it...

Purified Recycled Water for Drinking: The Technical Issues
Table of Contents

Foreword
Acknowledgements
Contributors
Reviewers

1 Introduction and report overview
1.1 Background
Drought
Population growth and climate change
Meeting future water demands
1.1.1 Objectives of the technical papers
1.2 Synopsis of technical papers
1.2.1 Introduction to potable water treatment – Chapter 2
Introduction
Synopsis
1.2.2 Current wastewater treatment processes – Chapter 3
Introduction
Synopsis
1.2.3 Advanced water treatment technologies – Chapter 4
Introduction
Synopsis
1.2.4 Risk management of chemicals in recycled water – Chapter 5
Introduction
Synopsis
1.2.5 Management of microbial contaminants for indirect potable reuse – Chapter 6
Introduction
Synopsis
1.2.6 Current indirect potable reuse schemes – Chapter 7
Introduction
Synopsis
1.3 References

2 Introduction to potable water treatment
Summary
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Australian drinking water guidelines
2.3 Why treat water?
2.4 Conventional water treatment
2.4.1 Dissolved air flotation
2.5 Disinfection
2.5.1 Chlorine
2.5.2 Chloramine
2.5.3 Ozone
2.5.4 Ultraviolet disinfection
2.6 Other treatment options
2.6.1 Adsorption processes
2.6.2 Oxidation
2.6.3 Biological filtration
2.6.4 Anionic resins
2.6.5 Membrane filtration
2.7 Monitoring
2.8 Potable water treatment in south east Queensland
2.9 Conclusions
2.10 Acknowledgements
2.11 References

3 Current wastewater treatment processes
Summary
3.1 Introduction
3.1.1 Outline of this chapter
3.1.2 Compounds in wastewater
3.1.3 Overview of wastewater treatment
3.2 History of wastewater treatment
3.2.1 The need for wastewater collection and treatment
3.2.2 Early wastewater treatment methods
3.2.3 The development of secondary treatment
3.2.4 The development of tertiary treatment
3.3 Steps in wastewater treatment
3.4 Nutrient removal processes
3.4.1 Biological nitrogen removal
3.4.2 Biological phosphorus removal
3.4.3 BNR operation
3.4.4 Common BNR plant configurations
3.4.5 Developments in BNR technology
3.5 Removal of micropollutants in wastewater treatment
3.5.1 Factors affecting biological removal of micropollutants
3.5.2 Performance of micropollutant removal
3.6 Reliability of modern wastewater treatment plants
3.6.1 Reliability of WWTPs in meeting licence conditions
3.6.2 Existing and future monitoring and controls
3.6.3 Importance of source control
3.7 Treatment processes in South East Queensland
Bundamba wastewater Centre
Oxley Creek wastewater treatment plant
Gibson Island wastewater treatment plant
Luggage Point wastewater treatment plant
Goodna wastewater treatment plant
South Caboolture wastewater treatment and reclamation plants
3.8 Conclusions
3.9 References

4 Advanced water treatment technologies
Summary
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Multiple barrier approach to water treatment
4.3 Objectives of advanced water treatment process
4.4 Technologies for removal of suspended solids
4.4.1 Membrane technologies
4.4.2 Monitoring the effectiveness of membranes
4.5 Removal of dissolved chemicals
Rationale for removal of organics
Rationale for residual nutrient removal
Rationale for removal of residual salt
4.5.1 Removal technologies for dissolved chemicals
Semi-permeable membranes for reverse osmosis processes
Adsorptive treatment processes
Advanced oxidation processes
Ion Exchange processes
4.6 Disinfection Processes
Chlorination
Ozonation
Ultraviolet light
Oxidation
4.7 Stabilisation
Rationale for stabilisation
Addition of sodium hydroxide
Lime stabilisation
4.8 AWT processes in South East Queensland
4.9 Conclusions
4.10 Acknowledgements
4.11 References

5 Risk management of chemicals in recycled water
Summary
5.1 Introduction
5.1.1 Scope of this chapter
5.2 Risk assessment framework
5.2.1 Issue identification
5.2.2 Hazard assessment - toxicological
5.2.3 Exposure assessment
5.2.4 Risk characterisation
5.3 Risk perception and risk communication
5.3.1 The case of endocrine disruption
5.4 Assessment guidelines
5.4.1 Australian drinking water guidelines (2004)
5.4.2 enHealth Council guidelines
5.4.3 National guidelines for water recycling (2006)
5.5 Hazard assessment for chemicals
5.5.1 Recognised chemical contaminants
5.5.2 Unknown chemicals and/or complex mixtures
5.5.3 Chemicals in water
Natural and synthetic hormones
Synthetic Industrial chemicals
Pharmaceuticals and personal care products
Antiseptics
Cyanotoxins
Treatment by-products
Radiological water quality
Pesticides and heavy metals
5.5.4 Dose-response relationships
5.6 Exposure assessment
5.6.1 Measurement methods
Chemical analyses of individual compounds
Complex mixtures and detecting ‘unknown chemicals’
5.6.2 Source controls
Trade waste controls
Hospital waste
5.6.3 Removal of organic contaminants in wastewater
Fate and partitioning
Removal of selected endocrine disruptors from WWTPs in SE Queensland
5.6.4 Removal of chemicals during AWT
5.7 Risk characterisation
5.7.1 Epidemiology
Cohort (longitudinal) studies
Case-control
Cross-sectional studies
Ecological studies
5.7.2 Experimental toxicology
Biomarkers of exposure and/or effect
Whole animal testing
Toxicological Studies on IPR
5.7.3 Combining observational epidemiology with experimental toxicology
5.7.4 Other methods for monitoring and assessment
Biosensors
Sampling techniques
Quantitative structure–activity relationship (QSAR)
Integration of chemical and bio-analytical methods
5.8 Conclusions
5.9 References
Appendix 1
List of regulated chemicals from ADWG and their identification as EDCs
Regulated pesticides from ADWG and their identification as EDCs

6 Management of microbial contaminants for indirect potable reuse
Summary
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Pathogenic microorganisms potentially present in wastewater
6.2.1 Bacteria
6.2.2 Viruses
Box 6.1 Can I get AIDS from drinking water?
6.2.3 Protozoa
6.2.4 Prions
Box 6.2 Can I get mad-cow disease from drinking water?
6.3 Removal of microorganisms from water
6.3.1 Wastewater treatment
6.3.2 Disinfection processes
6.3.3 Environmental buffer
6.3.4 Potable water treatment
6.4 Monitoring the removal of microorganisms from purified recycled water
6.5 Guidelines for water quality and microbial contaminants
6.5.1 Australian drinking water guidelines
6.5.2 National guidelines for water recycling
6.5.3 EnHealth guidelines
6.6 The management of microbial risks in water
6.6.1 Risk management in the National Guidelines for Water Recycling
6.6.2 Risk management in the enHealth guidelines
6.7 Acknowledgements
6.8 References

7 Current indirect potable reuse schemes
Summary
7.1 Introduction
7.2 United States of America
7.2.1 Upper Occoquan Sewage Authority, Northern Virginia
7.2.2 Groundwater Recharge in California
Box 71 Presence of N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) in recycled water
7.2.3 Scottsdale Water Campus, Arizona
7.2.4 Gwinnett County Georgia
7.3 Singapore
7.4 Windhoek, Namibia
7.5 Veurne-Ambacht, Belgium
7.6 Berlin, Germany
7.7 United Kingdom
7.7.1 Thames River
7.7.2 Essex and Suffolk Water
7.8 Examples within Australia
7.9 Relevance to South East Queensland
7.10 Acknowledgements
7.11 References

Appendix
Abbreviations and glossary
Glossary

Back on the Blog

2008-10-01T17:07:00.004+10:00

Well it has been a long time between drinks, so to speak. I haven’t posted a blog here since May and it has just turned October!

2008 has been a very busy year for me, -at work and away from it. However, running this blog has been a rewarding activity and I have missed it like an old friend. It was also a very effective way of keeping myself up-to-date with new developments at home and overseas. I feel like a have a much more balanced perspective on social attitudes and community sentiment when I am reading the blogs and receiving feedback to things I have written. So I am back on the blog with a fresh resolve to keep it active and updated.

I hope some of the friends and acquaintances that I met during the Toowoomba, Goulburn, Canberra and Brisbane debates of 2006/07 will stop in again and I hope to spark the interests of some new readers and contributors over time.

Sewer to Spigot: Recycled Water

2008-05-20T08:03:00.002+10:00

The Wall Street Journal ran a very good article on Indirect Potable Water Recycling in the USA this week. The article, authored by Anjali Athavaley and titled “Sewer to Spigot: Recycled Water” was published in the Real Estate section of the Journal on May 15th. It’s long, but well worth a read as it provides a good description of the Orange County Groundwater Replenishment System in California, as well as current plans in San Diego.

The article also mentions the 1998 US National Research Committee report on Indirect Potable Reuse (IPR). We have previously discussed this report and the implications of its description of IPR as an option of “last resort”. So I was interested to read the Chair of the Committee’s recent comments quoted on that point:

That wasn't always the case. A National Research Council committee concluded in a 1998 report that reclaimed or purified wastewater can be used to supplement drinking-water sources only as a "last resort" and "after a thorough health and safety evaluation." But Jim Crook, the chair of the committee, says that since that report was issued, there have been a great deal of advances in treatment of wastewater, such as the use of ultraviolet light after reverse osmosis.

"We know a lot more than we did back then, and we can treat it to higher levels," says Mr. Crook, who is a member of an independent advisory panel created to review the Orange County system and a similar independent panel that looked at wastewater recycling in San Diego a few years ago. In Orange County, the purified wastewater is cleaner than the county's groundwater supply, he says.

On the issue of community attitudes, I quite liked the following paragraphs:

People who learned about the system early on and were involved in county politics say they have no health concerns. "The public gets a little nervous about it," says Ralph Bauer, 77, a retired research chemist and former Huntington Beach mayor who was on the City Council from 1992 to 2002. But "you can actually make the water purer than what you would get out of rivers and lakes."

Still, some residents find it unsettling. "I would never touch it, nor would I give it to my dog to drink," says Carina Sampson, a 29-year-old hairstylist in Anaheim, Calif., who found out about Orange County's groundwater-replenishment system through a friend a few months ago. Anaheim is one of the areas that will eventually receive water that has passed through the new wastewater-treatment process.

Ms. Sampson and her Chihuahua both drink bottled water exclusively. She says of the recycled waste: "I just find it repulsive regardless of what it goes through."

Read the full article here.

Recycled Water Too Clean?

2008-04-20T08:47:00.002+10:00

I found this interesting article in The Age on Friday. It refers to concerns that have been raised regarding the suitability of using highly treated recycled water for enhanced river flows.

The concern is not that the water is contaminated, but rather that the water may be ‘too clean’.

After treatment by reverse osmosis, recycled water tends to contain only very low concentrations of important minerals such as calcium, magnesium and potassium, -all of which are essential to sustain aquatic life. Furthermore, there is none of the microscopic algae and other phytoplankton, which fish feed on, or nutrients required to grow such plants.

In most schemes, subsequent to reverse osmosis, water is ‘remineralised’, typically with calcium carbonate prior to transport or re-use. I would expect that in most environmental flow situations, further natural remineralisation and mixing with algae and nutrients would occur very quickly. But perhaps it is possible that if the water was not carefully adjusted prior to release, and then contributed (by far) the major portion of the environmental flow, then a waterway could indeed become deficient in some important chemical and microbial components.

There are a number of major environmental flow supplementation schemes currently under consideration or development around Australia (in Melbourne, Sydney and South East Queensland). Accordingly, I think this question warrants a closer look. The overall mineral and nutrient balance from various receiving waters to a river or reservoir is something that should be considered when assessing the environmental impacts of any proposed scheme.

Recycled Water 'Too Clean' for Yarra, Say Critics
By Peter Ker
The Age, April 18, 2008

A VICTORIAN Government proposal to divert billions of litres of recycled sewage into the Yarra River could hurt the waterway because the water could be "too clean", environmental groups have warned.

The Government is searching for the best way to use the 100 billion litres that will be recycled annually at the Eastern Treatment Plant plant at Bangholme once an upgrade is completed in 2012.

The Yarra proposal is one of two that have been under consideration since late last year. The second is piping the recycled water to the Latrobe Valley for use at power stations.

But Green groups have become concerned about the Yarra plan since briefings at which the Government made it clear that more water would be removed from the Upper Yarra for drinking if the recycled scheme went ahead.

That means the recycled water would be more of a substitute for river water rather than additional flows, with water diverted into Melbourne's dams just two kilometres upstream of where the recycled water would be piped into the river.

Those opposed to the plan include some of the most vocal campaigners for increased environmental flows in the river, with Environment Victoria spokeswoman Leonie Duncan saying that she had serious concerns.

"The purified recycled water that will be coming from the Eastern Treatment Plant will be the equivalent of distilled water," she said.

"It sounds bizarre, but it will actually be too clean for the Yarra. It will lack that real physical and chemical composition that is required to feed the chain of life in a river."

These claims were backed by Yarra Riverkeeper Ian Penrose, who said the idea of substituting recycled water for Yarra water was appalling.

"If it provides additional water to the Yarra and they take no more water out, we would be much more enthusiastic about this," he said.

"It's because they are going to do this as an excuse to take more water out that we are angry."

