(Not published by the Canberra Times)

Opinion Editorial

Why we need to have a real public debate about our water options

By Bill Stefaniak, MLA

Leader of the ACT Opposition, ACT Legislative Assembly

It was always one of the guiding principles of Sir Humphrey Dimbleby of ‘Yes Minister’ fame that if you can’t think of what to do or don’t want to do anything you have an inquiry. The second principle was that you make sure you know what the answer is going to be before you start.

There are many people in the community wondering whether the Stanhope Government’s very short inquiry into the health aspects of the Government/ACTEW proposal to add treated effluent to Canberra’s water supply falls into both those categories.

One of the curious aspects about the waste recycling proposal is that it has apparently appeared out of nowhere. It was not amongst the options that ACTEW put up in their ‘Future Water Options’ proposal a couple of years ago.

The other curious thing about this proposal is the haste with which it is being pushed, as evidenced by the saturation ACTEW advertising campaign in the Canberra Times.

Many in the community are concerned by the short deadline for reporting given to the Government’s ‘expert committee.’ Only three months to investigate a plan which if it goes wrong just on one occasion could, according to the risk assessment of the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines 2004 (Appendix A5), have a ‘catastrophic’ effect on public health.

This is why microbiologist, Professor Peter Collignon, believes there to be a ‘high level of risk’ involved in the Government proposal. (While the terms of reference for the Government’s ‘expert committee’ indicate that a microbiologist should be on the panel of experts, there was none appointed.)

That this abbreviated mini inquiry also excluded all matters other than health is also a concern. The Government needs to fully explain the case for its recycling option and look at all options from short-term solutions to long-term solutions.

What was clear at the two ACTEW forums held a couple of weeks ago was that Canberrans are perplexed as to why all options are not being put on the table.

The Liberal Party has maintained consistently that the Chief Minister has dallied so long that he has put the water security of the ACT in jeopardy. If we are in desperate straits now, it is because this Government has done nothing since it came to office.

The ACT Liberals went to the last election proposing to build the Tennent Dam (which according to ACTEW’s own website until recently was the best long-term option for Canberra’s future water needs), as well as a number of water savings initiatives.

This Government has done little apart from impose water restrictions, offering rebates for water tanks and its limited Water Smart Homes program. It needs to be doing much more.

In fact, the Government’s ambitions seem to be very limited, content to aim for a 12 per cent reduction in water consumption by 2013 (I understand we are close to this now) while Queanbeyan has already achieved an 18 per cent reduction in consumption by very proactive water-saving measures.

Queanbeyan, for example, offers free replacement water-saver shower heads, dual flush toilets and flow restrictors. They give rebates for water tanks and offer a $200 refund for those purchasing efficient front-loader washing machines and spent $1.2 million on a WaterWise program.

There are tap valves that reduce consumption by reducing water pressure and these achieve a minimum of 25 per cent reduction up to 80 per cent according to the pressure chosen. Sydney Water has installed half a million valves in houses for free but I am told the ACT Government is not using them.

In Goulburn which has been on Stage 5 restrictions for three years, you can’t go into a motel that doesn’t have up to the minute water-saving toilets and shower-heads. In Canberra, with our storage at 31 per cent, this is still not the case. While Goulburn has made an art of systematically catching every drop of water possible, the ACT Government has not even installed water-saving measures in all its schools and buildings.

It is hard not to conclude from this that the Stanhope Government is not serious about conserving water. Even the Government’s preferred recycling option was acknowledged at the recent ACTEW forums, as no silver bullet because it would only supply around nine gigalitres of the ACT’s annual 60 gigalitres of consumption and would take several years to become operational. This leaves the ACT with no short-term solutions from this Government apart from restrictions. In April, the Government warned that it would have to invent new restrictions and we are set to move to Stage 4 water restrictions on July 1.

Even the restrictions have been bungled badly. On October 28, 2005, Mr Stanhope, as environment minister, declared, ‘the ACT’s three year drought is officially over.’ [media release] Storage levels were close to 70 per cent and the Cotter catchment dams were overflowing.

Stage 2 Water Restrictions were wound back to Stage 1 and Mr Stanhope declared, “This new system is not about restriction so much as conservation – a way of being which respects our environment and protects our way of life.” This lack of foresight has done Canberrans no favours. While Australians overall consumed six per cent less water last year, Canberra residents used about ten per cent more in 2005-2006 than a year earlier. We should have stayed on Stage 2 restrictions.

ANU professor of water resources, Ian White, says the Government is ignoring cheaper solutions such as stormwater harvesting and using treated sewage for irrigation as well as conservation measures. Weirs and cloud-seeding were also options raised at the ACTEW forums by residents.

As pointed out by Engineers Australia in its reports, there are also major questions about the amount of water being let out of our dams as environmental flows. ACTEW has admitted that 109 gigalitres or around half of our dam water was let out for environmental flows between 2000 and 2004. This represented one and a half year’s water supply for Canberra. The retired principal engineer who built our water system, Reg Goldfinch, says our dams were designed as part of our public health system for up to 450,000 people and to survive drought but that did not reckon on the letting out of vast amounts of water as environmental flows.

According to a recent report by the National Water Commission, State and Territory Governments have stripped $1 billion in profits from their publicly owned water utilities while defying calls to increase expenditure on the nation’s leaky water infrastructure. The ACT Government gets $60 million a year from ACTEW but has conspicuously failed to plough this back into our water system.

Minister, Simon Corbell broke ranks in April to say that he was “concerned that the recent water policy is a fait accompli.” He said, “I think as a Government we do need to be more critical of what’s being proposed.” Mr Corbell also raised as a concern the energy costs of the proposal.

