Today I visit the Scottsdale Hospital to attend a public meeting with. Mr. Michael Ferguson, Tasmania’s Minister for Health.
I am led through a series of ward corridors, past the kitchen and through, much to my amazement, an old operating room – without the operating table, but with the old signs on the door clear to read: OPERATING ROOM. DO NOT ENTER.
I did not anticipate this teeth-chattering walk through to my first meeting with Tasmania’s Minister for Health. By the time the minister arrives for the meeting – twenty-five minutes late – a group of maybe twenty citizens have gathered together.
I am here to speak about my small home town, Pioneer. At Pioneer, we all live with lead-contaminated drinking water. This has been our life for the past two years, three months and sixteen days – since November 10, 2012.
The question on my mind is: Why is the CEO of TasWater not sacked?
The most recent work-pause at Pioneer – after the first seven homes were fitted with rainwater tanks in a single week in November last year – highlights a pattern of negligence by TasWater. If TasWater return in April this year, as they promise, it will have been a five-month delay and with no plausible explanation. Once again, we note that TasWater are answerable to nobody: they have felt no adverse repercussions against their board, nor to their profits. There is only a silence, led by our Tasmanian local councils, our own Dorset Council included.
The meeting well underway now, the focus rests upon various hospital issues. The first proposal is by a group of nurses; they suggest an ongoing strategy to transfer non-urgent patients from the Launceston General Hospital back to local rural hospital beds (when beds are available), or to an alternative rural hospital if agreed and so appropriate.
Mr. Ferguson next assures the Matron of the Scottsdale Hospital that there are no plans to cut nurse numbers.
Transport issues are raised. Nicole Grose of RAW, Community Wellbeing and Suicide Prevention, talks about the impact of a lack of community/public transport for people who have an existing mental health challenge and live outside of the major towns. Other concerned citizens and nurses ask for a transport solution to help the mentally ill patient who finds her/himself discharged from hospital late at night but with no family or other means to get home. The alternative is to have these women and men sleep outside with no shelter for the night.
Time creeps away and I can see that there is little time remaining to discuss the drinking water issue at Pioneer. I am the only representative on such matters, so Mr. Ferguson declares the meeting closed. Everyone departs to return to work, leaving only myself and Mr. Ferguson, his assistant and a lady from Winnaleah.
Mr. Ferguson says, ‘I can give you five or six minutes.’ Time is short – I am to understand – so it is difficult to know where to start. I wind back the clock to November 10, 2012. On this day we were told that our drinking water is not safe to drink, not even if it is boiled.
Eyeing-off the hospital’s spring water fountain in the corner of the room (full, and free), I ask Mr. Ferguson why it is that TasWater are seemingly accountable to no-one. Mr. Ferguson says he is powerless to help Pioneer. Mr. Ferguson says that TasWater is owned by the councils, and that TasWater is not answerable to the government.
I persist, inform Mr. Ferguson that TasWater do not employ even one full-time staff member to work on the Pioneer project. I remind Mr. Ferguson that this year TasWater has banked a record profit – as noted this week by Mr. Mike Blake, Director of Local Government – Mr. Blake cited this profit as reason enough to rate TasWater’s progress and performance as ‘very good’. Mr. Ferguson does not offer a notable response, only to agree with me that TasWater is a profit-making business. Mr. Ferguson’s only other response is surprise: I think he is surprised I am here.
Thumbing through Pioneer’s hefty individual contract for rainwater tanks, I rush to raise concerns about two toxic clauses:
• A confidentiality clause (12b). {I may comment here because I have not yet signed, nor received from TasWater, a contract for my property. My references here come from an anonymous neighbour’s individual contract.}
• (Edited; statement was incorrect).
• A clause stating that TasWater may disconnect completely the reticulated supply at the end of five years (the term of the contract), or earlier, if the home is sold before the end of the contract (10.2b).
•
I am bitter that a two-year theme of lead was not made public prior to 2012. The Australian Drinking Water Guidelines require consecutive readings above health standard levels before a problem – a theme of contamination – is made public. I suggest to Mr. Ferguson that his government legislate to make it compulsory for TasWater to publish, in real time on a public website, all new data for heavy-metals, pesticides, THM’s, and E-Coli, etc.
This is not the first time I have raised this idea with the office of the Minister for Health. It is the third time. First was in conversation with one of Mr. Ferguson’s senior advisors, Mr. Pree. These conversations and e-mails occurred for about two months in 2014. I also discussed with Mr. Pree the possibility of amending the present Australian Drinking Water Guidelines’ policy which holds secret any theme of heavy-metal contamination in a township’s drinking water – in our case, lead – until two consecutive dangerous readings are collected.
The second time I had written by e-mail to Mr. Ferguson’s office about the idea of a public website, as one of a group of questions on a variety of water quality hot spots across Tasmania. To which Mr. Ferguson replied on other questions but did not respond to this particular question, for the real-time website publication of TasWater’s data.
And here I am once again, questioning Mr. Ferguson, for a third time, in person. Mr. Ferguson says that Mr. Pree did not raise this issue with him at all… If this is true, it is a disturbing lack of communication between the Minister for Health and his advisor, Mr. Pree. This explanation does not account, however, for the matter of Mr. Ferguson’s previous e-mail which did not make a comment in reply to my question for a public website to record Tasmania’s water data.
Time ticks on, so for a change of scenery, as it were, I ask the Minister next for his attention, to consider Pioneer’s hush-hush disconnection from the Frome Dam in 2009/10. In the Dorset Council Development Application for the Winnaleah Irrigation Scheme, TasIrrigation state that Pioneer’s water race will remain open so that fresh water can be sent down to the town as required (4.2, Existing Land Uses, Page 19, RTI Request). Indeed, Pioneer owns this allocation of water. However, the race was purposely blocked during works for the Winnaleah Irrigation Scheme, so that Pioneer can no longer receive this water. Who is responsible here? The answer is blowing in the wind… But the answer is likely to settle somewhere near or around TasIrrigation; or Barry Jarvis’ Dorset Council. For this matter, Mr. Ferguson recommends that I consult with the Minister for Water, Jeremy Rockcliff. (And to relate an interesting co-issue, the Dorset Council recently rejected a proposal by TasIrrigation to build a mini-hydro at Herrick, which, it was proposed, would utilize water from the Frome Dam. This proposal previously enjoyed full council support. It is a most interesting change of heart by the Dorset Council.)
The meeting comes to a close: Mr. Ferguson needs to rush off. We walk gingerly through the old operating theatre. At one stage Mr. Ferguson and I get a bit lost! How to get out of this little emergency room? But we make it. We exit from the main doors in the visitor’s foyer and step out into the car park. The sky rumbles. Heavy drops of rain hit us, one and all. And the last words I hear from Mr. Ferguson are: ‘Ah, it’s good to get a nice drop of rain…’
EARLIER … on Tasmanian Times … September 24, 2013 …
.jpg "Toxic TasWater, Part 2 ~ From the Operating Room to a Public Meeting with the Health Minister 13")
*Tim Slade (b. 1976) lives at Pioneer, Tasmania. Tim’s poetry and essays have been published in Tasmanian Sagacity, Famous Reporter, Koori Mail, Tasmanian Times and Cricket Poetry Award – Best Poems of ’09. Tim suffers from a chronic illness known as multiple chemical hyper-sensitivity (MCHS), and since 2004 he has lived on a Disability Support Pension. Tim has spent much time lobbying TasWater and the Tasmanian government to provide safe drinking water to Pioneer, where a ‘Do Not Consume’ alert for lead contamination has been active since 2012.