Despite being funded by Government-controlled bodies such as Melbourne Water and the Environment Protection Authority, Mr Penrose has been vocal in his criticism of the Brumby Government for failing to honour election promises to increase environmental flows in the Yarra.

He said recycled water was "better than no water" but was "a second choice to natural river water".

"The river needs the little bits and pieces in it as part of life," he said.

The Government is expected to decide how to use the recycled water when the two business cases are completed later this year.

Water Minister Tim Holding said he was aware of the argument that recycled water might not be ideal for river flows.

"That is why a business case is being done," he said.

"The purpose of having a multiple set of options is to give us the flexibility to select the superior option … that will address those issues as to what an environmental flow should look like."

Solid waste or resource?

2008-04-02T22:02:00.004+11:00

This week some of my workmates and I paid a quick visit to Toowoomba in South East Queensland. The primary purpose of our visit had very little to do with recycled water (we do occasionally work on other things, you know!).

We were visiting for a project which involves investigating the fate of contaminants in waste products from beef cattle feedlots. We’re working with the meat and livestock industry to help them better understand how different management practices affect the degradation of chemical contaminants and the inactivation of pathogens.

If you’ve ever visited a large feedlot (something that all carnivores should do at some time), then you may have an idea of the scale of the challenges associated with managing the waste products from 20,000 head of cattle. If not, then maybe the photos below might give some indication..

On Monday we visited three different feedlots and the management practices employed by them were noticeably quite different. However, a common theme was the need to remove manure from the feedlot pens and store it in a way that allowed it to be sufficiently stabilised for it to then be utilised as valuable by-product of the feedlotting process.

One of the three feedlots managed the manure by mounding it within the pens. Another focused on stockpiling it outside the pens for up to 12 months and then sieving it into two grades for various types of land application. The third feedlot went one step further by employing carefully managed composting processes in order to convert what was previously a waste product into a significantly more valuable fertiliser. All three feedlots typically sell their processed manure to local farmers for the production of crops such as sorghum.

Since we were going to be too late to fly back to Sydney on Monday night, we decided to stay over in Toowoomba. This gave us the opportunity to pay a quick visit to the Wetalla Water Reclamation Facility on Tuesday morning. I was particularly interested to visit this plant to find out more about the 43-year contract that had recently been achieved to sell 3000 ML/year recycled water (treated effluent) to New Acland Coal Mine by March 2009. This agreement involves selling the effluent from the plant to the coal mine, which is then responsible for pumping the water about 40 kilometres to wash coal at the mine. The price that the coal mine have agreed to pay is $1.30 per kilolitre, which is roughly equivalent to the average consumer price for drinking water here in Sydney. This gives some indication of the value of water security for a thirsty industry in a dry region.

Of course, not everybody is happy. The effluent from the Wetalla plant is currently discharged to Gowrie Creek and subsequently used by irrigators downstream. The irrigators had previously rejected the opportunity to secure this water for $0.15 per kilolitre in 2000. However, they are now unsurprisingly unhappy about losing this free resource. I think there are lots of interesting (and potentially quite heated) discussions to be had on this topic, -covering such issues as water rights and property, environmental justice, public good, etc. But I’m not going to get into any of them now..

One feature of the Wetalla plant that I was completely unaware of is the new (not quite completed) solar sludge drying facility. Sludge is a byproduct of sewage treatment, which contains a significant amount of solid material, primarily as a result of biological growth during secondary treatment.

Depending on how the sludge is treated and further processed, it can still contain around 90% water. Its composition and sheer volume produced can render sludge disposal one of the major challenges (and costs!) associated with wastewater treatment. Sydney Water, for example, transports most of its sludge on tanker trucks to western NSW towns such as Parkes for land application. The sludge from Wetalla is also trucked to local destinations for disposal and this is a significant cost to the plant (and thus to Toowoomba City Council and the local community).

As a means of reducing the trucking costs, Toowoomba City Council have commissioned the development of an innovative solar-powered sludge drying facility. This is observable as the long rectangular shed in the bottom right-hand corner of the below aerial photograph.

After mechanical dewatering, the sludge is dispersed along the floor of the facility, where it is turned and aerated to facilitate drying. After some period of time (which is variable, depending on the weather), a completely dry hard product is produced with a small fraction of the wet sludge mass. While we learnt about the process from the folks at Wetalla, they seemed quite impressed with the significant reductions in disposal costs which they would achieve; and fair enough -they are significant. However, personally, I couldn’t help thinking about the cattle feedlots that we had visited the previous day and the success that they had had with converting a waste product into a valuable resource. I wanted to bring some of the dried sludge pellets home to try them out as plant fertiliser. If I find some spare time this year (yeah, right!), I’d be interested to do some analyses for contaminants such as pesticides and heavy metals. Something tells me that the City of Toowoomba has a valuable product to sell, which should be making –not just saving- money to dispose of.

Sometimes it can be difficult to distinguish a valuable recourse from a troublesome waste product. Factors such as drought, population growth, climate change, fossil fuel availability and nutrient exhaustion may cause us to seriously reassess our perspective sometime very soon.

Melbourne passes 20% recycling target

2008-02-27T21:27:00.005+11:00

Back towards the start of this decade, the Victorian State Government announced a target to recycle 20% of Melbourne’s treated effluent by 2010.

At the time, it seemed an impressive and ambitious target. However, the drought that followed, increased the urgency and pace of change faster than anyone had predicted.

An article in The Age today reports that the recycling rate for Melbourne actually exceeded 22% during 2006/07.

Similar targets were also announced for Perth (20% by 2012) and Canberra (20% by 2013). More recently, Sydney Water announced a target of around 10% (70 gigalitres/year) by 2015. It will be interesting to see if/when these other targets can be achieved...

Melbourne boosts waste water recycling
The Age
February 27, 2008

More than one-fifth of Melbourne's waste water is now being recycled, two years ahead of schedule, the Victorian government says.

Melbourne recycled 22.5 per cent of its wastewater in 2006/07, Victorian Premier John Brumby said.

"Since 1999 the use of recycled water has increased from around 14 billion litres per year to 65 billion litres," Mr Brumby said.

Water Minister Tim Holding said most of the recycled water was being used by industry, local councils and new suburbs, while some was used on site by water treatment plants.

In 2002, the government had aimed to recycle 20 per cent of Melbourne's wastewater by 2010.

"A key component of the next stage of the government's water plan is to upgrade the Eastern Treatment Plant to provide more than 100 billion litres of Class A recycled water for non-drinking purposes by 2012," Mr Holding said.

Mr Holding said dual pipe systems were being installed directly to new residential developments to provide recycled water across Melbourne's suburbs.

"Over the next 25 years more than 40,000 new homes in Melbourne's southeast will connect to recycled water as part of a dual-pipe system, which will save about four billion litres of water each year," Mr Holding said.

"Recycled water is piped directly to homes in new housing developments for garden watering, toilet flushing and car washing - reducing water use in these homes by about a third."

However, Mr Holding said the government was yet to consider its next target.

Solving the Global Water Crisis

2008-02-20T17:49:00.000+11:00

Daniel Simpson is a UK based journalist and researcher who keeps a blog titled ‘Untitled’. This week, he posted a great article called 'Wet Dreams? Solving the Global Water Crisis'.

As part of his research for ‘Wet Dreams?’, Daniel went to the extent of speaking to various people from around the world, -including yours truly... Since I can’t resist promoting an article in which I appear to say a few things that sound vaguely sensible, here’s a link to Daniel’s. It’s long but its well worth a few minutes of your time for an excellent international perspective on the future management of global water resources.

...Oh and thanks to Sarah for making the connection!

NSW Govt Wrong on Water

2008-02-05T22:03:00.000+11:00

The NSW State Government’s lack of interest in major water recycling in and stormwater harvesting projects continues to provide effective campaign fodder for the opposition coalition. This article from today’s Sydney Morning Herald (and also appearing in most of the other major daily newspapers) sums up the situation.

Sydney’s dams are rapidly filling and currently the rain just keeps on falling from the sky. Of course this wont last forever, but we could be in for a particularly wet 2008. What happens if Warragamba Dam is overflowing the day that Morris Iemma is set to flick the switch on Sydney’s seawater desalination plant? The public-private partnership arrangement will entail some obligation for Sydney to purchase water from the plant operators, regardless of whether we actually need it. The NSW Government may actually find themselves praying for the rain to cease…

Interesting times ahead.

NSW Govt Wrong on Water: opposition
Sydney Morning Herald
February 5, 2008.

With more than 120mm of rain falling in Sydney over the past two days the NSW opposition says the government has its water priorities wrong by failing to develop recycling and stormwater harvesting initiatives.

Some parts of Sydney have received their average February rainfall in the past 48 hours, according to the Bureau of Meteorology, and rain is forecast to continue into next week.

"The rain just demonstrates how wrong the Iemma Labor government has got its priorities in relation to water," Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell said in a statement.

"After sitting on their hands and doing nothing for 12 years, Labor panicked a month out from the state election and signed a contract to push ahead with an expensive and energy-guzzling desalination plant at Kurnell before dam levels reached the specified 30 per cent level. Dam levels are now above 60 per cent.

"This is despite virtually every water expert urging the state government to provide additional resources for water recycling and stormwater harvesting.

"Desalination is nothing but an expensive, carbon-belching white elephant, opposed by the people of Kurnell and greater Sydney."

A spokesman for Water Utilities Minister Nathan Rees has said previously that water costs would rise to cover the cost of the desalination plant, but that it was a small price to pay.

"Average water bills would probably rise by $2 per week over a four year period and that's a small price to pay to guarantee water supplies," the spokesman said.

"The long distance forecast is for drier, warmer weather in the face of climate change and facing an increasing population."

As this week's rain sparks calls for assistance to the State Emergency Service, Premier Morris Iemma has announced an expansion of the National Insurance Hotline.

Since 11pm (AEDT) Monday the SES has received 139 calls for assistance and a spokesman said many of those were "re-calls" from residents whose property had already been damaged by recent storms and was awaiting repair.

The insurance hotline (1300 663 464), designed to help people deal with their insurance companies, will now operate five days a week, Mr Iemma says.

"If consumers have been denied a claim for storm damage, they can now call the hotline and get free legal advice," he said in a statement.

Time to drink toilet water

2008-02-05T07:41:00.000+11:00

I always enjoy a straight-talking commentary on indirect potable water recycling. I found a particularly good one in the Dallas Morning News over the weekend. Here it is...

It's time to drink toilet water
By Eilene Zimmerman
The Dallas Morning News
Sunday February 3, 2008.

Recycling sewage is safe and efficient, so why aren't we doing it? asks EILENE ZIMMERMAN

Officials in Orange County, Calif., last month opened the world's largest water-purification project, among the first "toilet-to-tap" systems in America.

The Groundwater Replenishment System is designed to take sewage water straight from bathrooms and – after an initial cleansing treatment – send it through $490 million worth of pipes, filters and tanks for purification. The water then flows into nearby lakes, where it seeps through clay, sand and rock into aquifers in the groundwater basin. Months later, it will travel back into the homes of half a million Orange County residents, through their kitchen taps and showerheads.

It's a smart idea, one of the most reliable and affordable hedges against water shortages, and it's not new. For decades, cities throughout the U.S. have used recycled wastewater for nonpotable needs, like agriculture and landscaping; because the technology already exists, the move to potable uses seems a no-brainer. But the Orange County project is the exception. Studies show that the public hasn't yet warmed to the notion of indirect potable reuse – or toilet-to-tap, as its opponents would have it. Surveys like one taken last year in San Diego show that a majority of us don't want to drink water that once had poop in it, even if it's been cleaned and purified. A public outcry against toilet-to-tap in 2000 forced the city of Los Angeles to shut down a $55 million project that would have provided enough water for 120,000 homes.

But many cities in the U.S. are in the midst of a severe water crisis. Rising populations and ongoing droughts mean we don't have enough water where we need it.

If we don't learn to deal with drinking toilet water, we're going to be mighty thirsty.

Only 2.5 percent of the water on Earth is freshwater, and less than 1 percent of that is usable and renewable. The Ogallala Aquifer – North America's largest, stretching from Texas to South Dakota – is steadily being depleted. And Americans are insatiable water consumers – our water footprint has been estimated to be twice the global average.

The ocean provides another source of potable water. Large-scale treatment of seawater already occurs in the Middle East, Africa and in Tampa Bay, Fla. Taking the salt out of ocean water sounds like a good idea, but it's economically and environmentally far more expensive than sewage-water recycling.

Orange County water officials estimate desalinated water costs between $800 and $2,000 per acre-foot to produce, while its recycled water runs about $525 per acre-foot. Desalination also uses more energy (and thus produces more greenhouse gas emissions), kills tiny marine organisms that get sucked up into the processing plant and produces a brine byproduct laced with chemicals that goes back into the ocean.

What desalination doesn't have, though, is the "yuck" factor of recycled sewage water. But seawater, like other sources of nonrecycled water, is at least as yucky as whatever comes through a toilet-to-tap program. When you know how dirty all this water is before treatment, recycling raw sewage doesn't seem like a bad option.

Hundreds of millions of tons of sewage are dumped into rivers and oceans, and in that waste are bacteria, hormones and pharmaceuticals. Runoff from rainwater, watering lawns and emptying pools is the worst, sending metals, pesticides and pathogens into lakes, rivers and the ocean. The water you find near the end of a river system like the Colorado or the Mississippi has been in and out of municipal sewers several times.

