Media
For Media inquiries, call James Clark-Kennedy on 0408 561 347.
LATEST RANT (posted October 3, 10am):
Clean Ocean Foundation is hoping for your support in getting an immediate pledge from
the Victorian State Government for ADEQUATE WARNING/COMMUNICATION during and immediately after the major sewage pollution events in Port Phillip that we've seen (X5) since February.
We're calling on Melburnians in and around Northcote in particular for their support since most of those events - including last Wednesday's - have involved discharge of millions of litres of raw sewage into the Merri Creek.
Will it take meningitis or Hep A in a bay kite surfer, iceberger or a kid playing along
Merri Creek for adequate warning of these events to be taken seriously?
No beach users are notified of the events, by either Melb Water or the EPA. Merri Creek
catchment constituents shouldn't have to read about a major pollution event in The Age 5
days after the fact.
Clean Ocean Foundation, at a recent EPA Beach Report 'workshop', called for major
broadcasting of pollution warnings during and immediately after any such event using a
range of media, including radio, tv, beach signage and internet.
We are also very keen to force public debate on change to what is an almost
incredulous, most certainly dinosaur legal bind which SANCTIONS these events:
In April, EPA gave these guys a kicking for a small spill made inadvertently during a
sewage clean up:
http://epanote2.epa.vic.gov.au/EPA/media.nsf/ad5006bdf5dcd5c84a256695000c4619/7c899b874e124747ca257870001b0bb3?OpenDocument
And yet in our talks with the EPA it turns out their hands are tied in bringing Melbourne
Water (read: state government) to account for the failing sewerage system and these major
pollution events because of pre 1950s style licensing: obviously framed by engineers, the
licence actually allows for a one in five failure event in sewerage infrastructure.
HOW in 2011 is our sewerage system licensed this way and our enviro 'watchdog'
effectively muzzled? The government allows itself to pollute, on a major scale, our
beautiful bay.
COF is campaigning for change - at the policy level - for our laws to reflect European standards whereby the "resilience of the receiving waters" is the underpinning measure of the licence, and therefore what is classed an acceptable pollution event by the prosecutors and the courts.
It makes sense that if our licensing reflected EU standards, the EPA could act, that
state government's 'brand' Melbourne Water would be brought to account, then we might see public debate on the matter of adequate infrastructure spending measures and potentially a fix.
Not once this year has a state government representative been brought to the mic or camera to talk about licensing OR adequate warning - and the government is happy for the arm's length corporatised front (Melb Water) to cop a bit of a caning, then it's old news - until the next time.
Let's also remember that today's sewage isn't just poos and wees: the Merri Creek (therefore the Yarra, therefore Port Melb, St Kilda and Elwood beaches) was injected with raw sewage which includes big quantities of INDUSTRIAL TRADE WASTE, which is legally injected into the sewage system via the state governement's Trade Waste Agreements system. Then there are the pharmaceuticals of the modern day, including hormones etc.
Another point we've found along the way: The link above to the EPA's Media Release about
their successful Ringwood Magistrates Court prosecution in April directly contradicts
everything anyone from Melbourne Water has been saying about the government's own
pollution events (ie, all the 'don't worry about it, it's diluted and not a problem'
spin).
(..and that's just one coffee's worth, there's plenty more where that came from! - JCK)