The world’s media is focused on Net-Zero emissions…what about Net-Zero discharges of waste water?

Sydney discharges more water into its rivers and oceans than it consumes through its water supply (dams and desalination plant).  There is no water shortage. Sydney discharges vast quantities of primary treated (i.e. basically raw) effluent via three massive ocean outfalls 3km offshore. The fish/algae are the only beneficiaries of these valuable and nutrient rich discharges. In addition, Sydney wastes equally vast quantities of stormwater that discharge into rivers, estuaries, and beaches. This is all untreated runoff from rainfall and includes large amounts of untreated sewage that leak from Sydney’s aging sewerage system. If you visit Sydney after a rainstorm, you are still advised not to swim near stormwater drains for health reasons. This wasted water could be treated to both non-potable and potable levels for valuable use to the community.  Such water is a key solution to resilient water supplies.

I recently listened to the internationally experienced CEO of Sydney Water during a one-hour podcast where he stated that our customers say potable recycling is “almost a no brainer”. I was pleasantly surprised to hear his common-sense realism and refreshing approach.  In contrast, during the Friday 29^th October consultation webinar run by a team of NSW senior bureaucrats, they were defensive and dismissive of my request for them to explain their disain for purified water recycling as sustainable water supply for a growing Sydney. How odd that we have a well-respected internationally experienced CEO (French) who has delivered secure safe water and wastewater around the world, yet our elite spin doctoring bureaucrats continue to offer unsustainable, expensive, energy-hungry strategies that dismiss his common-sense view on the water cycle.

I have had the pleasure of debating the urban water cycle with pupils, students, community groups and utilities around the world over the last 35+ years. I have rarely found resistance from those who have listened to and questioned my questions surrounding recycled water,….. with the exception of one group, namely the webinars bureaucrats who control the planning, expenditure, and communication for this critical global resource.  Their uniquely strong negative response suggests that they:

• don’t want to step on their fellow bureaucrats’ toes in other government silos (mainly Environment, Health and Planning);
• don’t want to challenge their Minister’s short-term demands (i.e. no difficult issues); or
• won’t admit the reality of unplanned water recycling that underlies the majority of our existing safe drinking water supplies.

Generations of bureaucrats have spent decades formulating a barrage of regulatory barriers to deter and impose excessive costs on any planned purified water recycling (ARWG, 2008), Yet these same bureaucrats ensure that the existing unplanned recycled water from state owned water corporations” (like Sydney Water) across Australia are allowed to continue with much less stringent regulations/standards (ADWG, 2011).

You may ask what the difference is between unplanned and planned potable water recycling. This is a ploy introduced by a former CEO of Sydney Water when he was defending the $3+billion Sydney desalination white elephant. Quite simply most water supplies around the world have unplanned potable water recycling, which means their “virgin” water supplies collected from catchments are polluted by discharges from upstream towns/cities along with the excrement from millions of native and domestic animals. Engineers/scientists have successfully treated this water for centuries and hence enabled our cities to prosper with the secure knowledge that their tap water is safe to drink.

The bureaucrats want to save us from a safe, heathy, secure, planned, high quality, treated, recycled potable water supply. Yet they defend selling us lower quality, unplanned, potable, recycled water via our existing drinking water supplies, augmented with “bottled electricity” (as former NSW Premier Bob Carr labelled desalinated water). Indeed, one of the lead bureaucrats in the 29^th October webinar stated that Sydney will soon run the Kurnell desalination plant full time, irrespective of the former rules which would only use these energy-intensive salt water-fed water factories in times of drought.

The draft GSWS only makes passing commentary about the need for community education on both unplanned and planned potable recycled water and has only started to discuss this (I assume through narrow focus groups run by friendly public relations companies). Given that Sydney Water first considered potable recycled water over 50 years ago, it seems a bit late if they really wanted to take community views into the development of a sustainable water supply strategy. In the past, technological difficulties and reliability were used as barriers recycled potable water. Now that such technical myths have been exposed, the bureaucrats are claiming there is community resistance and an educational barrier that will take decades to overcome. We have had four severe droughts in Sydney over the last 30 years. No significant attempt was made to address this community acceptance barrier for potable recycled water, until two years ago.

What is so disgraceful is that since 1999, Sydney has had the infrastructure and capacity to demonstrate and test the feasibility of planned potable water recycling of both stormwater and treated effluent. It was built as part of our “Green Olympics 2000” infrastructure at Homebush built by the state-owned Sydney Olympic Park Authority. This scheme supplied standard drinking water and highly treated recycled water for non-potable use. The facility is identical to the type of technology that turns seawater and effluent into drinking water. With suitable technology upgrades, SWC and the NSW Government could have their very own real world working example of the performance of planned potable water recycling for over 60,000 Sydneysiders. Instead, the GSWS is planning yet another pilot study In Western Sydney from scratch and is only just considering talking about this obvious solution. The Kurnell and Wonthaggi desalination plants are financial white elephants for taxpayers, but excellent investments for Canadian teacher superfunds. Alternatively, a “purified planned water recycling elephant” could deliver secure, reliable, safe and enduring water supply to all our capital cities using our state-owned utilities. These utilities could deliver cost effective drinking water and wastewater management, and significant environmental benefits by harvesting effluent and stormwater discharges to turn into safe drinking water rather than being left to pollute our waterways and beaches.

My recent personal exposure to the bureaucrats’ “Zoom-based” approach to consultation demonstrated that bureaucrats are keen to embrace this medium, as it gives them even greater controls/constraints over community input. It’s about time politicians remembered that they need vision that surpasses their 3–4 year election cycle and to demand their highly paid, unelected bureaucrats to deliver outcomes (as opposed to cycles of pointless strategy documents) to secure Australia’s future urban water supplies.

During two years of “lockdown”, we have been consulted via “Zoom-webinars” on the strategies produced by elite bureaucrats (all on full pay working, with home allowances) with little experience of the real world. COP26 and the GSWS are classic examples of bureaucratic “tick-the box” community media consultation, now supported by “Zoom-webinar” constrictions thanks to the Covid 19 crisis. Once ticked they can deliver their unelected agenda with impunity.

Since Federation, Australian bureaucrats have traditionally thrived off crisis management. In water supply, they claim to have ‘saved the day’ by delivering expensive solutions to the water supply crisis their mismanagement has created.  A few dedicated scientists/engineers have developed sophistated planning tools to solve this perpetual water supply problem yet they have been dismissed by the self-serving bureaucracy. We can sustainably deliver 6-star quality purified drinking water by treating our wastewater across Australia, while sustainably managing our water cycles. In addition, if we want to, we can achieve net zero discharges of waste/stormwater into our waterways. If you believe in the COP26 “Net Zero Emissions (NZE)” then why not act locally and demand “Net Zero Discharges (NZD)” from our water planning bureaucrats?

Unlike Net Zero Emissions, Net Zero Discharge and a secure recycled water supply won’t take 50-100 years to make a difference or deliver tangible outcomes!