Whatever winds up in lakes and rivers used for drinking is cleaned and disinfected along with the rest of our water supply. Still, a recent analysis of San Diego's drinking water found several contaminants, including ibuprofen, the bug repellent DEET and the anti-anxiety drug meprobamate.

No treatment system will ever be 100 percent reliable, and skeptics who worry that pathogens in sewage water will make it past treatment and into our drinking water should worry about all drinking water, not just the water in a toilet-to-tap program.

The fact is, supertreated wastewater is clean enough to drink right after treatment. It's been used safely this way (in a process known as direct potable reuse) for years in the African nation of Namibia. The EPA has conducted research in Denver and San Diego on the safety of direct potable reuse and found that recycled water is often of better quality than existing drinking water.

And although putting water into the ground, rivers or lakes provides some additional filtering and more opportunities for monitoring quality, the benefits of doing it that way are largely psychological. In its 2004 report on the topic, the EPA concluded that Americans perceive this water to be "laundered" as it moves through the ground or other bodies of water, even though in some instances, according to the report, "quality may actually be degraded as it passes through the environment."

Despite the public's concerns, a few U.S. cities have already started to use recycled wastewater to augment drinking water. In El Paso, indirect potable reuse supplies 40 percent of the city's drinking water; in Fairfax, Va., it supplies 5 percent.

Unless we discover a new source of clean, potable water, we're going to have to consider projects like these to make wastewater a reusable resource. The upfront costs for getting a system in place and educating the public may be steep, but it would save us the expense – both economic and environmental – of finding another river or lake from which we can divert water.

Eilene Zimmerman is a San Diego-based journalist who writes about business and political and environmental issues.

Indirect Potable Reuse for India

2008-01-24T16:32:00.000+11:00

Planned indiret potable reuse (IPR), using advanced water treatment processes such as membrane filtration, has predominatly been the preserve of highly developed weathly countries such as the USA (and soon, Australia). However, it seems that such high-tech IPR practices may not be so endemic to such highly developed countries for very much longer.

An article in today’s Khaleej Times (published from Dubai, UAE) reports plans afoot to develop an advanced membrane-based IPR scheme for the city of Bangalore in India.

Bangalore is, in fact, among the most developed cities in India, thanks largely to a thriving technology industry. The New York Times reported in 2006:

“Bangalore is now home to more than 1,000 technology firms, ranging from tiny two-person start-ups to large multinational companies like Intel, Texas Instruments and Cisco Systems. In a teeming city of seven million, the industry employs about 300,000 workers, who are turning into a rising middle-class…”

“Young, comparatively well-paid technology workers, many in their 20s, dress in the latest American and European clothing labels, speak in accented English, drive foreign cars and shop in fancy malls. Home prices are shooting up in the city, and in the last couple of years, local newspapers advertise apartments and villas costing more than $1 million.”

Nonetheless, advanced water and sanitation infrastructure are not characteristics that most Indian cities are known for. Sewage is discharged into major rivers from many Indian cities after only very poor or no treatment. Such practices are –tragically- major contributors to the appaling public health conditions that continue to plague cities like Calcutta and Delhi.

So it was with a high degree of optimisim that I read this article reflecting the on-going development of Bangalore. It is to be hoped that knowledge, skills and capability developed in this city will, in time, be transferable to other Indian cities desperatly in need of improved water management.

I don’t have any further information on the proposed Bangalore scheme, other than what is in the article below. However if you do, I’d be grateful to know more.

Bangalore early evening (photo © Andy2Boyz)

Bangalore to Recycle Used Water for Drinking Purposes
Khaleej Times
24 January 2008

BANGALORE - The growing demand for water has forced the authorities in Bangalore to take up a project to promote use of recycled water for drinking purposes.

The demand for drinking water has reached 1.2 billion litres per day in Bangalore against the availability of 930 million litres per day. The Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) has decided to implement a Rs4.72 billion project to recycle water for drinking purposes under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM).

According to a statement from BWSSB, the project has been sanctioned by JNNURM’s Screening Committee, which met in New Delhi last week. Under the project, BWSSB will collect used water in Visvesvaraya valley on the outskirts of the city. “The used water will undergo tertiary treatment, ultra filtration and membrane process. This will help the authorities to supply an additional 135 million litres per day once the project is completed by 2010”, the statement said.

Presently, the drinking water supply to Bangalore is being met by River Cauvery, which flows at a distance of almost 120kms from Bangalore, and the Thippegondanahalli reservoir. But, the 810 million litres from Cauvery and 150 million litres from Thippegondanahalli reservoir are inadequate creating a shortfall of more than 250 million litres per day.

Clean Up Our Coast

2008-01-02T22:21:00.000+11:00

Not surprisingly, most of the discussion about water recycling during the last decade has been focussed on the need to overcome potable water shortages. However, there is another important driver for improved water management. That is, the need to minimise the impact that discharged treated sewage effluents have on the marine environment.

The discharges from Australian ocean outfalls represent a cumulating, and often overlooked, burden on marine flora and fauna. Some of the pollutants found in primary and secondary treated effluents include nutrients, suspended solids, organic carbon, pathogens and toxic chemicals. Large volumes of fresh water can also detrimentally alter otherwise saline environments. Furthermore, sewage discharges can carry large quantities of heat to otherwise cooler environments, thereby disrupting local ecosystems.

Every year, thousands of tons of the essential plant nutrients phosphorus and nitrogen are discharged via Sydney’s three deepwater ocean outfalls. These nutrients support the growth of plants and algae in coastal waters. Most of the nitrogen is discharged in the form of ammonia which is toxic to marine ecosystems.

The federal opposition environment spokesman, Greg Hunt, has long been an active campaigner for the cessation of ocean outfall practices in Australia. Today, The Age newspaper reports Hunt embarking on a renewed campaign to lobby the Federal and State Governments to consider more carefully the options for reusing –instead of discharging- some of the effluents from Australia's major cities.

Libs Urge Action on Ocean Spill
Jewel Topsfield, Canberra
The Age
January 2, 2008

A CAMPAIGN to pressure the states to stop sewage spewing into the ocean will be launched by the Federal Opposition.

Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt will meet the opposition parties in each state and territory throughout this month. His aim is to form a national conservative coalition that will fight a campaign to be called Clean Up Our Coast.

In Victoria, the campaign will be focused on the Boags Rocks outfall near Gunnamatta beach, where the equivalent of 55,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools full of off-colour, treated sewage is flushed into Bass Strait every year.

Mr Hunt said there were 140 ocean outfalls across the country where pipes from treatment plants dump 1800 billion litres of sewage into the sea every year.

He said waste water that could be recycled for industry or agriculture was polluting oceans, harming marine life and jeopardising the health of surfers.

"It's inconceivable that the states allow this pollution to continue, let alone the waste of water," Mr Hunt said.

"Gunnamatta has 150 billion litres a year of secondary treated sewage dumped 10 to 20 metres offshore of one of the great surf beaches.

"Surfers still go there because it is such a great break, but they report numerous examples of ear infections which you simply don't get from other beaches."

Most of the recycled effluent that enters Bass Strait at Boags Rocks comes from the Eastern Treatment plant at Carrum, which is one of Melbourne's two big sewerage plants.

The Clean Ocean Foundation has been campaigning for years to close the Boags Rocks ocean outfall.

"This pipeline is the largest shoreline outfall in Australia, daily dumping more than 450 million litres. This is 42% of Melbourne's waste," the group's website says.

"These pipelines are at the ends of the water supply and waste collection chain, and because no dumping fee is paid, they are used indiscriminately."

During the 2006 state election, Labor spruiked an ambitious $2.3 billion plan to divert drinking water from the power stations in the Latrobe Valley and replace it with the recycled sewage now flushed out to sea near Gunnamatta.

But when the State Government announced its $4.9 billion water plan last June, including the desalination plant near Wonthaggi, the recycled plan was not approved.

"Victoria took the 'clean up Gunnamatta' campaign to the election, but then it evaporated afterwards," Mr Hunt said. "While I accept the desalination plant is part of the solution, it shouldn't be used as an excuse to abandon their election promise."

He said the Clean Up Our Coast campaign would involve naming and shaming the state governments and working with coastal action groups to raise public awareness. The Opposition would also lobby the Rudd Government to fund a national audit of the volume of sewage being pumped into the ocean.

A spokesman for Water Minister Tim Holding said the State Government remained committed to a $300 million upgrade of the Carrum plant. It is planned that the plant will provide 100 billion litres of recycled water every year by 2012 and improve the quality of the waste water discharged into Gunnamatta.

Penny Wong – Minister for Water

2007-12-01T11:14:00.000+11:00

In the wash-up of last weekend’s federal election, we have awoken to a very different political landscape in Australia. John Howard’s Coalition Government has been replaced after 11.5 years by the Australian Labor Party (ALP) led by Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.

We have a full suite of new Ministers to get to know, including Penny Wong who is now in charge of the Cabinet portfolio ‘Climate Change and Water’.

There are two things about Penny Wong that journalists never fail to mention when they write about her. One is that she is a woman and the other is that she was born in Malaysia.

Both facts may be significant in that they make her unusual in the Australian Parliament (and did even more so when she was first elected). However, this really tells us more about the Australian Parliament than it does about Penny Wong.

Wong’s mother was Australian and her father Chinese. The family settled back in her mother’s home city of Adelaide in 1977 when Wong was eight years old. She studied Law at Adelaide University and was admitted to the Bar in 1993.

The earliest newspaper reference that I can find to Wong comes from the Adelaide Advertiser in March 1998. She was a lawyer representing a driver for Adelaide’s public train and tram service TransAdelaide in the South Australian Industrial Relations Court.

At the time, TransAdelaide had a growing habit of employing workers in “part-time” positions, but still having them work 38 hours per week or more. Being part-time, these workers were not entitled to full-time pay and conditions, including long-service and sick leave. Wong was quoted referring to the workers as "Clayton's part-timers" and arguing that TransAdelaide “can't have its cake and eat it too".

Wong won the landmark case with the court finding that all TransAdelaide's part-time drivers who worked 38 hours a week or more should be paid as full-time employees. Furthermore, those who worked on Sundays and more than 48 weeks a year were also eligible for full-time pay and conditions.

A few months later in August 1998, the Adelaide Advertiser again referred to Penny Wong, -this time as a rally organizer and representative of the “Celebrating Diversity Coalition”. The rally involved more than 4000 people marching through Adelaide in a candlelit demonstration of solidarity against racism.

Penny Wong - Minister for Climate Change and Water

In the years preceding the 2001 Federal election, Wong was preselected as the No 1 candidate on the ALP Senate ticket in South Australia. Wong was (and remains) a member of the ALP Left faction and her preselection occurred amid the usual factional manoeuvring. She had the numbers and replaced the sitting Senator (and former State secretary of the ALP and Keating minister) Chris Schacht. The dislodging of such sitting members is extremely rare in the ALP.

Both Wong and her No 2 Senate candidate Linda Kirk were established legal professionals (Kirk was a lecturer in Law at Adelaide University). However, a month out from the election, classy newspapers like the Sunday Mail were running such in-depth analyses as the one headlined “Labor's lipstick warriors” (7 Oct, 2001). The first line read “They’re smart, attractive - and Labor's "lipstick weapons" against the popularity of the Democrats' Natasha Stott Despoja”. Hard-hitting Australian journalism at its best.

2001 was the year that The Tampa had sailed in over the horizon spurring John Howard and ALP "leader" Kim Beazley to undertake a refugee kicking contest as an election campaign. Beazley demonstrated that he could kick any refugee just as hard as Howard could, but in the end the election was won by Howard’s solemn pledge that “we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come”.

An article in The Australian referred to the Senate win by Wong and Linda Kirk as “the sole highlight for Labor” in the election.

Wong was sworn into the Senate in August 2002. The Adelaide Advertiser ran a feature in which Wong listed the environment, salinity and the River Murray among her top policy priorities. "Depending on what study you read, the water in Adelaide will be undrinkable if we don't fix this," she said.

Wong’s Maiden Speech has been well reported and reminisced during the past few months. Much of the speech criticised Prime Minister Howard for inflaming racial division during the election campaign. She observed that “we have a climate in which someone who speaks out about injustice or prejudice or discrimination is dismissed as simply being politically correct. Compassion has been delegitimised – instead it is seen as elitism”.

Referring to Pauline Hanson's warning that Australia was “in danger of being swamped by Asians”, Wong said "instead I believe we are in danger of being swamped by prejudice."

If such words had been uttered by ALP "leader" Kim Beazley just a few months earlier, perhaps the outcome of the 2001 election may have been different. It certainly would have been easier to watch.

By the end of 2002, the big issue was our apparently unbridled enthusiasm to join the USA in an illegal invasion of Iraq. Wong was quoted in the Sunday Age: "This government speaks of the danger of Saddam Hussein using weapons of mass destruction against his own people. Why waging war against these people is a way of protecting them against such a threat is beyond logic."

From what I can tell, Wong’s introduction to water policy in Australia came with her appointment to a Senate Committee charged with conducting an inquiry into Australia's management of urban water.

The Committee, Chaired by the Democrats' Lyn Allison, produced a high impact report in 2002. The report identified widespread measures that should be taken to improve management of urban water resources throughout Australia. Practically all of the recommendations have since been adopted to some degree and the report became an important foundation document in the establishment of the National Water Initiative. Wong told the Courier Mail that "as the most precious resource in the nation, we say [water] management is deserving of national leadership".

