Stuart Nettle March 10, 2009

I've always considered myself a fairly tolerant fellow; willing to turn the other cheek to people whether they be lid-riders or liberal voters. However, what really boils my blood are those folk - usually cab drivers with the dial stuck to AM talkback - telling me how they would improve the world. Call it the Wisdom Of The Cabbie; isssues reduced to black and white with all colour and complexity ignored.

You see, I'm a subscriber to the homespun philosophy of Frederick Lewis Allen: "Everything is more complicated than it looks to most people." I think it's too easy for people to comment on issues from the side without understanding the full story and knowing they will never be called on to fix said problem.

So I'm a bit torn on the latest issue to pass the Surfpolitik desk.

A few weeks back I was contacted by a fellow from the Clean Ocean Foundation. He was letting me know about an upcoming protest march C.O.F had organised about the Gunnamatta ocean outfall in Victoria, and the Eastern Treatment Plant - or ETP - that flows to it.

Before writing this I had to do a lot of reading because, I'll admit it, I knew bugger all about the outfall. However, for various reasons, I had done a lot of reading on the nearby Wonthaggi Desalination Plant, located barely 60 kilometres along the Victorian coastline from Gunnamatta.

On the very face of it, the two operations seem like opposite ventures; one gets rid of waste, the other creates a resource. The two ends of the consumption continuum. Yet the more I read on the Gunnamatta outfall the more I realised that there is an awful lot of common ground between it and the nearby desalination plant. And the more I read the more I started to wonder if this is one issue where The Wisdom Of The Cabbie may have some merit.

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Some background...

In 2004, then Premier of Victoria, Steve Bracks, announced a grand plan to 'secure sustainable water supplies for the state.' It was to be achieved through implementation of 'water saving measures, improved water infrastructure, and reduction of water use through recycling'. Nowhere in the Premier's media release of June 2004 is desalination mentioned.

In 2007 Bracks resigned as Premier and was replaced by John Brumby. That same year a revamped water plan was announced by the Brumby government with less emphasis on recycling and the inclusion of a desalination plant at Wonthaggi to augment the state's water supply.

The Wonthaggi desalination plant is forecast to cost $4 billion dollars, and another $132 million a year to run. The justification is that it is a 'last resort' move and that all other options had been exhausted.

The government also used climate change as a rationale for building the desalination plant.

A warning to climate skeptics: set your climate-bias to zero for a moment and hear me out. If climate change is real - and the Brumby government says it is - the causes are an oversupply of carbon in the atmosphere. The result - at least in SE Australia - will be less rain and more droughts. So to protect ourselves against drought the government is creating more drinking water by building a desalination plant. An energy intensive desalination plant. Energy that will have carbon sources and further add to the problem that the plant is trying to solve.

You don't have to be a cabbie to see the absurdity in that.

But that's the desal plant (and I'll have more to say on that in a coming article). Back at Gunnamatta we have 450 million litres a day - 99% of it fresh water - being released into the ocean. The percentage that isn't fresh contains pollutants such as ammonia, heavy metals, e-coli and entercocci, and various other pathogens.

Because the ETP discharges class-C effluent, surfers at Gunnamatta often contract minor health ailments such as ear, eye, nose and throat infections. Cuts becoming infected. Stomach bugs are regular. Occasionally more serious complaints are reported, such as the two cases of viral meningitis contracted by local surfers recently.

The reefs around Gunnamatta are also entirely denuded of plant life. Ironically this isn't caused by the same nasties that make humans sick, it is caused by the 445 million litres of fresh water that gets pumped out of the pipe every day. Fresh water being as harmful to sealife as pathogens to humans.

Meanwhile down the coast the pipe feeding the Wonthaggi desalination plant will suck in around 900 million litres of saltwater a day, turning just 43% of it into drinking water. The concentrated brine that is left will be mixed with the chemicals used in the reverse osmosis process - chlorine, caustic soda and hydrochloric acid - and dumped in the ocean near Wonthaggi.

But this dumping has been deemed safe by the Victorian government. The government recently appointed an Independent Expert Group that contained 4 water, ocean or contaminant specialists. They concluded that the desalination plant down the coast met all health requirements. It would have been very interesing to see what those specialists would have have said about the Gunnamatta discharge.

Is the common ground between the two now clear? Clear as purified water?

Could not the $4 billion dollars (plus the $132 a year running costs) have been spent to treat the water flowing out of Gunnamatta, thereby saving the health of surfers, restoring the ocean environment, using less energy, and perhaps costing less money?

Water recycling and purification is becoming more popular and more effective, and it is being used in many cities around the world. In some cities, such as London, Singapore and Washington DC it is even used as potable water. Yep, they drink it!

Yet even if it wasn't potable, $4 billion dollars would go a very long way toward creating infrastructure for dual-line or greywater systems, which reduces the demand for clean water. As it is we flush 11 litres of perfectly clean, drinkable water down the dunny every time we flush. Even during times of drought.

But the Victorian government hasn't even considered large-scale reuse as an option. They have taken everyone for a ride by claiming their water plan as environmentally sustainable and desalination as a 'last resort'. Yet the reality is the Wonthaggi desalination plant was greenlighted within 12 months when the outfall has been waiting for 7 years. And all the while, during the governments inactivity and ignorance, it has been pumping fresh water into the ocean.

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Clean Ocean Foundation have organised a protest rally about the Gunnamatta ocean outfall. If you care about water use or you surf near Gunnamatta then get on down. Meet at the second carpark at Gunnamatta this Sunday March 15th at 11am

You can get a cab there.

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