Heavy Metals from Sydney Water - Sydney Morning Herald

UNTREATED sewage and heavy metals from the nation's biggest water utility are contaminating some of Sydney's most picturesque waterways and posing potentially widespread health risks, but the extent of the problem has been kept quiet.

The $32 billion Sydney Water Corporation has breached its pollution licences more than 1000 times in the past five years. And yet the NSW government's Office of Environment and Heritage has not prosecuted one of the breaches.

In many cases, a Sun-Herald investigation has found, untreated effluent overflowed into waterways such as the Georges River, Berowra, Cattai and Narrabeen Creek.

Sydney Water has also been unmasked as the state's biggest polluter of mercury, but the OEH has placed no restriction on how much it can discharge.

The federal government's National Pollutant Inventory shows Sydney Water's North Head sewage plant dumped 24 kilograms of mercury off Manly in 2009-10, through its deep ocean outfall pipe. That dwarfs the next biggest mercury polluter, the Springvale Colliery's 0.66 kilograms.

Medical studies published in 2008 revealed the cases of three Sydney children found to have toxic levels of mercury after eating fish, which had long been exposed to mercury.

''Every other industrial facility has managed to reduce its mercury pollution to almost nil,'' said the chief executive officer of the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, Pepe Clarke, when told of the breaches. ''This is an extraordinary situation and they need to explain it to the public.''

The Sun-Herald's inquiries reveal hundreds of cases a year involving Sydney Water, many involving a failure to improve environmental performance, odour problems, mechanical failures, high levels of heavy metals and untreated effluent overflowing into waterways, much of it blamed on human error, broken pipes and crumbling infrastructure.

In the mid-1990s, the then Sydney Water chief executive, Paul Broad, said the authority had tackled pollution of beaches and some rivers, but he conceded ''the big sleeper has been the sewer overflow issue''.

The State of the Beaches report for 2010-11 does show big improvements in pollution levels at ocean beaches. It is a different story for estuarine and freshwater river swimming sites. The worst-rated swimming spots include Malabar beach, the Narrabeen Lagoon and Kyeemagh Baths.

Examination of the OEH's own public records for the past five years shows high levels of zinc and aluminium have been reported in the discharge from some Sydney Water sewage plants. They also show reports of untreated sewage regularly overflowing into unnamed waterways and into one school - again, not identified - in the suburbs around the Malabar treatment plant.

Sydney Water has 24,000 kilometres of pipes, many of which are almost 100 years old, servicing 23 sewage treatment systems across Sydney.

An employee of 20 years and now an environmental scientist at the University of Western Sydney, Ian Wright, said it was well known 5 to 10 per cent of sewage never made it to a treatment plant. ''There is a network of creeks around Sydney that are being contaminated,'' Dr Wright said. ''We know there is continual leakage from old, cracked and broken pipes - we can see that from the nutrient spike in the waters. The majority of urban creeks around Sydney would suffer from time to time from sewage … There is also a greater risk than average for any disease that people in that area might be carrying to be passed on. Hepatitis is a classic example.''

Sydney Water is not required to publish information on its website about the amounts of heavy metals it discharges. Its managing director, Kevin Young, said it was undertaking a program known as SewerFix to upgrade pipes and infrastructure. By next June it would have spent $560 million over four years fixing leaks and blockages in pipes. In the past five years it had rehabilitated 500 kilometres of its 24,000-kilometre wastewater network.

At a rate of 100 kilometres a year, it would take hundreds of years to upgrade the whole network.

An environmental expert from the University of Wollongong, Sharon Beder, has long warned that Sydney's rivers and beaches are being regularly polluted. Professor Beder, the author of Toxic Fish and Sewer Surfing, said: ''Things are getting worse because the licence conditions were set at levels that were achievable at the time [about 20 years ago].''

The government had since loosened licence conditions under which industry pays for the right to pollute. Even the less rigorous conditions were not being met, Professor Beder said. ''Basically the system is not keeping up … successive governments have not been willing to spend money on infrastructure.''

The OEH had shown itself to be incapable of enforcing environmental laws, she said. The OEH has also not prosecuted the Lithgow sewage treatment plant, operated by the local council, which has shown faecal contamination in its discharged waters every year for five years.

This water goes into the Sydney drinking water catchment area. The OEH has defended Sydney Water's record, saying the utility had made many improvements and that they are working together on pollution reduction programs at North Head, Malabar, Bondi and Cronulla.

The OEH said it had asked for 62 pollution-reduction programs for Sydney Water, issued eight infringement notices and given three warning letters in the past decade. None has progressed to a prosecution. The Environment Minister, Robyn Parker, said she had been advised that Sydney Water had made many improvements. ''However, OEH have identified that there is more to do on sewer overflows, particularly during wet weather,'' she said.

James Clark-Kennedy, the campaign manager for the Clean Oceans Foundation, said the OEH could not properly set the standards or pretend to police them while it was a servant of the same government. ''The public perception is that the watchdog is there to protect [the public] … not other government departments,'' he said. ''The teeth need to be put back into the watchdog. We need to create the political will to spend money on improving the system. But while the government is relying on the dividends, it is a bit like being addicted to the pokie tax.''

Sydney Water recorded an after-tax profit of $305 million to June. It will pay a dividend of $230 million to the government this year, rising over the next four years. The pricing regulator is reviewing its proposed price rise, which could cost households an extra 15 per cent over four years.

Jeff Angel, from the Total Environment Centre, said Sydney Water should be ''majorly embarrassed''.