In the lead-up to the 2004 federal election, Wong went in to bat for the highly stressed River Murray. The ALP pledged to restore 1500 gigalitres of environmental flows over a 10 year period and Wong unsuccessfully challenged the Government to match this pledge.

Subsequent to the 2004 election, Wong was promoted to the Opposition front bench with the dual portfolios of ‘employment and workforce participation’ and ‘corporate governance and responsibility’. Anthony Albanese took on responsibility for water and thus it is he –not Wong- who has had the most to say on this issue since.

However by 2007, Wong’s role had been broadened somewhat to include ‘public administration and accountability’. This gave her the opportunity to question the Finance Minister Senator Nick Minchin about the Government’s recently announced $10 billion water plan for the Murray-Darling Basin. Upon questioning from Wong, it was revealed that the plan was so hastily cobbled together that it had not been considered by Cabinet or fully costed by finance bureaucrats.

"The Prime Minister really needs to explain how it can be that he can put this solution forward, as a considered solution to our national water crisis, when the matter hasn't gone to Cabinet and when key departments were consulted so close to the announcement," said Wong at the time.

My understanding is that Wong’s public profile really picked up during the recent election campaign by regular television appearances. However, since I don’t own a television, I missed all that and she still seems like a bit of an unknown to me. Nonetheless, doing the research and background reading for this blog post has encouraged me in terms of her commitment to the environment and her ability to win battles and make things happen.

I am optimistically looking forward to great developments for water management in Australia. As Wong would surely be aware, water management is of the greatest fundamental importance for the future of this country. There is scant room for error and there is no time for dithering.

Good luck -and hard work!- Penny Wong.

World’s largest IPR scheme opens

2007-11-29T22:50:00.000+11:00

The world’s largest indirect potable water recycling (IPR) scheme will begin operation this week. The scheme, in Orange County California is known as the Groundwater Replenishment System (GRS) and is essentially an upgrade of the earlier Water Factory 21, which began operation in 1976.

Thanks to the four separate individuals who sent me this article from the New York Times. It’s nice to have a few vigilant spotters out there!

It’s worth clicking on the link below, back to the original source, which includes a couple of nice pictures of the plant. Check out all those membranes!

Oh, speaking of membranes… I happened to visit the advanced water recycling plant at Sydney Olympic Park this afternoon. They had only just recently made the first replacements of some of the reverse osmosis membranes that were installed when the plant was first commissioned back in 2000. Eight years is an excellent achievement!

From Sewage, Added Water for Drinking
By Randal C. Archibold
New York Times
November 27, 2007

FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif. — It used to be so final: flush the toilet, and waste be gone.

But on Nov. 30, for millions of people here in Orange County, pulling the lever will be the start of a long, intense process to purify the sewage into drinking water — after a hard scrubbing with filters, screens, chemicals and ultraviolet light and the passage of time underground.

On that Friday, the Orange County Water District will turn on what industry experts say is the world’s largest plant devoted to purifying sewer water to increase drinking water supplies. They and others hope it serves as a model for authorities worldwide facing persistent drought, predicted water shortages and projected growth.

The process, called by proponents “indirect potable water reuse” and “toilet to tap” by the wary, is getting a close look in several cities.

The San Diego City Council approved a pilot plan in October to bolster a drinking water reservoir with recycled sewer water. The mayor vetoed the proposal as costly and unlikely to win public acceptance, but the Council will consider overriding it in early December.

Water officials in the San Jose area announced a study of the issue in September, water managers in South Florida approved a plan in November calling for abundant use of recycled wastewater in the coming years in part to help restock drinking water supplies, and planners in Texas are giving it serious consideration.

“These types of projects you will see springing up all over the place where there are severe water shortages,” said Michael R. Markus, the general manager of the Orange County district, whose plant, which will process 70 million gallons a day, has already been visited by water managers from across the globe.

The finished product, which district managers say exceeds drinking water standards, will not flow directly into kitchen and bathroom taps; state regulations forbid that.

Instead it will be injected underground, with half of it helping to form a barrier against seawater intruding on groundwater sources and the other half gradually filtering into aquifers that supply 2.3 million people, about three-quarters of the county. The recycling project will produce much more potable water and at a higher quality than did the mid-1970s-era plant it replaces.

The Groundwater Replenishment System, as the $481 million plant here is known, is a labyrinth of tubing and tanks that sucks in treated sewer water the color of dark beer from a sanitation plant next door, and first runs it through microfilters to remove solids. The water then undergoes reverse osmosis, forcing it through thin, porous membranes at high pressure, before it is further cleansed with peroxide and ultraviolet light to break down any remaining pharmaceuticals and carcinogens.

The result, Mr. Markus said, “is as pure as distilled water” and about the same cost as buying water from wholesalers.

Recycled water, also called reclaimed or gray water, has been used for decades in agriculture, landscaping and by industrial plants.

And for years, treated sewage, known as effluent, has been discharged into oceans and rivers, including the Mississippi and the Colorado, which supply drinking water for millions.

But only about a dozen water agencies in the United States, and several more abroad, recycle treated sewage to replenish drinking water supplies, though none here steer the water directly into household taps. They typically spray or inject the water into the ground and allow it to percolate down to aquifers.

Namibia’s capital, Windhoek, among the most arid places in Africa, is believed to be the only place in the world that practices “direct potable reuse” on a large-scale, with recycled water going directly into the tap water distribution system, said James Crook, a water industry consultant who has studied the issue.

The projects are costly and often face health concerns from opponents.

Such was the case on Nov. 6 in Tucson, where a wide-ranging ballot measure that would have barred the city from using purified water in drinking water supplies failed overwhelmingly. The water department there said it had no such plans but the idea has been discussed in the past.

John Kromko, a former Arizona state legislator who advocated for the prohibition, said he was skeptical about claims that the recycling process cleanses all contaminants from the water and he suggested that Tucson limit growth rather than find new ways to feed it.

“We really don’t know how safe it is,” he said. “And if we controlled growth we would never have to worry about drinking it.”

Mayor Jerry Sanders of San Diego, in vetoing the City Council plan there, said it “is not a silver bullet for the region’s water needs” and the public has never taken to the idea in the 15 years it has been discussed off and on.

Although originally estimated at $10 million for the pilot study in San Diego, water department officials said the figure would be refined, and the total cost of the project might be hundreds of millions of dollars. Although the Council wants to offset the cost with government grants and other sources, Mr. Sanders predicted it would add to already escalating water bills.

“It is one of the most expensive kinds of water you can create,” said Fred Sainz, a spokesman for the mayor. “It is a large investment for a very small return.”

San Diego, which imports about 85 percent of its water because of a lack of aquifers, asked residents this year to curtail water use.

Here in Orange County, the project, a collaboration between the water and sanitation districts, has not faced serious opposition, in part because of a public awareness and marketing campaign.

Early on, officials secured the backing of environmental groups, elected leaders and civic groups, helped in part by the fact the project eliminated the need for the sanitation district to build a new pipe spewing effluent into the ocean.

Orange County began purifying sewer water in 1976 with its Water Factory 21, which dispensed the cleansed water into the ground to protect groundwater from encroaching seawater.

That plant has been replaced by the new one, with more advanced technology, and is intended to cope with not only current water needs but also expectations that the county’s population will grow by 500,000 by 2020.

Still, said Stephen Coonan, a water industry consultant in Texas, such projects proceed slowly.

“Nobody is jumping out to do it,” he said. “They want to make sure the science is where it should be. I think the public is accepting we are investigating it.”

Toowoomba Effluent worth Fighting For

2007-11-19T07:41:00.000+11:00

If you have been following water recycling issues in Australia during the past two years, The City of Toowoomba in Queensland will be a familiar location.

In 2006, Toowoomba became the first city in the world to vote directly on its water supply. The Citizens famously voted ‘NO’ to a plan to recharge an important drinking water reservoir with advanced-treated recycled water. It was a fairly landmark event for urban water management in Australia and we observed a number of lessons from it.

While it is not widely recognised, irrigators played a significant role in urging the citizens to vote against the proposed indirect potable reuse (IPR) scheme. Perhaps not surprisingly, they considered that there were ‘better uses for recycled water’.

Today it is reported in the Courier Mail that Toowoomba City Council has now signed an agreement to supply recycled water to a local coalmine for $1300 a megalitre. That’s about the same price that we pay in Sydney for reticulated potable water.

The trouble is that irrigators have been relying on the free resource of effluent as it has always been discharged from the sewage treatment plant and into local creeks. The Courier Mail article states that ‘farmers had rejected the chance to lock in supplies at $150 a megalitre in 2000’.

Given that Toowoomba now plans to pump potable water up the Great Diving Range from Brisbane’s Wivenhoe Dam, a good price for treated effluent seems like a good thing to help cover the cost of potable water pumping.

However, transferring water from one use to another is a big deal in Australia and carries significant social implications. A degree of disquiet is to be expected.

Mine buys out water allocation
Brian Williams
The Courier Mail
November 18, 2007

SIXTY farmers are threatening to sue Toowoomba City Council for $80 million after losing free waste water because a coalmine is prepared to pay $1300 a megalitre.

Farmers had rejected the chance to lock in supplies at $150 a megalitre in 2000.

Gowrie and Oakey Creek Irrigators Association spokesman Rod Sleba yesterday said farmers had legal advice they could sue for lost earnings based on notes taken at a meeting with council officers in the early 1970s.

Mr Sleba from Kingsthorpe, about 20km from Toowoomba, said farmers understood from the meeting they were guaranteed water.

"The council said they'd give us first opportunity. It seems like a vendetta," he said.

Mayor Di Thorley said the farmers had no agreement and had done well for decades, getting water for nothing.

State and federal funding had been sought in 2000 for a project to pipe water to farmers at $150 a megalitre but when irrigators were approached with the deal, they fought the offer, and the council lost the grants.

Farmers also backed a campaign last year to stop the council from controversially recycling waste water back into drinking water because it would have reduced their supplies.

Council engineer Kevin Flanagan said notes from meetings in 1982, 1988 and 2001 showed irrigators had never been guaranteed the water.

Mr Sleba said farmers had spent $80 million to $100 million on irrigation infrastructure.

New Hope chairman Robert Millner said a contract had been signed to buy recycled water for the Acland coalmine for 28 years from 2010.

"New Hope will build, own and operate a 47km pipeline from Toowoomba to Acland, which will essentially drought proof the mine," Mr Millner said.

Cr Thorley said the council would make about $4 million a year from the mine, which would take 3000ML a year and have an option on a further 2500ML if available.

Caboolture IPR Proposal 1996

2007-11-10T16:09:00.000+11:00

One of the first towns in Australia to advocate a planned indirect potable water recycling (IPR) scheme was Caboolture Shire in South East Queensland. This post tells the story primarily in terms of the community reaction to the 1996 proposal.

The information is primarily sourced from local newspaper articles from the time as well as some discussions that I have had with people who were involved. If you have an alternative perspective on the story, I’d be grateful to receive it.

Caboolture shire, in South Eastern Queensland, is one of the fastest growing areas in Australia with a current population of around 140,000.

The Caboolture River runs through the centre of the town and, in part, supplies the town with potable water via a small weir. However, the quantities of water available from the weir have not been sufficient to meet the demands of the shire and most of the potable water is imported from Brisbane City Council.

Caboolture Weir (from Sweetwater Fishing)

The South Caboolture Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) is about a kilometre downstream from the drinking water weir. Unfortunately, the flow regimes of the Caboolture River have been insufficient to effectively flush the river at all times of the year and, by the 1990s, eutrophication of the river had become a significant problem.

The South Caboolture STP was identified as a principal point-source of nutrient inflow to the river and indications developed that the Queensland Environment Protection Authority may soon require improved protection of the river. One likely solution would have been the construction of an ocean outfall pipeline to Moreton Bay.

In 1995, the Caboolture Shire planning engineer was enthusiastic to address the problems facing the shire’s overall water management. He identified water recycling as a potential solution to reduce nutrient discharge to the river while also reducing the shire’s dependence on outside sources of potable water supplies.

The initial proposal was to significantly upgrade the South Caboolture STP and then pump the highly treated effluent back up above the weir for potable reuse. Such a scheme would involve negligible elevation and therefore minimal pumping costs.

The planning engineer proposed the scheme to the shire councillors, many of whom, including Mayor John White, became strong advocates.

The council implemented a strategy aimed at convincing the community that their shire would be a world leader and pioneer of water recycling systems. The treatment process would employ state-of-the-art technology and provide significant environmental and economic benefits to the community. The shire council expected that the community would see the scheme as a significant cultural achievement for Caboolture.

The plan was announced amid much fanfare in February 1996 and a process of public consultation initiated a few months later. It began with the distribution of brochures outlining the project to households and the establishment of a telephone hotline service for the community to provide feedback. The brochures depicted a number of possible scheme variations including recycling back into the town water supply.

The Caboolture Shire Herald reported:

Waste water views tapped.
16 July 1996
Caboolture Shire Herald

CABOOLTURE Shire Council has started public consultation on its waste water re-use proposal.

Brochures explaining the sewage reclamation project have been sent to all households and a phone hotline set up for people to call.

Council public relations manager Andrew Swanton said there had been a slow initial response to the invitation to comment on the scheme.

