Agrees!

The consultant is recommending that the EPA requires Wannon Water to move to a Class A/tertiary system within five years.

Five years!

Sorry for the exclamation marks, but I am genuinely excited, because this is a major breakthrough in what has been a very long battle, by some very dedicated people, to bring our city into the 21st century.

If the W’bool City Council is serious about its 2040 Plan, then it needs to demand this requirement too.

I have learned that Class A water is good for just about everything other than a refreshing drink.

It is safe for human contact.

You can wash your clothes in it, water your vegies with it, irrigate your lawn with it….

How very modern and forward thinking, given we are the driest continent on the entire frying pan of the planet.

As it sits, Wannon Water plans to spend $40m expanding the treatment plant so that it can do more of the same for the next 20 years – ie. just keep pumping effluent into the ocean.

To go for Class A will cost another $30m to $40m, which for something which will set us up for the next 20 years, sounds like a good deal to me.

Wannon Water has already put the heebies into people by saying it would also cost an extra $2m to $3m each year to run and customer bills might rise.

When I see the sort of money swishing around the big dairy and meat companies that use our treatment plant, that sounds like small change.

They can afford it and they should pay most of it.

There are 19 recommendations in the report which has dropped onto the EPA website, and I am yet to fully digest them all, but boy, this one – #7 in the 19 – is a ripper.

People power is working and that is why I love, through the Terrier, being a part of it.

By the way, thankyou SO MUCH to everyone who has tipped into the tip jar. I will have an update on all days that have a T in them…..which means, tomorrow!

[You can find the full report here]

It’s a big ask for us humble citizens to get our heads around the full proposal.

How can we possibly know whether it’s the best we can do for our beautiful ocean?

But we have until 1 July to express an opinion, no matter how humble.

In digesting this WW plan, Dr Sam and I have been able to take a bit of a short cut – and you can too.

I have been able to tap into scientific and environmental experts who are helping the Clean Ocean Foundation with its response.

They have shared some of their thoughts with me, to pass on to you.

This means that if you want to make a comment, you don’t have to feel overwhelmed and have some handy starting points.

What follows is a top 10 list of some of the very detailed concerns being compiled by the COF. At the end is a link to an extended mix of these tips.

We are giving the simple version here, but the message is clear: we need to invest in new ways of doing things, not just do more of the same for the next 20 years.

This is our chance to stand up for the sea.

Here is your Terrier 10-point cheat sheet:

1. Where does the sewage go if the treatment plant fails, or partially fails?

2. Risks to human health from exposure to the effluent both inside and outside the mixing zone via fishing, diving, snorkelling and rock pooling.

3. The phosphorus concentrations – largely from Warrnambool Cheese and Butter – are about 10 times higher than for a similar plant. This can lead to algal blooms.

4. Micro-plastics will still be able to make it through the screening process and into the sea.

5. There is no plan for effluent disinfection. Physical, or chemical disinfection will provide a much safer marine environment.

6. The amount of effluent discharged each day will grow from 16 megalitres to 26 mgl a day, which means more pollutants will also be discharged.

7. The upgrade doesn’t take into account ‘new’ pollutants and how these will be handled, such as micro plastics, organo-chlorines and pesticides.

8. There is no deep exploration of ways to reuse/recycle the wastewater or reduce the energy consumption of the upgraded plant.

9. There must be an upgrade of technology, not just an expansion of the existing systems.

10. Industries that create the vast majority of the waste should be paying more toward the plant upgrade to make it best practice and future proof.

Click here for the extended mix.

Its overall score of just 42/100 is lower than the darkest years of the past decade.

It’s far lower than the regional average (56) and the state average (58), despite several councils having been dismissed, exposed or shamed.

Confidence in our council’s direction has crashed to just 32/100.

The ability to make community decisions scored a paltry 38/100.

Of the 28 different areas independently measured – from parking to tourism to traffic – satisfaction was down on every single measure, bar one (the environment, which stayed the same).

This is not just a failure, but a full-blown crisis.

As the survey company warned in its summary, it is going to take a mammoth effort to turn around.

We are looking to you, Mr Schneider, for answers and direction. This is why we pay you more than $320,000 a year.

But what do we get from our chief?

Well, today we got this statement to Katrina Lovell from The Standard:

“While we can look at the challenging issues that were playing out at the time the survey was conducted – horses on beaches, a councillor resignation, the Reid Oval design, The Lookout proposal, free car parking, ongoing investigations into management of credit cards and the start of COVID-19 restrictions – the reality is that many in the community are not happy with our performance and we must address this,” he said.

We get more excuses.

We get “not happy”.

Where is the plan, Mr Schneider? Where is the hope for change and real connection with the community you serve?

The council would have had these survey results for some time, and yet we don’t get even a hint of a plan, but more platitudes.

I, for one, am sick to death of the platitudes.

And where is the statement from our Mayor?

This is why we have a Mayor, to speak on behalf of the six other people elected to represent us.

Are they shocked? Outraged? Saddened? Determined to start working on this from first thing tomorrow morning?

We have silence.

They just don’t get it. Even after a report card littered with metaphorical Fs and Es, they still can’t reach across the divide and say “we hear you”.

In the meantime, there is a second survey that was released about a week ago, that we won’t see. This is the staff survey which, I have a sense, is equally as shocking.

The WCC will not be releasing those results. I wonder why.

Bring on October – and vote for change.

[The community survey report is 163 pages long and buried on the WCC website. I will drill down into it as the week unfolds. You can find it here.]

It also happened on 17 March, which means there have been at least three such “dirty dumps” into the ocean in the past three months.

The reason is that the Wannon Water plant is full to the gills.

It can’t take much more of our gunk – most of which comes from three main industries – and the system is failing more than it should.

The good news – if you could call it that – is that, according to Wannon Water GM Service Delivery Ian Bail, these brown waves haven’t included raw sewage. (ie. We won’t see a cameo appearance of our personal contributions.)

The other good news is that we have a chance to put things right.

The EPA is asking for public feedback on a $40 million upgrade of the treatment plant that will double its capacity – 30 million litres of waste water a day.

Hooray, I thought, we will soon have the best treatment plant possible.

Wrong.

The $40m upgrade will see more of the same technology that is used now.

For the next 20 years we will continue to have a “secondary” treatment system, and not a “tertiary” treatment system.

We will remain stuck in Year 10 at WooBoo High while other towns along our coastline have long moved on to Melbourne University.

How does a “Year 10 system” (as I like to call it) that still shoots shite into the ocean fit with our claim to be a clean, green, cosmopolitan, hydrogen-fuelled-FOGO-climate-change-emergency-aware Warrnambool?

It makes a mockery of that claim.

We can’t just keep saying we want to change the way we do things: we have to actually CHANGE.

But there is a problem.

The cut-off date for us to have a say via the EPA about this treatment plant upgrade is 17 June.

The EPA told me today that this deadline had already been extended by a week because of C19.

A week is not long enough. We need more time.

I don’t know about you, but I still don’t know what day it is and I haven’t been home schooling kids while trying to work, cook, clean the house and keep up with the rates notices.

We need more time to make sure we have our say and to get this absolutely right – to demand more for our coastline – and I hope the EPA agrees.

[You can find more detail on the EPA consultation here.]