Advocate article makes it sound like a cartoon! -- Lennox Head Sewerage Outfall

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Date Posted: 14:43:47 12/11/01 Tue
Author: Janeane Waters
Author Host/IP: pad-cache2-1.cache.telstra.net / 165.228.129.12
Subject: Advocate article makes it sound like a cartoon!

I read the article about the Lennox Sewage Treatment Plant open day "Treatment works open day aimed at 'informing�" (The Advocate, 6.12.01) with great concern. The article made the effluent sound harmless: ��where oxygen is blown in to keep alive the friendly bacteria which eat anything �nasty� in the sludge�. It sounds like a cartoon! Sure, the treatment is to a very high standard but it appears that a few of the facts were omitted.

Oil and grease cannot be treated. The amount of oil and grease for each litre is a minuscule. Multiply that miniscule amount by 3.2 million litres (the amount of effluent discharged in the ocean daily) and we have about 32 kilograms of oil and grease being deposited into the ocean every day.

Endocrine disruptors are not mentioned either. These are a relatively new discovery and, not being a scientist, I�ll try to define them accurately. These are the hormones that pass through our systems and end up into the ocean, also untreatable. They have been proven to actually change the gender of fish. A bit of a concern? Not mentioned in the article.

Every day the Plant does a particular amount of treatment - enough to make the effluent look reasonable before it continues into the environment and fertilises algae among other things. At present some 20 kilos of phosphorus and 20 kilos of nitrogen go into the surf zone every day, feeding algae, disrupting the natural balance of the ocean.

The final area of concern is the viruses that UV filtering cannot treat. This treatment addresses faecal coliform levels (harmful bacteria that cause illness) to a very large extent but it cannot stop dangerous viruses from entering the ocean, where we swim, surf and fish, where our children splash, where the fish we eat are caught.

It is hardly the harmless process as suggested by the article. When are they going to address all of these issues truthfully? Are they going to alert the public to these issues? How much longer do we have to listen to their hard sell on the proposed outfall increase?

Janeane Waters
Lennox Head Surfrider President

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