It involves upgrading the shire's sewage treatment works and a final option which may involve recycling waste water back into the town water supply.

In a letter to rate payers, Caboolture Shire Mayor John White states that the council has to examine all water saving options.

"With the enormous population growth taking place, water consumption within the shire has increased to the point where we are no longer self-sufficient," he said.

He said that while the council was continuing to examine solutions such as new dams and water conservation programs, the recycling option was effective and environmentally friendly.

Any reuse of water for human consumption would only be considered after exhaustive tests by health authorities.

Within a couple of weeks of the brochure distribution, it became very clear that there would be considerable community resistance to potable recycling. The local newspaper presented a ‘vox populi’ section on the question of whether ‘to drink or not to drink?:

Recycling reaction mixed.
30 July 1996
Caboolture Shire Herald

TO drink or not to drink? That's the question the Caboolture Shire Herald asked people in King St last week about the shire council's sewage recycling scheme.

The proposal involves recycling highly treated water from the new South Caboolture Sewerage Treatment Plant back into the weir for drinking purposes.

The response from people was mixed with some thinking it a good idea but others saying it "stunk".

Debbie Ashton, of Burpengary, said she would rather the council encourage people to install rainwater tanks.

She personally would not drink the recycled water.

Annette Berger, of Caboolture, said she supported the scheme as it would be good for the environment.

She said the current Caboolture town water was so bad, it couldn't get any worse. "As long as they did the proper tests, it would be better than what we are drinking now. I used to think the kids were peeing in the shower, the water is so bad."

Sean Wood, of Morayfield, said he would not like his kids to bath in the recycled water. He said it would be all right to use for agricultural purposes but not for human consumption.

Nola Lea, of Wamuran, said the idea "stunk". She said one of her children had been born premature because she drank contaminated water and she would not like to take the risk again.

Nathan Bahre, of Caboolture, said he didn't know too much about the proposal but he didn't like it. "I wouldn't like to drink it," he said.

Kirsty Jones, of Caboolture, said her first reaction to the scheme was revulsion. "If they did strenuous tests, it would not be so bad, but I personally would not drink it," she said.

Tom Robertson, of Caboolture, said the scheme sounded like a good idea. "It worries me a little bit but if we can get assurances it is absolutely purified it should be okay to drink," he said.

Soon after, the council stepped up its public education campaign. This was focused around a very scientific presentation of information such as water quality data, health effects and relative risk description.

The council sponsored two full-day community workshops in August 1996. Speakers included the Caboolture Shire Council water resources planning manager, a representative of the Sunshine Coast Environment Council as well as other experts including microbiologists and water engineers. However, the presentation of such dry technical information proved to be no match for the opposing arguments, which were highly emotionally-based...

Stoush on tap.
12 November 1996
Caboolture Shire Herald

CABOOLTURE Shire Council's controversial sewage recycling debate continues to smoulder despite mayoral attempts to defuse the issue.

Cr Lynette Devereaux (division four) tabled a petition to the council last week. It was signed by 500 people opposing any plans to recycle sewage back into drinking water.

"People have expressed to me the view that they will consider leaving the shire because of this proposal," Cr Devereaux said.

Mayor John White told Cr Devereaux the present council was "not proceeding" with the scheme.

Cr White attempted to further allay community concerns in September when he assured residents they would have the final say on the scheme.

"I wish to give an assurance that no decision will be made on the possible reuse of treated water for at least four years and before doing so, the public will be surveyed to gauge acceptance," Cr White said.

However, Cr Devereaux said people still felt the proposal was "hanging over their heads".

Petition organiser Sue Hannam, of Burpengary, said 90 per cent of the people she spoke to opposed the scheme.

"They were worried about a number of things including health, the effect on real estate prices and the fact their children would have to drink water that was more chemically treated," Mrs Hannam said.

She said despite the Mayor's recent announcement delaying the scheme, the project "could be too far down the track to stop".

The Bribie Island Environmental Protection Association will hold its third community information night on the sewage recycling issue on Friday.

Guest speaker is Keith Harrison, of the Queensland Fertility Group, who will discuss links between male reproductive health and water contaminants.

The meeting will be held at the Bribie Island Community Arts Centre in Sunderland Dve from 7.30pm.

Local government elections took place in early 1997. While water recycling proposals were not the only issues arising during the election campaign, they were among the major issues.

The Mayor, along with a further vocal supporter of the recycling scheme, was not returned to the following council. All of the returned and newly elected councillors had agreed to a campaign policy to not proceed with the current potable recycling proposals and, further, that potable recycling would not be again considered by the council.

Many readers will not help noticing the parallels between this story and the situation in Toowoomba a decade later. Indeed, the Courier Mail carried the following story...

Former mayor warns Thorley
Amanda Gearing, Brendan O'Malley
27 June 2006
The Courier-Mail

The big dry

THE first Australian mayor to be dumped from office for backing recycled drinking water has warned Toowoomba Mayor Di Thorley she risks the same fate.

Ten years ago Caboolture Shire residents ditched their mayor, John White, after he had served for 16 years on the council.

He blamed his demise on a plan to recycle purified sewage from the local wastewater treatment plant.

"I didn't see it as an election issue, but very emotive terms were used and the topic was used to divide the public," he said.

"One day I was the rooster, the next I was a feather duster."

Cr Thorley, who plans to contest the 2008 council election, is backing a similar plan for drought-stricken Toowoomba, where residents are facing a July 29 referendum on water recycling.

Mr White warned she risked a similar fate and he called for a co-ordinated approach from the State Government instead of allowing individual councils to cop the flak.

"If (her) opposition chooses to use this as an issue then she will become a feather duster as well," he said.

He admitted that if he had been able to foresee the deep divisions the debate caused he would have advocated recycling for uses other than drinking.

Cr Thorley said that although she did not underestimate how concerned some residents were about the issue she would not back down.

"I've acknowledged that people take this seriously, but I have not seen that as a reason to make me lose courage," she said.

"I think 1997 in Caboolture was a very different time.

"They weren't faced with running out of water, no one thought Wivenhoe Dam could run dry and you didn't have climate change in the media day after day."

Mr White said he was pleased the debate had led Caboolture to spend millions of dollars to improve its water treatment facilities and to embrace recycling of water for parks, gardens and sporting fields.

"It defies logic to treat millions of litres of water and then dump it into the ocean," he said.

In 1999 Caboolture upgraded its sewage treatment works, treating the effluent to A-class standard rather than building an outfall pipeline to Moreton Bay.

The recycled effluent is now used for new housing and industrial developments and major water users including school grounds, the town's showgrounds and sporting fields, parks and gardens, roadworks and building sites.

It is interesting to note how nothing much changed in terms of community attitudes towards indirect potable reuse between 1996/97 and 2006/07. This is despite the vastly increased pressures on drinking water supplies noted in the article above.

The quote from the Toowoomba Mayor: “I think 1997 in Caboolture was a very different time” is clearly true in terms of some environmental and population density factors. However, it was apparently not correct in terms of social acceptance of the credibility and reliability of facts as they are espoused by scientists and engineers. For that, we can really only blame scientists and engineers...

What do you think?

ALP Election Policies

2007-11-03T09:13:00.000+11:00

As all Australian readers would know, we are approaching the federal election on November 24.

I expect that sometime during the next three weeks, the Howard Government will announce new policies building on the (very effective) National Water Commission (NWC) and associated funding programs. As I understand it, the major NWC funding programs are now essentially fully allocated so a major injection of funds will be required to sustain the role of the Commission. I’ll endeavour to take a look at any announcements as they come.

During the last two weeks, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) have announced what I presume to be their major election campaign policies regarding urban water supply. The centre piece is a $1 billion National Urban Water and Desalination Plan (NUWD Plan). This is to fund a 10% Water Tax Credit and grants for approved desalination, water recycling, and major storm water capture projects developed by the private sector, local governments, and State and Territory Governments.

Its not entirely clear (to me) how the tax credit will work. However, I assume that it means that an ALP Government would provide 10% of the up-front capital costs by allowing project proponents to keep an equivalent sum that would otherwise be required to be paid as tax.

Where the project proponent is a government-owned business that does not pay Commonwealth income tax, support from the NUWD Plan would instead be paid in cash.

Project proponents would be able to submit proposals for funding assistance up until the end of June 2009. To be eligible, projects must source 100% of their energy needs from renewable supplies or else fully offset the carbon impact of their operations using nationally accredited offsets.

There wasn’t much response from the Howard Government to this announcement. However The Greens did weigh in with Bob Brown stating that stormwater recycling and water harvesting are good ideas but desalination plants are not. Brown noted that desalination plants are “energy guzzlers” and claimed that the ALP’s plan to keep the plants carbon-neutral was unrealistic. He said “they use vast amounts of energy and if you're going to (divert) Australia's flow of wind power into these desalination plants you're simply taking it away from households and businesses elsewhere and burning more coal”

Kevin Rudd at the Gold Coast Desalination Plant

The ALP has also promised to establish a Centre of Excellence in Desalination in Perth and a Centre of Excellence in Water Recycling in Brisbane. These Centres would each be funded at $4 million per year for five years.

Universities, government agencies and other interested stakeholders will be asked to develop collaborative bids to competitively bid for the opportunity to be part of each Centre.

I haven’t seen any specific detail regarding the proposed activities of the Water Recycling Centre yet. However, the activities of the Desalination Centre of Excellence were described during a recent ALP visit to Perth:

Investigating ways of optimising and adapting desalination technology for optimum use in Australia’s unique circumstances;
Expand on research into the use of desalination technology in rural and regional areas;
Researching ways of efficiently and affordably reducing the carbon footprint of desalination facilities; and
Accelerating ground breaking research on energy efficient bulk water supply technology being developed in Australia.

These seem like very noble goals indeed. I think it is appropriate that the focus appears to be on addressing some of the existing technical limitations of seawater desalination (predominantly the energy costs and carbon footprint).

Personally, I would have added research towards achieving environmentally sustainable management of concentrated desalination brine streams. While this is extremely important for coastal areas, it is the major limiting factor for the increased uptake of brackish water desalination in inland areas. Perhaps it comes naturally under the first two dot points.

One quick pedantic point before I finish this post...

Perth’s existing seawater desalination plant at Kwinana is normally described as having a capacity of 125 megalitres per day (ML/day) or 45 gigalitres per year (GL/year). However, for some reason the ALP’s media release this week prefers US Gallons: “The Kwinana Desalination Plant already turns water from the Indian Ocean into nearly 40 million gallons of drinking water a day”. Presumably this is a result of having sourced the information from Wikipedia which states: “The Kwinana Desalination Plant, located just south of Perth, Western Australia, turns water from the Indian Ocean into nearly 40 million gallons of drinking water per day”. I guess they must be pretty busy in the ALP campaign office right now.

Drinking Recycled Stormwater

2007-10-28T17:00:00.000+11:00

A few months back, there was some discussion on this blog regarding opportunities for the use of urban stormwater as a drinking water supply (see comments from Mark at the bottom of this post). An article from the Adelaide Advertiser this week, points to the likelihood of such a strategy being undertaken on a large scale in Australia sometime in the future.

The City of Salisbury in northern Adelaide is where most of the activity has been focused. A decade ago, the city began to investigate potential means of eliminating the flow of polluted stormwater into the environmentally sensitive Barker Inlet of Gulf St. Vincent. The Inlet is a significant fish nursery which supports the majority of South Australia’s fishing industry.

The key strategy adopted was the creation of wetlands for stormwater treatment. Some of this treated water is now reused for a variety of non-potable purposes in the region. The scheme has been very successful and there has been great interest in expanding it in order to be able to reclaim larger volumes of water.

Among the main challenges has been the need to overcome the seasonal variability between available water supply and demand. Naturally there is more stormwater available during the wetter months, but these wet months are when irrigation users (in particular) least require it.

To address this need for large-scale water storage, the CSIRO has spent more than a decade researching a process known as aquifer storage and recovery (ASR). This involves preparing the water to a suitable quality whereby it can be safely used to recharge a depleted aquifer and then recovered at a later time when required. The general concept is nicely summarised in the following figure from CSIRO Land & Water.

As the above figure indicates, ASR can be used for appropriately-treated reclaimed water from any source including stormwater and municipal sewage. Under suitable conditions, it can even have a significant benefit in terms of further improving the water quality during the process.

Given these benefits, it may be no surprise that the Government of South Australia and the National Water Commission appear to agree that there is great potential for Adelaide to use urban stormwater reclaimed by ASR as a future drinking-water supply.

The article from The Adelaide Advertiser appears below.

I’d be grateful for your thoughts or comments...

Stormwater for drinking
The Advertiser (Adelaide)
October 22, 2007
By Cara Jenkin

ADELAIDE residents will be drinking recycled stormwater as traditional water supplies continue to dwindle, says the National Water Commission.

South Australia's representative on the commission Dr John Radcliffe says treated stormwater will form part of SA Water's metropolitan supply in the future to ensure long-term water security in the city.

Dr Radcliffe said governments had traditionally treated stormwater as a "hazard" and as waste which could not be used.

He said stormwater should instead be seen as a resource.

"People naturally feel a little concerned about drinking water that doesn't fall off the hillsides, but some of these hillsides aren't that pristine," he said.

"All water is recycled water, that's the hydrological cycle."

Stormwater is already collected, stored and used for irrigation purposes in parks across Adelaide.

