The Daily Sh*t Report

It was a glorious balmy spring morning.  The air was crisp, the sunshine warming, and the harbour was sparkling and sprinkled with yachts.  I was being driven for the first time across the world famous Sydney Harbour Bridge, and the whole scenario was spectacular.  Even better, it was as a passenger in a sports car with the top down, and I felt like a thousand dollars on my way to a job interview.

It was October 1986, and my first ever visit.  Which is why the “thousand” rather than a million dollars.  Back then a thousand meant something. 

It was peak hour and as we approached the toll gate on the Bridge, manual back then with a lovely friendly lady taking the coins and making change, the radio made an announcement that took my breath away.  Literally.

I had yet to see the infamous Bondi Beach, its wide sweeping white sands and fantastic deep surf rolling in from across the Pacific.  Very few cities in the world have a beach in their midst, so that you can have a surf / swim both before and after work.  In fact Sydney has a number of these beaches both north and south of its harbour. 

The announcement was saying that there could be no swimming today because the beach sh*t pollution was too dangerous.  I kid you not.  It was, I found out later, the daily sh*t report.  How much faecal matter was washing up on the beach.  Too bad if you went for a swim earlier huh!!  And I am not talking teensy weensy bits, but big dollops.

When I first heard it I thought the traffic would stop, and angry people would get out of their cars and start streaming into parliament to get this disaster fixed.  Not a word of it.  Here was I turning blue from being unable to breath, and everybody else was just going along.

Well you can imagine, back in the days of no internet research, it took me a while to piece it all together.  And keep in mind this is a world famous beach and international tourist destination; still today.  Tourism being a multi billion dollar industry for Australia, and especially Sydney.  

Sydney uses an ocean out spill for both semi treated sewage and also for the waste water from roads, footpaths  etc.  This is now going to be fasttracked.  I used to run through the streets in Sydney in the morning before work (I got the job).  But it was hazardous because the immense amount of dog sh*t all over the foot paths.  Again, this was before the pooper-scooper was both invented and then regulated.  I recall reading that thousands of tonnes of this stuff would regularly wash into the ocean via the wastewater system.

And the semi treated sewage, was being sent out to sea in a long pipe.  A solution to the problem, was fixed in late 1980’s by building the pipe longer.  I kid you not.

There are many cities in the world that use this method of sewage management, so Sydney is not alone.  And they still use it.  Because you guessed it, they are still doing sh*t reports.  Here’s the news right here from last month when the sh*t report made the front pages of the local paper.   

Then of course it becomes even more interesting.

Until 2010, Australia was suffering under a severe drought.  Very severe.  Water storage levels of the dams that feed into Sydney were at dangerous levels – real fears about running out of water in Australia's main city was on the cards.  There were water restrictions that the UK would be familiar with now.  Sydney was dry.

So the government decided to build a desalination plant at Kurnell.  You can read all about it here.  It cost $1.896 billion.  Now, I am not sure, but I think this plant is sucking up the very same water for the people of Sydney into which it is emptying its sewage.  But whatever. 

And because it was a public private build, Sydney must keep paying for this plant whether it is making water or not.  Millions of dollars a year.  And you guessed it, for the last two years Sydney and its surrounds have had nearly unprecedented rain – to the point where its main dam was required to release water – that there is no use for the new water being generated by the desalination plant.  

Why not just recycle, Sydney, recycle the hundreds of gigalitres of water being pumped into the ocean with untold damage (who could ever eat fresh fish out of Sydney again huh!) to the marine life.

Well I now learn that they are.  Three new recycling plants will be opened in 2015.  Nearly 30 years after I heard the first sh*t report.    Which will continue.