By Geoff Ash
SYDNEY — Two environmental activists took the gloss off the Sydney Water Board's latest public relations effort here on August 14, when the last of the city's three deep water ocean outfalls was officially opened by Premier Nick Greiner at Bondi sewage treatment plant.
According to the premier, when the $106 million outfall was commissioned with the touch of a button, it ended more than a century of pollution off Australia's most famous surfing beach.
Sewage effluent will be pumped 1.7 kilometres offshore, where it will enter the ocean through a series of diffusers instead of simply being discharged at the cliff face.
Somehow, environmentalists Richard Gosden, from Stop the Ocean Pollution (STOP), and David Vincent, from Friends of the Earth, managed to be part of the "invitation only" show for the media deep in the bowels of the sewage plant.
Local member Michael Yabsley and housing minister Joe Schipp, whose portfolio includes the Water Board, praised the government and the board, but when Greiner's turn came he had to contend with Gosden's view of the outfall.
"The extended outfalls were designed to hide the sewage from view, not to treat it or prevent toxic pollution of the marine environment", Gosden said. "The Water Board has done little to prevent industry putting its toxic waste into the sewers since it was revealed early in 1989 that fish were being contaminated by the sewage."
According to Gosden, the new outfalls will simply dump toxic waste like mercury and organochlorines closer to commercial fishing grounds.
Friends of the Earth and STOP are calling for the government to commit itself to implementing secondary treatment of sewage, a process that would require a large reduction in the flow of toxic industrial waste into the sewers, because it interferes with the biological treatment process.
The government's policy is to upgrade treatment at the plants with processes that are tolerant of toxic waste.
David Vincent also warned that "the extended outfalls won't prevent grease coming to the surface and viruses and bacteria encased in grease can survive in the ocean for months. With an onshore breeze, swimmers will still be vulnerable."
Sewage fields from the Malabar and North Head outfalls have been surfacing one in every three days. In Los Angeles, effluent from its submarine outfall has reached beaches from eight kilometres out to sea.