A world-first trial to treat stormwater naturally in underground aquifers to a standard suitable for human consumption is now under way at Parafield.

Dr Radcliffe said the trial was one reason why South Australia was more advanced in stormwater reuse than elsewhere in Australia. "One has to look at all water resources that are around and there is no perfect resource for a particular circumstance," he said.

"One of the benefits is that (treated stormwater) has a lot less salinity than is found in Adelaide tap water."

Treated stormwater will be added to the mains water pipes and dispersed among households.

The water will supplement existing sources but figures on what portion of existing supply could be supplemented are yet to be researched.

Draft guidelines on the use of recycled water for drinking have been developed by the National Water Commission.

They are expected to be endorsed by state water ministers, including SA Water Security minister Karlene Maywald, when they meet to discuss the guidelines early next year.

Election Promises

2007-10-17T20:39:00.000+10:00

I happened to stumble upon two articles published in the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 7th January, 1995. They include lots of talk about phasing out Sydney’s ocean outfalls and recycling the water “for everything from industry to drinking”.

Oh…look out for that old line about water from the Rhine or Thames passing through eight sets of kidneys before it reaches the sea. Perhaps this was the original source in the Australian media?

The second article is particularly interesting. It features the then Labor opposition leader Bob Carr pontificating about ocean outfalls and arguing that Sydney's (coastal) sewage treatment plants must be upgraded to at least secondary treatment.

My back-of-an-envelope calculation tells me that roughly 2500 billion litres of primary treated effluent has been discharged from those outfalls since then.

The only thing different almost 13 years later is that nobody seems to care as much anymore.

A timely reminder about election promises...

Why Sydney May Soon Be Drinking Treated Sewage
Sydney Morning Herald
7 January 1995
By James Woodford, Environment Writer

Sydney's householders will be urged to reuse sewage effluent as drinking water under an ambitious new strategy to be launched next month by Sydney Water.

The plan is to persuade the public that the billions of litres of polluted water that pour into the oceans off the city need to be reused for everything from industry to drinking.

The release in the middle of next month of an issues paper - Choices Issues Paper No 1: Re-use - dealing with the reuse of effluent will be the most significant change in the way we get our water since the building of Warragamba Dam.

Community consultation, including the use of independent consultants, has played a crucial role in the development of the paper.

By July this year, Sydney Water's new legislation requires it to complete effluent reuse targets and in the long term contains an objective to phase out dry weather discharges from the deep ocean sewage outfalls.

The Environment Protection Authority (EPA) signalled this week that in the long term the $309 million outfalls will need to be phased out.

But according to Sydney Water, unless the public is able to change its attitudes about reusing effluent, it will be difficult to cut back on the use of the outfalls and delay the construction of new dams.

Some of the options for Sydney include:

* Sewer mining - tapping into the sewerage system to remove the effluent so it can be treated and used.

* Direct potable reuse - the establishment of a sewage-treatment system with possibly dozens of treatment plants, each serving several suburbs. The waste water from homes would be collected and highly treated and returned to the local water supply.

* Indirect potable reuse - the collection of vast quantities of highly treated effluent that would be pumped back into Warragamba Dam or Prospect Reservoir.

In all cases the water would be as clean, if not cleaner, than the present Sydney supply, says Sydney Water.

For the authority the prospect of water reuse opens up huge commercial possibilities and would ensure protection of the environment.

The treated effluent could be used for anything from industry, which would require less treatment, to domestic household use, including drinking.

The manager of demand management for Sydney Water, Mr George Bawtree, said: "Basically all of us here today are used to the option that there's fresh clean water out there for us to drink and that effluent is some other product.

"It (using effluent) requires a change in our perception of water. We will have to absolutely address this issue and it's absolutely critical that the community is part of this debate." Mr John Denlay, a researcher employed by the Sydney Water Project - an independent team of consultants set up by the then Water Board - prepared a study which analysed all of the reuse options available.

A shift to the use of "highly treated waste water" was the best way of drought-proofing Sydney, he said.

"Even during the drought we are still generating more than a billion litres of waste water a day that just pours out into the oceans." This water could be used providing the public was made comfortable with the idea that it was safe, he said.

In Europe and other parts of the world treated effluent had been commonly used for decades for drinking. "They say in the Rhine or the Thames that the water passes through eight sets of kidneys before it gets into the sea," Mr Denlay said.

"Reusing highly treated waste water for drinking purposes is well established overseas. For example, a plant in Namibia has been recycling up to 40 per cent of the water supply for the last 25 years.

"If the recycled water is only used for non-drinking purposes we will only be able to utilise 10 per cent of the waste water. To exploit the opportunities of reuse fully we also need to move to potable uses."

Carr Lashes 'hypocrisy' Over Outfalls
Sydney Morning Herald
7 January 1995
By Paola Totaro

The call by the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) to scrap ocean outfalls was hypocritical because it had consistently allowed the old Water Board to increase levels of toxic discharges into the sea, the Opposition Leader, Mr Carr, said yesterday.

A NSW Labor Government would immediately conduct a review of the operations of all sewage treatment plants to try to identify reuse options where possible and upgrade the plants to use the best technology for the least cost.

Mr Carr was responding to an EPA report which called for the phasing-out of the use of the $309 million sewage outfalls.

He said new outfalls were now planned at Coffs Harbour, Port Macquarie, Cronulla and Ballina, and Labor would place a moratorium on all such projects along the coastline.

"A moratorium is needed to force Government, the community and industry to seek environmentally responsible reuse alternatives to outfall disposal, including the use of new technology treatments," he said.

Mr Carr said that it was possible to stop short of upgrading to tertiary treatment levels while significantly upgrading the treatment already available.

"Tertiary treatment is a big step," he said. "We have to set that as a goal and move towards it. But before that, there is a lot you can do to upgrade (to) secondary treatment. That means reducing and setting targets to phase out toxic substances that are going into the ocean at the moment.

"No area in environmental science is developing faster than water treatment technology. We have an opportunity to use this cost-effective new technology that can significantly increase the treatment of water to tertiary standards." Mr Carr said the ALP would:

* Require the EPA to set targets for the phase-out of the dumping of toxic substances into the sewerage system, including mercury, cadmium and other bio-accumulating substances;

* Enshrine the $7 billion Clean Waterways program into special legislation to force Sydney Water to finance the upgrading of sewage treatment;

* Overhaul and tighten Sydney Water's pollution licences to require the progressive upgrading of ocean sewage treatment plants.

However, according to a spokesman for the Minister for Planning, Mr Webster, the new legislation which corporatised the Water Board provides a detailed framework to establish pollution targets.

You remember Sydney in 1995!

UV-Advanced Oxidation Seminar

2007-10-12T08:07:00.000+10:00

In an earlier post, we took a look at the use of ultraviolet (UV) radiation for advanced oxidation treatment of organic chemicals in recycled water.

Most of that post was based on work undertaken at Duke University (USA) by Associate Professor Karl Linden and his research group.

Now we are very fortunate to have the opportunity to learn more about this important topic from Karl as he visits the University of New South Wales to give a seminar. This is a free public seminar and all interested persons are welcome to attend.

Ultraviolet light: Beyond water disinfection
Associate Professor Karl G. Linden
Duke University, NC, USA

DATE: Wednesday, October 24 2007
TIME: 12-1pm
VENUE: Room 701, Civil & Environmental Engineering (Building H20), University of New South Wales.

ABSTRACT:

Although used in wastewater disinfection for years, ultraviolet light technology has only recently been seriously considered for drinking water treatment.

Because of its singularly high efficiency for inactivating protozoan pathogens, such as Cryptosporidium and Giardia, UV is now expected to be widely adopted for water treatment disinfection in the coming years.

But there is another side of UV not widely appreciated - that of contaminant remediation via photolysis and oxidation processes, specifically for water reuse.

UV mediated destruction of chemical contaminants is a very promising treatment process with interesting fundamental research opportunities and practical applications for indirect potable reuse.

This seminar will provide an overview of where UV technology for water treatment has been, and focus on the fundamentals of UV based remediation, drawing on our recent research findings for conventional and emerging environmental pollutants of concern in water including N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), pharmaceuticals, and endocrine disrupters.

Some related recent Linden Group publications:

Chen, P.J., Kullman, S.W., Hinton, D., Linden, K.G. (2007) "Comparisons of Low- and Medium- Pressure UV lamps on the Removal of Bisphenol A Estrogenic Activity in Water following Direct Photolysis and UV/H2O2 Oxidation Processes" Chemosphere, Vo. 68, No. 6, 1041-1049.

Rosenfeldt, E.J., Linden, K.G., (2007) "Hydroxyl radical formation during the UV/H2O2 processes: The ROH/UV concept" Environmental Science and Technology. Vol. 41, No. 7, 2548-2553

Rosenfeldt, E.J., Chen, P.J., Kullman, S.W., Linden, K.G., (2007) "Destruction of estrogenic activity in water using UV advanced oxidation" Science of the Total Environment, Vol. 377, No. 1, 105-113.

Chen, P.J., Rosenfeldt, E.J., Kullman, S.W., Hinton, D., Linden, K.G. (2007) "Biological Assessments of a Mixture of Endocrine Disruptors at Environmentally Relevant Concentrations in Water following UV/H2O2 Oxidation" Science of the Total Environment, Vol. 376, No. 1-3, 18-26.

Shemer, H., Linden, K.G. (2007) "Aqueous photodegradation and toxicity of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons fluorene, dibenzofuran and dibenzothiophene", Water Research, Vol. 41, No 4, 853-861.

Pereira, V.J., Weinberg, H.S., Linden, K.G., Singer, P.C. (2007) "UV degradation of pharmaceutical compounds in surface water via direct and indirect photolysis at 254 nm" Environmental Science and Technology Vol. 41, No 5, 1682-1688.

Wu, C., Shemer, H., Linden, K.G. (2007) "Photodegradation and Byproduct Formation of Metolachlor in Water via UV and UV/H2O2 Treatment" J. Agric. Food Chem. Vol. 55, No. 10, 4059-4065.

Shemer, H., Linden, K.G. (2006) "Photolysis, oxidation and subsequent toxicity of a mixture of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in natural waters", Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology A: Chemistry Vol. 187, No. 2-3, 186-195

Shemer, H., Sharpless, C.M., Elovitz, M.S., Linden, K.G. (2006) "Relative rate constants of contaminant candidate list pesticides with hydroxyl radicals" Environmental Science and Technology Vol. 40, 4460-4466

Chen, P.J., Linden, K.G., Hinton, D.E., Kashiwada, S., Rosenfeldt, E.J., Kullman, S.W. (2006) "Biological Assessments of Bisphenol A Degradation in Water following Direct Photolysis and UV Advanced Oxidation" Chemosphere Vol. 65, 1094-1102.

Shemer, H., Linden, K.G. (2006) "Degradation and byproduct formation of diazinon using UV and UV/H2O2 processes", Journal of Hazardous Materials Vol. 136, No. 3, 553-559

Shemer, H., Kunukcu, Y.K., Linden, K.G. (2006) "Degradation of the Pharmaceutical Metronidazole Via UV, Fenton and photo-Fenton Processes, Chemosphere Vol. 63, 269-276.

Rosenfeldt, E.J., Melcher, B., and Linden, K.G. (2005) "Treatment of Taste and Odor Causing Compounds in Water by UV and UV/H2O2 Processes", Journal of Water Supply: Research & Technology -AQUA Vol. 54, No. 7, 423-434.

Rosenfeldt, E.J. and Linden, K.G. (2004) "Degradation of endocrine disrupting chemicals bisphenol-A, ethinyl estradiol, and estradiol during UV photolysis and advanced oxidation processes" Environmental Science and Technology, Vol. 38 No. 20, 5476-5483

Sharpless, C.M. and Linden, K.G. (2003) "Experimental and Model Comparisons of Low- and Medium-Pressure Hg Lamps for the Direct and H2O2 Assisted UV Photodegradation of N-nitrosodimethylamine in Simulated Drinking Water", Environmental Science and Technology, Vol. 37 No. 9, pp. 1933-1940

Wave Energy to Power Desalination?

2007-10-07T10:43:00.000+10:00

Perth is the first Australian city to have its drinking water partly supplied by desalinated seawater. A 45 GL/year plant was constructed and began operation at Kwinana, 40 km south of the city in 2006. Since then, the West Australian Government has announced plans for a second plant to be sited 155 km south of Perth near Binningup and to produce another 45 GL/year desalinated water by 2011.

Among the major issues with seawater desalination is the necessary energy consumption and the associated greenhouse gas production and cost impacts. The Kwinana desalination plant is powered from the local power grid. While the grid is predominantly supplied by coal-fired power stations, the equivalent energy required for the plant has been formally off-set by the construction of a wind-farm about 260 km north at Cervantes.

After plans for the second (Binningup) seawater desalination plant were announced, a West Australian company began vigorously promoting a new energy-supply technology, which is currently under development. The company is Carnegie Corporation and the developing technology is named CETO, -possibly after the hideous sea monster from Greek mythology (or perhaps there is another explanation for the name!).

The CETO Technology is actually owned by the London-based Investment Company ‘Renewable Energy Holdings Plc’ (REH). However, CETO is an Australian designed and developed technology. Much of the development has been undertaken (and continues to be undertaken) by the Perth-based company ‘Seapower Pacific Pty Ltd’. REH collaborates with Carnegie Corporation on financing CETO development in the Southern Hemisphere.

