Statement - Curdies River blue green algae event
12 May 2022
From Wannon Water Managing Director Andrew Jeffers:
Wannon Water acknowledges the concerns expressed by the community and river users about the toxic blue green algae (BGA) bloom, which has impacted the Peterborough Coastal Reserve and Curdies River, and the recent fish and cattle deaths.
Wannon Water is an urban water corporation. We don’t extract water from the Curdies River for drinking water purposes and we don’t have a land or waterway management role in the Curdies River catchment.
However, we do have two roles in relation to this BGA bloom event:
- As Regional Coordinator for BGA blooms in the south-west region of Victoria
- As a provider of sewerage services and operator of the Peterborough Sewerage Scheme.
Wannon Water as BGA Regional Coordinator
Victoria has a state-wide coordination plan to manage BGA blooms with the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) as the control agency.
As BGA Regional Coordinator, Wannon Water is responsible for ensuring there is a coordinated management response for local BGA blooms. We also coordinate planning and preparedness for managing regional BGA blooms.
The Curdies River BGA bloom has been defined as a ‘local BGA bloom’.
Local Water Managers (LWMs) are responsible for managing the response to local BGA blooms. The main role of the LWM is to minimise the public health risks through monitoring, communications and reporting. The LWM role does not imply any other waterway/water body management responsibilities.
DELWP accepted responsibility for being the LWM for the Curdies River BGA bloom. Wannon Water has undertaken BGA sampling and testing on behalf of DELWP to assist in its management response to the local BGA bloom.
A range of land and waterway organisations have a role in preventing and/or minimising BGA events.
Wannon Water as operator of the Peterborough Sewerage Scheme
The Peterborough Sewerage Scheme was commissioned by Wannon Water in 2008 to alleviate concerns about failing septic systems causing health and environmental concerns, particularly with nutrients entering the lower Curdies Estuary.
The sewerage system includes a pipe network to collect sewage from Peterborough properties, a pump station, and a pipeline to convey sewage to the Peterborough Sewage Treatment Plant which is located north of the town (see map below).
The treatment plant includes treatment lagoons, a winter storage lagoon and an irrigation area. The winter storage lagoon was designed to store the town’s treated wastewater supply each year and have extra capacity to meet the needs of future development.
The plant operates under an Environment Protection Authority (EPA) licence which ensures we have a mandatory obligation to treat Peterborough sewage to a quality that is fit for irrigation on adjacent land. We also have several bores across the site to monitor water quality of the shallow groundwaters for compliance with EPA regulations.
The Peterborough site is fully compliant with the EPA licence and regulations.
We routinely sample the water, including prior to irrigation, and conduct regular site visits and inspections of the facility to ensure its structural integrity. Following reports of the BGA bloom in the Curdies River, we carried out an inspection of the site to confirm that there has been no leakage of sewage or treated effluent from the facilities to the Curdies River or estuary.
