Our Campaigns

Bay Fray Port Phillip Campaign

Clean Ocean Foundation has been busy in research this past three months, further developing and refining our Port Phillip ‘Bay Fray’ campaign actions and outcomes.

We alerted Melbourne’s media to three major pollution incidents February-April where the city’s sewerage system failed to cope with flow. Millions of litres of raw sewage was directed straight to Port Phillip Bay via the city’s creeks and drains.

Those events brought forward our Port Phillip ‘Bay Fray’ campaign, originally scheduled for launch later this year: and along the way we’ve defined a specific policy target to enact real change.

We’re rapt to announce that Ozmosis has back us with specific Bay Fray campaign sponsorship, enabling us to employ professionals for research, science and legals over the coming year.

The Clean Ocean Foundation’s legal Brains Trust has ascertained that we can make most impact for a cleaner Port Phillip by going after EPA policing powers of our water authorities.

That means poking at a sleeping ‘watchdog’ – EPA Victoria – and lobbying for contemporary licensing conditions and powers, more EPA resources and state pollution policy that is in line with international standards.

Read more with the latest Members' Update

A foot in the door …

The Victorian EPA has now given Clean Ocean Foundation a role in their Beach Report community consultative workshops - where we will be further lobbying for broadening of Port Phillip’s beach monitoring, meaning more resourcing of the EPA.

It’s now minuted from our April 19 meeting that EPA intends “working with the industry to explore a risk-based approach to sewer capacity design standards” and “EPA will work with water authorities to provide guidance on how EPA expects water authorities to communicate to the public on ERS discharges”.

The EPA Beach Report workshop, scheduled for August, also intends to explore ways communication of bay water quality can be improved for bay users, including mobile phone apps, texting, beach report signage and other mechanisms.

Clean Ocean Foundation made clear in our EPA talks that a bay beach user should NOT be expected to go digging in the ‘media’ sections of EPA or Melbourne Water websites before kitesurfing, sailing, swimming etc - and that communicating beach health to a broad audience in 2011 is not difficult. We also offered to help facilitate those communications.

Turning the microscope on Werribee

Other than major pollution events when the sewerage system fails, Melbourne Water’s Werribee treatment plant sends 500 million litres of Class C sewage into the bay EVERY DAY.

Thanks to a substantial donation by Ozmosis, we’re able to kickstart our marine biology and legal Brains Trust onto finding out exactly what’s in that Werribee mix and trawl through things like Toxin Release Inventories over the coming year - because it’s far from just the bird and fish attracting nutrient Melbourne Water Corporation would like you to believe.

Again thanks to Ozmosis, we’re able and ready to launch FoI requests if they don’t want to give up the info, just as we had to for the Gunnamatta campaign.

Read more with the latest Members' Update