CETO is designed to harness ocean wave energy by using it to pressurise seawater and transport it onshore. The energy from the pressurised seawater can then by utilised by pushing the water through a reverse osmosis membrane (to produce desalinated water) or recovered by using it to run a turbine (to produce electricity).

The technology behind CETO is relatively simple. A buoyant bladder is restrained just below the sea surface and moves in an elliptical path as a result of wave-action. The bladder is connected to a piston which moves inside a narrow pipe fixed to the sea floor. The movement of the bladder pulls the piston up and down, producing pumping forces. These pumping forces are then used to drive pressurised seawater to shore via a pipeline.

Plans are currently underway for a pre-commercialisation pilot-scale trial of CETO at Fremantle (WA) during 2007-2008. Based on the success of this trial, it is hoped that the first full-scale implementation of the technology can be developed during 2009-2011. Carnegie Corporation expects that this timing is just right for CETO to be employed for Perth’s second desalination plant.

The possibility of using CETO to power the future desalination plant was recently discussed in a short article appearing in CSIRO’s Ecos Magazine. The article quoted Phillip Jennings, Professor of Energy Studies at Murdoch University pointing out that while the technology is exciting, it is currently experimental and untested on a large scale:

‘Currently, the government is looking for an assured water supply,’ says Professor Jennings. ‘If the new desalination plant is not reliably producing clean drinking water by the target date, there will be a shortfall in Perth’s water supply. ‘First, CETO would need to prove itself at a smaller scale for a use that is not as critical as Perth’s drinking water supply. The company needs to demonstrate that the technology would be cost-competitive at a larger scale with other energy sources, such as wind power.’

A recent independent technical appraisal of CETO was undertaken for Renewable Energy Holdings in the UK. It noted “…Even with this price advantage, the CETO device will require financial support either through capital grants at the front end or through ongoing support as is available through the Renewable Obligation arrangements in the UK.”

As a whole, Australian governments have generally been very poor at investing in renewable energy technologies (why would they when burning coal is so cheap?). In order for a technology like CETO to be fully developed and commercialised, it is likely that either some government incentive will be required, or that the Australian population simply demand (and be prepared to pay for) clean energy alternatives.

Of course, one government intervention that would drastically improve the competitiveness of renewable technologies overnight would be the implementation of a carbon tax. Even the indication that such a tax would be instituted some time in the future would stimulate research and development. But which Australian government would be so foolish as to implement something that would be so vigorously opposed by the lucrative fossil fuels sector?

An alternative strategy is to sit back and let innovative Australian technologies be commercialised by overseas companies and then Australia can contract those companies -at significant cost- when we finally decide that we need the solutions that they provide. This is the model followed for hollow-fibre microfiltration membranes currently being installed in advanced water treatment plants around the country.

The independent technical assessment of CETO identified the West Australian coast as “an ideal location for the [first full-scale implementation] due to the high and constant wave energy (waves over 2 m occur 90 % of the time) that occurs along the south west coast”. However, ultimately, the assessment authors concluded “that a good commercial project test site may be in Northern Ireland, where there is economic support available for renewable energy projects in terms of the NIROC, combined with a good wave energy resource”.

-
Postscript:

The above text may sound pessimistic about Australian inclinations to support the development of innovative energy sources. However, stock exchange investors have a solid reputation for their collective ability to predict future events and they appear to be optimistic.

The Binningup desalination plant was announced by the West Australian Premier on May 15 2007. From that date over the next four weeks, the Carnegie Corporation share price rose from around 3.5 cents to more than 20 cents. It has since corrected to around 13 cents, but it is still an impressive sudden rise.

The red line is the share price, the burgundy line is the 20-day moving average and the blue line is the Australian stock exchange index “S&P/ASX 200”.

I wonder whether similar impacts were observed for other West Australian energy sector companies...

[Please note that I am not in the business of giving investment advice and nothing on this blog should be mistaken for such!]

Beware the Deadly Microsystems

2007-09-28T07:42:00.000+10:00

Could water recycling help prevent blue-green algal growth in our reservoirs?

Sydney’s Lake Burragorang (Warragamba Dam), currently has a considerable growth of blue-green alga on the surface, -see the article and image below.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to most people that if you dam a river and cause the water to sit in a huge puddle, algal growth is always a possibility. Add to that the nutrients run-off into the reservoir from last month’s rain and the current warm weather, and algal growth becomes almost inevitable.

As the article below suggests, it’s probably not a major problem. Blue-green algae tend to float towards the surface, whereas we have the capability to draw water supplies from much deeper. Nonetheless, these types of algae do produce a number of chemicals which are released into the water. Some of these may simply cause the water to taste or smell bad, but some are highly toxic.

The article quotes NSW Water Minister Phil Koperberg stating that recent testing has “detected some Microsystems” in the water. This could possibly mean that there are lots of computers that have been dumped in the reservoir. However, it is more likely that Mr Koperberg was misquoted and was actually referring to microcystins, -a type of blue-green algal toxin.

The current NSW Government does not plan to construct a planned indirect potable water recycling scheme that involves recharging Warragamba Dam. They have clearly stated that they are opposed to such a scheme because they don’t believe that the public would support it and because it would be expensive.

Nonetheless, it would be interesting to consider the impact that such an IPR scheme may have on the propensity for algal growth. We could look at the relative loads of the key nutrients nitrogen and phosphorus in the reservoir and at how effectively we may be able to dilute these with lower concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorous from advanced-treated recycled water.

Furthermore, recharging the reservoir and extracting the majority of our water supplies from it, would keep the water moving through the system, -preventing nutrient build-up and stagnation. Compare this with the current plan to replace much of the eastern suburbs’ water use with desalinated seawater pumped directly into the distribution system. This would reduce demands on Warragamba supplies (as it is intended to do), causing the water there to travel more slowly through the system.

Just another angle to consider for water supply planning…

Damn that algae - it's a blooming nuisance

Alexandra Smith
Sydney Morning Herald
September 28, 2007

A BLUE-GREEN algal bloom has taken over most of Warragamba Dam, with small levels of toxins found just below the surface.

Recent testing of the algae had shown three positive samples of microcystins, toxins that can cause skin irritation and stomach upsets if consumed in large doses. But NSW Health has stressed that the quality of Sydney's drinking water is not under threat.

Kerry Chant, the acting NSW chief health officer, said the levels of toxins were very low and had been found about three metres below the surface, not from where drinking water was being sourced.

The Water Minister, Phil Koperberg, said the bloom now stretched across 75 per cent of the dam - more than 58 kilometres - and more than twice the area it occupied at the beginning of the month.

He said it was possible drinking water could be mildly affected, but this would be limited, with water being safely drawn from 48 metres below the algae.

"There could be a discernible odour or taste with the water in the coming months," he said.

Warmer weather had provided the perfect conditions for the bloom to grow and could be present until at least Christmas.

"It is a bloom which, due to the warm weather, is likely to persist," Mr Koperberg said.

"It is very unlikely, unless there is some unforeseen meteorological event, that this bloom will either dissipate or disappear during the summer. It's, more likely than not, going to be around at Christmas."

Mr Koperberg said he would be provided with updates on water quality and testing.

"Testing is being conducted regularly by the Sydney Catchment Authority and Sydney Water of both the raw and treated water before it is supplied to Sydneysiders to drink," Mr Koperberg said.

"It is not a health risk whatsoever, even though part of the rigorous testing that Sydney Water and Health undertake has detected some microsystems - which are a group of molecules which contain some toxicity.

"Those levels are well below the Australian standards for drinking water safety.

"The main issue with this bloom is its visibility."

IPR Plans for San Jose

2007-09-25T19:34:00.000+10:00

I know this blog is supposed to be “Water Recycling in Australia”, not “Water Recycling in The USA”. However, I think it is important for Australians to be aware that current Australian plans for indirect potable reuse (IPR) are not unique, -far from it!

The following is an article from the Contra Costa Times in San Jose. San Jose is the third-largest city in California, and the tenth-largest in the United States. It is a wealthy city, commonly referred to as the “capital of Silicon Valley”.

As the article makes clear, the major concerns are not whether the technology exists to safely recycle drinking water, but whether the community will be able to overcome the all-too-familiar psychological barriers to planned (as opposed to unplanned) drinking water recycling.

It will be interesting to watch the proposal develop (or otherwise!) during the coming months and years.

Making sewage water good to drink
Valley District, San Jose Look to Ensure Adequate Future Supply
By Paul Rogers
Mercury News
Contra Costa Times
25 September 2007

The Santa Clara Valley Water District and the city of San Jose are beginning talks on a bold new strategy to boost water supplies: making sewage water clean enough to drink.

If the public backs the plan, one day millions of gallons of the purified water could be pumped into streams and groundwater aquifers across Santa Clara County and mixed with existing drinking water supplies.

The county now provides half of its drinking water from wells that pump water from those aquifers. The other half comes from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

"This is a homegrown resource. It is the most reliable supply you can have," said Eric Rosenblum, division manager for San Jose's South Bay Water Recycling Project.

"It is much less dependent on the weather than other sources. It is a great new tool to meet water needs."

The potentially controversial idea, still in the early stages, will be discussed this morning at the water district's weekly board meeting in San Jose. A final, detailed proposal isn't expected until next year.

Experts note that the technology exists to take sewage water and purify it to levels that meet California drinking water standards using an array of techniques such as reverse osmosis, microfiltration and ultraviolet light.

But in several areas around California - from San Diego to Pleasanton - attempts at blending purified wastewater with drinking water aquifers have been dropped after public outcry from critics who call the projects "toilet-to-tap."

But some water districts have already moved ahead with projects.

The Orange County Water District will christen a new $480 million project in November to produce up to 70 million gallons of recycled water a day from treated sewage. It will be used to recharge drinking water aquifers that serve Anaheim, Huntington Beach and other cities.

The project - the largest of its kind in the United States - came after nine years of public hearings and scientific studies. It won permits from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Public Health.

Cautious approach

Keith Whitman, water supply manager for the Santa Clara Valley Water District, promised that the district will take a similarly cautious approach.

"What we don't want to end up with is what's happened in other areas where you have fear and politics cause a backlash," he said.

Because California's population is expected to grow from the current 37 million to more than 52 million by 2030, the state Department of Water Resources recommended four years ago that California triple its use of recycled water, now about 500,000 acre-feet a year, by 2030.

Nearly all the recycled water in the state, however, goes for non-potable uses such as irrigating crops, cooling power plants, and watering golf courses, cemeteries and highway landscaping.

San Jose has used it in those ways for a decade.

In 1997, the city began delivering recycled wastewater across the county through purple pipes from its sewage treatment plant in Alviso. The project now has 540 customers and provides about 10,000 acre-feet of water a year - nearly 3 percent of total county demand. An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, or the amount of water a family of five uses in a year.

Customers for recycled water include San Jose Municipal Golf Course, Metcalf Energy Plant in South San Jose, Oak Hill Cemetery and dozens of schools and parks.

The city sells the water at a discounted rate. Originally, the $225 million project was built after state water regulators ordered the city to stop pumping so much treated fresh water into San Francisco Bay, where it was diluting brackish marshes and changing the bay's ecology.

But now, the city and the water district see the project as a potentially significant source of drinking water.

Today, the water district board will vote whether to allow its staff to negotiate with the city to expand the use of recycled water. If approved, as expected, the final agreement would come next year.

No project would be built without public hearings, an environmental impact statement, approval from the state Department of Public Health, the Regional Water Quality Control Board and the San Jose City Council.

In early feasibility studies, the water district has envisioned constructing a $52 million advanced treatment plant. It would be located in Alviso next to the city's wastewater treatment plant and produce the same amount of recycled water now produced by the plant, about 10 million gallons a day, but at a higher quality. It would remove salts that, if left untreated, would eventually build up in irrigation water, causing grass to brown and harming redwoods and other trees in clay soil.

Could open by 2012

Whitman said construction could begin on the plant by 2010 and open by 2012.

After that, if the city and district want to blend its recycled water with groundwater aquifers, they would build one or more "satellite plants" in places like Coyote Valley and further treat the water to drinking water standards.

The state Department of Public Health requires any recycled water used on food crops, school fields or residential irrigation to be treated to tertiary standards - the highest level of sewage treatment, and disinfected with chlorine. San Jose's now meets that standard.

But the health department does not have uniform guidelines for pumping it into drinking water aquifers. New rules the department is drafting would require it to meet drinking water standards.

Environmentalists are generally supportive.

"Recycled water is going to be a critical component of California's water future," said Linda Sheehan, executive director of the California Coastkeeper Alliance, in Fremont. "It has to be, because of population growth and because climate change is going to reduce the amount of snowpack in the Sierra."

Sheehan said, however, that the water must be rigorously tested not only for traditional contaminants such as bacteria but also for minute levels of pharmaceuticals, hormones and other contaminants that can get through sewage treatment plants unfiltered.

The largest hurdle if the project is to go forward is the "yuck factor." Even if the science is sound, how do you persuade people that it is OK to drink toilet water?

In Sonoma County, some vintners have been fighting a proposal this summer to use recycled water from Santa Rosa to irrigate wine grapes.

"I am worried that there is a huge backlash on recycled water on our grapes," Katie Murphy, vice-president of the Alexander Valley Association, told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat in May. "I fear negative publicity - and that could linger over our wine industry for a long time."