It is time for the Stanhope Government to demonstrate the principles of ‘good government’ it once pledged, notably openness, transparency and willingness to consult with the community, in making the critically important decisions about how we secure our water supplies.

The Liberal Party is hosting an open public forum on Canberra’s water options on Saturday at 2 pm at the Assembly with a panel of distinguished speakers from all sides of the debate.

Exduco.net

 
Baylor Researchers Find New Pharmaceuticals in Texas Waters, Fish -

2007-05-16
by Matt Pene

Baylor University researchers have found the residue of three new human medications in fish living in the Pecan Creek in North Texas. The pharmaceuticals, which have not been previously identified in fish, include diphenhydramine, an over-the-counter antihistamine also commonly used as a sedative in non-prescription sleep aids and motion sickness; diltiazem, a drug for high blood pressure; and carbamazepine, a treatment for epilepsy and bipolar disorder. Residue of norfluoxetine, the active metabolite of the antidepressant fluoxetine, was also detected in this study, confirming results of a previous project by the researchers.

“These results demonstrate the increasing need to consider bioaccumulation of emerging contaminants in the environment,” said Dr. Kevin Chambliss, an assistant professor of chemistry at Baylor, who is a co-lead investigator on the project. “This research proves fish are being exposed to multiple compounds in our waterways.”

The researchers report these findings in the journal Analytical Chemistry, the premier publication in the analytical chemistry field.

Like many rivers across the country, most of the water in Pecan Creek is effluent from an upstream wastewater treatment facility. While fish are typically seen as early warning signals for larger environmental issues, even human health, the data suggests there is not a human health concern. However, exposure to the compounds may produce adverse effects in fish. For example, high levels of antidepressants, like fluoxetine, in fish are known to cause behavioral changes, which impact aggression, feeding rate and other behaviors necessary for fish survival.

“The effects of these three new compounds on fish are still not well understood, but it could be important to an emerging area of science,” said Dr. Bryan Brooks, an assistant professor of environmental and biomedical studies at Baylor who is an environmental toxicologist and a co-lead investigator on the project. “The pharmacological properties of these compounds in humans will likely provide an indication of their specific effects in fish.”

Although treated wastewater may meet current federal testing standards, no guidelines or federal water quality criteria exist for pharmaceuticals, Brooks said.

To test the collected fish tissue for pharmaceuticals, Chambliss and Alejandro Ramirez, a Baylor doctoral student in chemistry who is the lead author on the study, developed a new method using a technology called liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. It can, for the first time, screen fish for several groups of drugs at the same time. Researchers said previous tests for detecting pharmaceutical and personal care products in tissues of aquatic organisms focused only on identification of individual medications or classes of medications like antidepressants. The new test created by Baylor researchers can screen up to 25 different drugs, representing multiple therapeutic classes. The 25 compounds were chosen based on their relative frequency in the environment as well as the variability of their structures and physicochemical properties.

Research at Baylor has long been an important part of the academic life of the University. In 2006, the Carnegie Foundation reclassified Baylor as a “research university” with high research activity. The faculty’s standing commitment to excellent teaching, scholarship and interdisciplinary research continues to produce outstanding graduates at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Baylor 2012, the university’s 10-year vision, articulates Baylor’s aspiration to develop into one of America’s leading Christian research universities. Brooks and Chambliss are also affiliated with the Center for Reservoir and Aquatic Systems Research, one of the more than 25 research institutes and centers at Baylor.

 

 

Deadly bugs hit hospitals

Clair Weaver
July 01, 2007

A NEW breed of killer bacteria is invading Australian hospitals, endangering patients and forcing staff to revert to old-fashioned infection control measures.
The mutant infections – dubbed XDR for “extreme drug resistance” – cannot be treated with available medicines.

Experts say it will take at least 10 years to develop new drugs to kill the virulent bugs, which can result in blood poisoning and death.

In the meantime, Australian hospitals have no option but to “return to the pre-antibiotic era” in an attempt to stem the infections’ spread.

Professor David Paterson, consultant infectious diseases physician and microbiologist at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, revealed the extent of the XDR crisis in the latest edition of the journal Critical Care Medicine.

“The XDR problem is here,” he said.

“We are returning to the pre-antibiotic era where some infections are untreatable.

“Strict infection control practices must now be routinely enforced and antibiotics that are still helpful should be prudently and optimally used.”

He told The Sunday Mail that drug companies had failed to develop new antibiotics to combat XDR infections because it was not profitable enough.

It will become a much bigger issue in the future, he warned.

XDR bacteria, which can be passed through human contact, are forecast to be a massive threat to intensive care units.

Critically ill patients with weakened immune systems are particularly vulnerable.

Staff will be forced to adopt stricter handwashing, disinfection and protective measures.

“Prevention is of paramount importance,” Prof Paterson said.

E-coli and other common bacteria that cause pneumonia and urinary or respiratory infections are among those that have developed resistance to various modern antibiotics.

They would have been treatable in the past, before mutating into their more resilient forms.

Prof Jeffrey Lipman, co-author of the study and the hospital’s director of intensive care, said the unrestricted use of antibiotics had fuelled the growth of highly resistant bacteria.

There had not yet been any confirmed deaths from XDRs “but we are worried about it,” he said.

Hospitals needed to be more aware of the XDR risk and take preventive action, he said.

Disease specialists are now experimenting with combinations of older types of antibiotics, which were considered too strong to be used in the past.

Golden staph, or methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, has become a leading cause of post-surgery infections in hospitals around the world in recent years.