Wannon Water upgrade issues: The Terrier cheat sheet
Carol Altmann – The Terrier
The sexy Wannon Water sequel: Meet Dr Sam, the West Highland Water Scientist.
Dr Sam is here to help us have a say on the Warrnambool sewage treatment plant $40m upgrade which is actually not sexy, but boy, it’s important.
What happens next at that plant sets up what will happen off Thunder Point for the next 20 years.
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.
Wannon Water sewage plant upgrade must reach for the stars
Betty Boop has nothing to do with Wannon Water and its treatment plant, but I am rolling out some stars to make sewage sexy.
Carol Altmann – The Terrier
Tonight I am rolling out the red carpet to make sewage sexy and effluent exotic, because we need to talk about the planned upgrade of the Wannon Water treatment plant.
This upgrade will service Warrnambool for the next 20 years.
I want to explain, as best I can, why before 1 July (when the chance for public comment closes) we need to ask for better from Wannon Water, to aim higher, and to stop using our beautiful ocean like a giant Maytag washing machine.
As it stands, Wannon Water plans to spend $40 million expanding the treatment works at the end of Elliot St, so it can double its capacity to eventually handle around 30 million litres of sewage a day by 2040.
This Wannon Water production should be a blockbuster starring the Brad Pitt of shit and the Betty Boop of poop and the Scarlett Johansson of industrial trade waste, except it isn’t even close.
It’s more of a B-grade movie starring faded stars of yesteryear.
That’s because the $40 million plan is the cheapest option and will not change the way our sewage is treated in the future from how it is treated now.
The ‘mixed liquor’ of treated sewage that entered the ocean off Thunder Point last month due to problems at the Wannon Water plant. Image: Beach Patrol 3280.
This means, in 2040, we will still be pouring millions of gallons of treated sewage/effluent into the ocean off Thunder Point using exactly the same treatment system as in 2020.
The COF is lobbying to have all waste water discharged to the ocean at a Class A+ standard by 2030 to reduce ocean pollution.
Warrnambool is not even at Class A now, and won’t be at Class A after the upgrade, let alone at A+.
Worse, our system often doesn’t work, as can been seen by what is called the “mixed liquor” (which sounds sexy, but is the revolting foamy brown stuff) which still turns up off Thunder Point.
What we should be aiming for by 2040 is clean, treated effluent that can be recycled and reused and doesn’t have to go into the ocean at all, but if it does, at least make sure it is not full of pollutants like phosphorous.
Right, how do I make phosphorous sexy?
Well, here is a photo of a very sexy Brad Pitt, followed by a sexy Wannon Water graph that shows that Warrnambool Cheese and Butter – the burgundy colour – producing a Pitt-load of phosphorous, nitrogen and ammonia that goes into our ocean:
Warrnambool Cheese and Butter is owned by the Canadian giant, Saputo, which turns over about $11 billion a year.
Perhaps we could ask Saputo to throw a few million toward helping us make it to the Hollywood A-list by making sure our ocean had the cleanest effluent possible?
Or maybe Saputo could spend a few million dollars improving the treatment of its own waste before it makes anywhere near Wannon Water and into the ocean?
Another of the problems from this dairy trade waste is it’s extremely salty, which means the effluent water cannot be reused easily without burning everything along the way.
I found it astonishing that of the millions of litres of waste water produced by the Warrnambool treatment plant – 15 million litres a day – only 60 million litres a year is reused, and only at the plant itself.
In the scheme of things, 60m litres a year is an eye dropper full and the rest goes into the sea to swirl around in nature’s Maytag: not a drop is recycled or reused outside of the Elliot St treatment plant.
Wannon Water says it has investigated reuse projects and also tried to find customers for recycled water, but without success, no doubt because of the high salt content among other things.
So we have a treatment plant within walking distance of the Warrnambool Golf Course* and the new Younger St housing estate, yet no recycled waste water from the treatment plant is being used at either. (*Clarification: water was diverted from Fonterra, before it reached the plant, for use on the golf course. Please see comment from Dave at the end of this story).
Good grief.
If this is “green” Warrnambool under the Warrnambool City Council 2040 plan, then we have a long, long way to go.
Of course it all comes down to dollars and who pays.
People, naturally, become nervous when Wannon Water talks about higher customer bills to cover the cost, but here is a photo of a beautiful Scarlett Johansson, under which we can see a beautiful graph showing the costs.
You will see that between the various options, it is really not that different – a range of 1.16% to 1.53%.
Is Wannon Water really that strapped for cash or ways to find it?
How bizarre that Lyndoch Living – a not-for-profit, community owned aged care home – can roll out out a $100 million masterplan, yet Wannon Water can only come up with $40 million for a major treatment plant expansion to service our city for the next 20 years.
Water treatment is complex, but I know we can do better than this, our kids deserve to inherit something better than this, and the Clean Ocean Foundation is right behind Warrnambool in its quest to ask for more.
The COF will appear in the blockbuster sequel to this story tomorrow night, offering us non-science-minded folk some starting tips for our submissions.
Holy shi*! Why is brown gunk being pumped into our ocean?
Carol Altmann – The Terrier
Dirty dumps: isn’t it incredible to think that in 2020 we still have waves of brown, creamy, sewage water turning up at Thunder Point from the Wannon Water treatment plant?
The video above, captured by Good Will Nurdle Hunting, was taken from above the outfall pipe off Shelly Beach last Saturday, May 30.
Another gorgeous brown tide was also crashing onto the rocks on Tuesday 26 May.
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.
Yuk: The brown treated sewage water off Thunder Point on May 30, having been pumped into the from the Wannon Water treatment plant. Image: Good Will Nurdle Hunting.
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.