In Orange County, water officials held hundreds of public meetings with hospitals, civic groups, religious leaders and others. They noted that astronauts have drunk recycled water for years - and that anyone drawing water from a river is drinking the recycled wastewater of cities upstream, as Los Angeles does with Las Vegas, and Memphis with St. Louis.

"We are very concerned about public opinion," said San Jose's Rosenblum. "People in Silicon Valley value innovation and technology, but they also value a high quality environment and a reliable source of water. So to the extent that using recycled water for potable purposes helps achieve those goals, I think the people in our area will be open to its use."

The San Diego Saga

2007-09-14T23:22:00.000+10:00

The City of San Diego (California) is a widely cited case-study regarding the unsuccessful implementation of an indirect potable water recycling (IPR) scheme. Ironically, it is also an important case-study for where some of the best science has been conducted to establish and demonstrate the safety of the practice.

San Diego is often credited with the popularisation of the intentionally yuck-inducing term ‘toilet-to-tap’. An article from CNN in 1997 stated "If all goes according to plan, by the year 2001, the city's sewage water will be treated and recycled right into the drinking tap". Hence intentionally emotive language, crafted to emphasise a link between sewage and taps can be traced back at least a decade. Perhaps not surprisingly a highly emotional debate ensued.

The plan in San Diego was to pipe highly treated municipal effluent to the San Vicente Reservoir, where it would mix with raw river water and become part of the city’s raw water supply. This proposal met with considerable community opposition; apparently largely on the basis that IPR seems distasteful. However, an editorial from the Sacramento Bee puts some of the issues in perspective:

"Alas, it seems time to let San Diegans and any other squirming citizens in on a little secret about water supplies: Toilet-to-tap is as old as civilization in California. And if San Diego shuns blended toilet water, it's about to become very thirsty.

With little groundwater underneath it, San Diego has two primary supplies. One is the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The other is the Colorado River. The proposed project, to reuse water rather than drain it into the ocean, is one viable way to create a reliable local supply for San Diego. But it does involve the blending of treated water with untreated water in a reservoir. Technically, this means drinking treated toilet water. Is this really new for San Diego or most cities? Of course not.

Consider the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, whose waters San Diego draws from the Delta. More than 300 farmers and cities are permitted to discharge their treated and untreated runoff into these rivers. Counties empty treated sewage water into rivers every day. Almost 10 percent of the average flow of these rivers is discharge, according to San Diego's water department.

Yuck? Consider the Colorado River. Las Vegas dumps 58 billion gallons of treated sewage water into nearby Lake Mead, from whence it flows into the Colorado. More than 17 percent of this river's flow is discharge. Guess who drinks some of this, San Diego?"

Although IPR is not current San Diego City policy, it seems the issue will not disappear until long-term water shortages are resolved. The city’s Union-Tribune newspaper today reported on an on-going disagreement between the San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders and City Attorney Michael Aguirre.

Mayor Sanders has publicly rejected IPR for San Diego, while Attorney Aguirre has pointed out that “we rely on recycled water right now…We import recycled water from the Colorado River”. The Union-Tribune stated that Attorney Aguirre accused the mayor of relying on polls to dictate his water policies and not educating the public.

It’s certainly not for me to suggest how San Diego should best manage its water and I don’t pretend to have any capacity to be able to do so. However, it is insightful to observe the debate and consider just how significant politics and populism are in the determination of long-term infrastructure planning.

Las Vegas Wash

2007-09-07T15:01:00.000+10:00

Greetings from Las Vegas.

I came through Las Vegas primarily to visit the new Water Quality Laboratory and Applied Research & Development Center of the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA).

This facility is practically ground-zero in the USA for research into emerging water quality issues such as the presence of pharmaceuticals and endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) in drinking water.

I was invited to visit Dr Shane Snyder, -an environmental toxicologist and Research & Development Project Manager at SNWA. Throughout the last decade Shane has conducted research focussing on water quality at Lake Mead on the Colorado River, -the home of Hoover Dam and one of the most important drinking water sources in the USA. Lake Mead is a vital water supply for Nevada, Arizona and California.

As Shane explained to me, Lake Mead and Hoover Dam are also an example of a planned indirect potable water recycling (IPR) scheme. All treated municipal effluent is recycled one way or another in Las Vegas. Much of it is used directly for irrigation, but a significant proportion is also returned to Lake Mead via a waterway known as the Las Vegas Wash.

The Las Vegas Wash is a flow of water that is comprised of urban runoff, shallow ground water, reclaimed water, and stormwater. As described on the website of the Las Vegas Wash Coordination Committee, reclaimed water (ie. recycled municipal effluent) is normally the largest contribution of water to The Wash.

Three municipalities (Las Vegas, Clark County and Henderson) discharge treated effluents into The Wash to give a combined total of more than 500 million litres per day. The discharged water is generally conventionally treated sewage effluent with nutrient removal. There are no advanced water treatment processes such as reverse osmosis or advanced oxidation prior to discharge. As a result, there have been a number of pollution concerns in Lake Mead. One of the major concerns has been salinity. Furthermore, Shane’s work over the last decade has shown that endocrine disrupting compounds (such as estrogenic hormones) have had a detrimental effect on fish in the lake.

Prior to human consumption, the water from Lake Mead (and Lake Las Vegas) is treated by processes including flocculation, ozonation, dual media (anthracite and sand) filtration and chlorination.

As the fastest growing population in the USA and being in the middle of the Mojave Desert, sufficient clean drinking water is not something that Las Vegas can afford to gamble. The city invests in water in a way that suggests that it truly recognises the value of its most precious resource. It maintains a comprehensive water quality analysis program and on-going research aimed at process optimisation and continual improvement.

The image below shows a pilot-scale ozonation reactor at one of the Las Vegas water treatment plants.

Here is Lake Mead showing dramatic evidence of the drought experienced during the last decade. This deck was built for fishing from. An almost identical picture appeared on the front page of the New York Times earlier this year.

This is another view of Lake Mead. In the distance you may be able to see some boats crowded into a receding marina. Well above the boats you can see a white band on the rocks behind. This is precipitated calcium carbonate (‘hardness’) from the lake water and reveals the previous water height. This image from the New York Times shows it even more dramatically.

The next two images are from Hoover Dam. Again, note the white scale on the rocks showing evidence of previous water height.

Finally, water from the lake is treated at a full scale Las Vegas water treatment plant, ready for distribution to customers.

Wentworth Group promotes IPR

2007-09-05T09:06:00.000+10:00

The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists is a group of respected Australian scientists with an aim to raise awareness and facilitate debate regarding some key environmental issues. Their members include Prof Tim Flannery, Prof Peter Cullen, and Prof Mike Young.

The Wentworth Group have released a number of significant documents including their Blueprint for a Living Continent in 2002 and their Blueprint for a National Water Plan in 2003. You can also find a brief article about the Wentworth Group's contribution to the water debate here.

Today’s Adelaide Advertiser reports the Wentworth Group advocating the expansion of Adelaide’s municipal water supplies by means including potable and non potable water reuse and urban stormwater harvesting (see below).

I haven’t yet found the actual source document where the proposed strategies are described. Please let me know if you come across it…

A State of Emergency
By Cara Jenkin
The Adelaide Advertiser
September 05, 2007

SOUTH Australians need to drink recycled sewage, recycle stormwater and consume 50 per cent less to safeguard water supplies for the future, the Wentworth Group of Scientists says.

They have called for reliable sources to be established as a matter of urgency to replace SA's reliance on the River Murray.

The group's four water experts, University of Adelaide Professor Mike Young, former Adelaide Thinker in Residence Peter Cullen, University of Sydney Emeritus Professor Bruce Thom and CSIRO environmental adviser Peter Cosier have outlined several strategies.

The use of recycled wastewater and stormwater, limits on groundwater use, a buyback of water licences and an overall reduction in consumption was necessary.

Professor Young said all the options to source water must be examined.

"We need to put sewage recycling strongly on the table as an option, for both drinking and for outdoor use, and evaluate (all the options) carefully and thoroughly," he said.

Professor Cullen said 50 per cent of the water allocated from rivers would be less reliable as climate change took hold.

"We need to put controls on groundwater bores right across the Adelaide Plains," he said.

"We are pumping vast amounts out of our reserves when we might not have anything come out of the taps this summer."

Professor Thom said there was a "tremendous loss" when stormwater was being discharged out to sea.

Mr Cosier said State and Federal Government reforms to allocate water more stringently and sustainably had also failed to make progress in the past three years.

"One of the big criticisms SA had in the past was asking others to do what they weren't prepared to do themselves," he said.

Swanbank Power Station on Recycled Water

2007-09-03T12:28:00.000+10:00

This week is a significant milestone for recycled water use in Queensland with a key component of the Western Corridor Recycled Water Project reaching fruition.

High quality water from the new Bundamba Advanced Water Treatment Plant is now delivered direct to the Swanbank Power Station. This is currently 13 ML per day, which would otherwise be taken from Brisbane’s Wivenhoe Dam, and expected to increase to 20 ML per day when water restrictions are relaxed.

Further details below from a media release today from the Queensland Water Commission.

Workers toasted with a top drop: Beattie
QWC Media Release
03 Sep 2007

BUNDAMBA: Premier Peter Beattie and Deputy Premier Anna Bligh today lifted glasses of recycled water to toast the success of the first completed stage of the State Government's $9 billion Water Grid.

Mr Beattie and Ms Bligh drank the purified recycled water during an open day at the Bundamba Advanced Water Treatment Plant, the first stage of the $2.4 billion Western Corridor Recycled Water Project to have been completed.

This week the Bundamba Advanced Water Treatment plant started delivering supplies to the Swanbank Power Station via a 7.3km pipeline.

Stage 1A of the Western Corridor Recycled Water Project also involved building a 9.6km "triple" pipeline from the Goodna and Bundamba wastewater plants to the new Bundamba Advanced Water Treatment facility.

Mr Beattie said purified water would not be introduced into drinking supplies in the Wivenhoe Dam system until October 2008, when the Western Corridor Recycled Water Project was running at full steam, taking water from Bundamba and two other Advanced Water Treatment plants at Luggage Point and Gibson Island that are under construction in Brisbane.

"This is one of the most satisfying drinks of water I've ever had," Mr Beattie said.

"Ten months ago, this was a paddock. Now we have a high-tech plant producing some of the best-grade recycled water in the world, which easily meets Australian drinking water standards.

"Out of the worst drought in this region's history we have developed a long-term solution. This is Smart State at work.

"As well as securing our drinking supplies and driving power stations, it will eventually provide our farmers with a reliable water supply. Industry in this growth belt also will be able to access the recycled water."

Ms Bligh used her taste of purified water to toast the 800-strong workforce who laboured long and hard to ensure the success of the project.

"Despite the recent rains, they met a timetable that some said was impossible. It's a tremendous feat of engineering recognised around the world," Ms Bligh said.

At full capacity, Stage 1A will produce 20 million litres of purified recycled water a day for Swanbank, freeing up Wivenhoe drinking water for more than 140,000 people.

At present, flows are reduced to about 13Ml because people in south-east Queensland are using less water than normal under Level 5 restrictions.

"On the upside, this water is of such quality it can be reused by Swanbank more times than the water that was being taken directly from Wivenhoe. This means further water savings in the order of 10 per cent - at least another million litres of drinking water a day for south-east Queenslanders," Ms Bligh said.

When completed in October 2008, the Western Corridor Recycled Water Project will have the capacity to deliver 182ML a day to Swanbank and Tarong Power stations and into Wivenhoe Dam. Its ultimate capacity is 310Ml a day.

The Government also is investigating expanding the capacity of the Gold Coast Desalination Plant at Tugun, from 125Ml a day to just over 170Ml/day meaning more than half of SEQ's water needs will come from sources that aren't dependent on rainfall.

AQWATEC

2007-08-30T09:58:00.000+10:00

I’m currently in Colorado visiting Assoc Prof Jorg Drewes at the Colorado School of Mines (CSM). Jorg is well recognised for his research which has improved the understanding of how trace chemical contaminants are removed from water during various treatment processes. I mentioned some of Jorg’s research previously regarding the membrane rejection diagram developed by Jorg and one of his post-doctoral researchers.

Jorg is also the Director of the new Advanced Water Quality Centre (AQWATEC), which was opened at CSM this week. I was fortunate to be visiting during the week of the official ribbon cutting.

Despite the dodgy acronym, AQWATEC is a great facility for advancing our understanding of water treatment and water recycling processes. A significant amount of effort has been invested in developing pilot-scale water treatment operations. These can be used to examine the impacts that various operational changes may have on treated water quality. Furthermore, these pilot-scale apparatus will be extremely useful for investigations into the optimisation of energy efficiency and membrane life-span.

Pilot-scale rigs in the AQWATEC currently include:

- Reverse osmosis
- Nanofiltration
- Forward osmosis
- Membrane distillation
- Soil transport columns (to simulate soil-aquifer treatment)
- Coagulation/flocculation
- Dual media filtration
- Capacitive deionisation
- Electrodialysis
- Fluidised bed crystallisation
- Activated sludge bioreactor

About 60 people came along to the grand opening including a Colorado Congressman (Ed Perlmutter), the Executive Director of the Awwa Research Foundation (Rob Renner) and representatives of the US Bureau of Reclamation.

Expect to see plenty of quality research coming from the AQWATEC during the next few years.