Tasmania’s independent Economic Regulator has released its third annual review of the State’s urban water and sewerage industry. Drinking water quality across the State remains an issue, with 24 permanent boil water alerts in place to manage the potential risk to public health.
The performance of the State’s wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) continued to be a problem, with 71 out of the 78 WWTPs underperforming against the compliance limits set by the Environment Protection Authority.
The Media Release:TASMANIAN WATER AND SEWERAGE STATE OF THE INDUSTRY REPORT 2009-10
Tasmania’s independent Economic Regulator has released its third annual review of the State’s urban water and sewerage industry. Mr Glenn Appleyard, Chairman of Tasmania’s Economic Regulator, said the report is “a comprehensive independent review of the service, quality, reliability and pricing across the industry, as can be reasonably determined with the limited data available.”
The 2009-10 report covers the performance of the new regional water corporations in delivering water and sewerage services across the State. “The corporations have faced a difficult challenge in their first year of operations, inheriting a range of problems with infrastructure that required immediate attention,” said Mr Appleyard. “The corporations are taking actions that I expect will deliver improved outcomes across the State in the coming years”
Drinking water quality across the State remains an issue, with 24 permanent boil water alerts in place plus 16 occasions when temporary boil water alerts were issued during the year, to manage the potential risk to public health. Mr Appleyard said, “Approximately four per cent of the Tasmanian population connected to a water supply network received drinking water that did not meet safe drinking water quality standards”.
The performance of the State’s wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) continued to be a problem, with 71 out of the 78 WWTPs underperforming against the compliance limits set by the Environment Protection Authority “Generally, year on year compliance has improved; though many of the problems with plant capacity and design persist,” said Mr Appleyard. “The industry continues to pollute the State’s rivers and coastal waters with effluent containing significant organic loads, elevated nutrients and faecal bacteria concentrations”.
In relation to financial performance, Mr Appleyard noted, “at current levels of revenue, the corporations are not financially sustainable in the long term as they will be unable to fund the replacement and maintenance of their assets over time, let alone be able to fund the significant investment required to address the current health and environmental performance issues.” “Furthermore, the pricing structures continue to reflect previous council practices where customers across the State are required to pay a range of costs for the same service, which is inherently inequitable”.
In summary, the Tasmanian water and sewerage industry is characterised by substandard environmental and public health outcomes that have resulted from sustained under investment across the State. Mr Appleyard said, “The framework is in place to resolve the widespread challenges currently facing the industry. However, these problems have been allowed to develop over a number of years, if not decades, and will take a similar time period to resolve”.
Copies of the State of the Industry Report are available at:
www.economicregulator.tas.gov.au
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Our daily poison: Film investigates the causes of our cancer epidemic
A new film by Marie-Monique Robin, French journalist and film maker will be shown on Arte TV (French and German language television) on Tuesday 15 March 2011 at 20.45. It follows her investigation into the health effects of chemicals used in conventional, intensive farming.
Following the success of her previous film, “The world according to Monsanto” about GMOs, this new enquiry looks at how modes of food production, packaging and consumption are resulting in cancer and other diseases. She gives special attention to pesticides, aspartame and bisphenol A (BPA).
The report takes her to Ruffec, near Poitiers, France where the first meeting of farmers and bystanders affected by pesticide exposure, “victimes des pesticides”, took place – an initiative that is supported by Generations Futures (formerly MDRGF) and HEAL.
She also visited the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Food Safety Authority to demonstrate the inadequate process in which chemicals that contaminate our food chain are tested, evaluated and regulated.
Finally, she explores how certain foods may useful be used to support human immune mechanisms.
Watch the trailer and read more about the film here: http://www.arte.tv/fr/Comprendre-le-monde/Notre-poison-quotidien/3673748.html .The film is also available as a DVD.
For German speakers, see the video interview with Marie-Monique Robin here:http://www.arte.tv/de/Die-Welt-verstehen/3677910.html
For English speakers, watch the trailer of World according to Monsanto (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8hFuuDAZjk) and an interview with Marie-Monique Robin on the Slow Food International website (2009)(http://sloweb.slowfood.com/sloweb/eng/dettaglio.lasso?cod=3E6E345B0ce4928709NxO1498347)
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All about temperature inversions:
temperature_inversions.pdf
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http://www.epa.gov/ncea/pdfs/dioxin/factsheets/infosheet3.pdf
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“The corporations poisoned the world and its inhabitants with POPs. The corporations are now stopping government from doing what it was created to do, that being to protect the public from avoidable harm. Government has failed to act on its mandate to protect public health. This failure to act began in the 1970s when scientific knowledge came into existence that described PCBs as a harmful group of man made chemicals that had become widely distributed throughout the global environment due to industrial use and disposal. The federal government should have warned the public about animal fat contamination and the health protective benefit of restricting consumption of all animal fat containing foods at that time. Forty years of failure to warn the public about POPs contamination of the food supply have now passed. The failure to give this warning continues today.
Americans (and Australians – my words) have received avoidable exposures to dioxins and many other POPs that have caused them to develop cancer and die because of this government failure to act that is the result of corporate control. We need to take back control of our government. We need to reduce the power of the corporations so that they can never cause the world such terrible harm again.”
