Today TasWater officially cut the ribbon to open Pioneer’s new reticulated drinking water system.
After one decade and eight months since the original and persistent alert at Pioneer for heavy-metal contaminated drinking water, 2012-2023, TasWater today announced the completion of all major works. These include a new pipeline to Pioneer and the modification of the Herrick mini-treatment plant to accommodate Pioneer’s supply.
Notification for today’s event was distributed to media by TasWater only yesterday – but not to the residents of Pioneer. The residents were not invited nor notified about the ribbon-cutting event today at Pioneer hall.
It was thanks to a confidential notification by one of Tasmania’s media outlets yesterday, a few residents at Pioneer learned about this major event in their town.
“This is TasWater in a nutshell,” said one resident at Pioneer today.
TasWater’s notification to media yesterday was headed ‘Media Alert’, ‘Not for publication’, and ‘Media purposes only’. This document lists the following agenda: ‘Completion and ribbon-cutting of the Pioneer water supply project. Interview opportunities: Greg Howard, Dorset Mayor; Tony Willmott, Acting CEO, TasWater.’
Residents will reasonably have expected to be invited to such an event at Pioneer, so they may together celebrate the introduction of safe drinking water, and furthermore, be granted the opportunity to speak openly to the media. If the media event today was not for every resident of Pioneer, who was it for?
Confusingly, TasWater yesterday sent an e-mail to residents to notify of a ‘Completion Delay’. Kat Sayer of TasWater wrote:
“While unexpected delays have impacted the original completion date of 1 July 2023, please be assured that the team will connect the remaining properties as soon as possible.”
There was no mention of the planned media event at Pioneer hall today.
This morning I telephoned to Kat Sayer of TasWater, who spoke to me from Pioneer hall. She said: “This is a media event. I am aware that residents were not invited. We will be having another ribbon-cutting event for residents later in the year when everything is complete. We invited two residents, Lin Simpson and Jenny Bellinger, to cut the ribbon.”
At Pioneer, this mystifying media event at Pioneer today follows more than one decade of campaigning, including a minor finding in favour of Pioneer at the 2021 parliamentary inquiry into TasWater, and furthermore, an assessment by an expert in lead (Pb), Professor Mark Taylor, of Macquarie University, that the Pioneer case is the worst-handled example of heavy-metal contamination he has witnessed in his career.
In a nutshell – by every test, or rather, failure to adequately test, over a timeline of one decade and eight months, the Pioneer case may be said to encapsulate the careless ethos of TasWater, the DHHS and the Tasmanian government. In the years 2012-2023, no person has ever been sanctioned or dismissed.
Invited or not, today nevertheless signposts a remarkable moment for the people of Pioneer, the end of a damaging era, the never-ending failure to acknowledge duty of care for the men, women and children in a tiny town of about seventy in Tasmania’s north-east.
After one decade and eight months, it will be a relief for residents to know that they are no longer at risk of heavy-metal exposure at the hands of TasWater.
The residents may now raise a glass of water, and safely say: “Fellow Tasmanians, you are invited…”
Tim Slade is a concerned resident of Pioneer. His folio of twenty-eight articles about Pioneer’s drinking water, 2013-2023, can be read at his website: Home | Tim Slade (jimdosite.com)
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