By Colin MacGillivray
A MONEGEETTA landowner is threatening legal action against Greater Western Water, GWW, over what he believes is an illegal discharge of recycled water from Romsey Recycled Water Plant into Deep Creek.
Randall Gerkens said the water authority’s application to the Environment Protection Authority, EPA, to begin discharging recycled water into Deep Creek in late September breached a 2019 undertaking given by GWW’s predecessor, Western Water, to provide landowners along the creek 14 days’ written notice before seeking EPA approval to release treated waste water.
When Western Water merged with City West Water to form GWW last year, general counsel and corporate secretary Lara Jimenez wrote to Mr Gerkens to confirm the new entity was still bound by the 2019 undertaking.
But Mr Gerkens said GWW had reneged on its obligation.
“We got a phone call out of the blue … to say they were going to do it [within 24 hours], in breach of the undertaking,” he said.
“We thought that was just outrageous. Not only does it show a lack of integrity by breaching the undertaking, it shows they’re not competent to be managing the plant.”
Mr Gerkens said GWW’s actions constituted a common law nuisance, as Deep Creek’s bed and banks were not Crown land.
“My guess is that the majority of waterways around Victoria are Crown reserves, but in areas where the titles were issued before 1881, they didn’t reserve the waterways as Crown land,” he said.
“That means you can take action. If the waterway was Crown land then we’d probably be stuck with it … but in this case the titles were issued from the early 1850s at least.
“Broadly, most of the bed and banks of the creek are owned by the farmers who own farms along it.”
A GWW spokesperson said high rainfall levels and wet catchments resulting from a third consecutive La Nina weather event had strained the infrastructure of water corporations across Victoria.
“Wastewater storage lagoons in the Greater Western Water area are near capacity, as a result of recent sustained heavy rainfall,” the spokesperson said.
“As a result, to manage the Romsey Recycled Water Plant, we started to release treated class B recycled water into Deep Creek.
“Discharging excess treated wastewater from our storages helps to reduce any potential for uncontrolled overflows and helps to protect infrastructure.
“Strict water quality monitoring processes remain in place to ensure we protect the health of our communities and the environment.”
But Mr Gerkens said he believed GWW could have done more to avoid releasing water into Deep Creek.
“For months, if not years, they have been trucking sewerage away to another place, so I don’t know why that has stopped. I guess they thought they could cut costs and try to rely on the rainfall as a fig leaf to cover it up,” he said.
“It has been well known since at least 2018 that the plant isn’t big enough, but if you study their website and public statements they keep referring to exploring options while nothing substantive happens.
“I don’t know what the solution is, but it strikes me that in 2022, polluting a natural creek is not a solution. It’s just environmental vandalism.”
Mr Gerkens said the quality of the water in the creek had noticeably deteriorated since the releases began.
“[At the moment] it’s masked to an extent by the floods, but you only have to look at what’s happened to the Campaspe [River] where they’ve discharged this stuff to see that it’s going to result in algal blooms and destruction of native fish and platypuses,” he said.
“There are documented studies of platypuses and other native wildlife living in the creek, and to date it has been largely unpolluted.”
Mr Gerkens said he would pursue legal action against GWW for the release, and that he believed the discharge started before the water authority gained EPA approval. The Review approached the EPA for comment but received no response.
