News - Environment

ANU Professor Peter Collignon has been having a lot to say of late about Actew's plans for water recycling. He has now taken his complaints to the national stage via Crikey.com.

My letter back to Crikey wasn't the only one pointing out the bias in the good professor's arguments. And the third letter seems to be inferring that the professor might have a bit of a conflict of interests...

From Crikey.com 21 June 2007:

Alan Kerlin writes: The credibility of ANU Professor Peter Collignon's arguments on water recycling and his attempts to stir up "poo phobia" are degraded on three points: He says we can't rely on available technology to safely treat effluent for reuse, but fails to acknowledge that this same technology (and usually to a much lower treatment standard) treats the water already coming out of his tap. He argues that Canberra's water catchment is "pristine", when not even the very headwaters of the Snowy River on the side of Mt Kosciuszko is safe to drink untreated due to the spread of Guardia by animals like foxes. He talks only of Canberra's water (the stuff he has to drink), with no regard for every other township between Canberra and Adelaide that drinks the water that went through his toilet. This simple act of flowing downstream and around a few bends does not purify water, Peter. It is time that Peter stops bolstering his arguments with his official title and admits that he has a personal hang-up about it. He's a poo-phobe.

Paul Rasmussen writes: Re. "Keep the cr-p out of our drinking water" (yesterday, item 6). It is of some interest to us here in the Hawkesbury LGA that drinking recycled water is such a big issue - we have done it for years. The town water supplied to most of the households in the Hawkesbury City comes from the Hawkesbury Nepean (HN) River. It is extracted at North Richmond, NSW and then treated and distributed to households. The HN river water is over 80% sewerage treatment plant discharge water - 97% of the fresh clean river water is diverted to Sydney and what now flows in the HN River is substantially STP water. Once this water flows to North Richmond, it is extracted by the water treatment plant there, treated and distributed to HOUSEHOLDS for drinking, washing etc etc purposes. Sure this water has been "cleaned" by the STP processes and the water filtration plant, but it is still STP water. Not good enough for the City, but OK for the regions? Sounds a bit like the Broadband plan? Are we becoming "two" Australias?

David Hand writes: A feature of this ongoing debate is that opponents of water recycling call it "recycled sewage". This term is meant to conjure some sort of revulsion to the proposal and therefore indicates a lack of true objectivity by the professor who seems to have already made up his mind. To those of us who are at the mercy of the media for our information on this important issue, it would be nice if your commentator was less shrill and more emotionally neutral, arguing from a position of reason, supported by facts, rather than fear. The professor seems to want me to be afraid that "evil corporations" will visit my house, attach the outlet of my toilet to the inflow of my drinking water and charge me an arm and a leg for the privilege. His comments on overseas experience say nothing of the political influences by activists such as himself within all those solutions, suggesting that rejection of measures being discussed here are purely technical. Nowhere does he present any studies from anywhere showing that science has proven recycled water cannot be achieved. I saw in the news that Goulburn's biggest dam has risen from empty to 3% full this week. The uncertainty of future rainfall patterns in the light of climate change means that the possibility of running out of drinking water is real. As with climate change, none of us have actually visited Australia in 50 years time and so at best we are limited to risk assessments. I am satisfied that the risk of running out of water is real and therefore I support any true research into measures that might be taken to avoid this, whether by academics, politicians or even "evil corporations". *In the interests of encouraging a more open declaration of conflicts of interest in this debate: I do not have any contracts, consultancy arrangement or research grants from any companies that may derive major financial gains from building sewage water recycling plants (eg engineering companies such as CH2M Hill, Veolia Water etc) nor from institutions that may be involved with the large sums of monies that will be needed to finance these types of projects (eg Macquarie Bank, Babcock and Brown, and/or water infrastructure funds). I have not previously owned a small parcel of shares in AGL (which is in a business partnership with ACTEW and thus derives profits from water supply and use in the ACT in conjunction with ACTEW and the ACT Government). 

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