A statement from Darren Cleary

Inquiry into PFAS contamination in waterways and drinking water supplies throughout News South Wales – Hunter Water Statement from Darren Cleary.

Thank you Chair. I too would like to begin by acknowledging the Awabakal and Worimi people here in Newcastle, and pay respects to the Traditional Custodians of the lands and waters upon which Hunter Water operates.

I understand that the Committee will also be meeting with my colleagues at Sydney Water and Water NSW. While there are many similarities, there are also some differences among the three State Owned Corporations (SOCs) and how water is managed across the regions, so I will start by briefly summarising Hunter Water’s role, and how this relates to PFAS:

Hunter Water provides water, wastewater and some stormwater and recycled water services to a population of 643,000 people across the Lower Hunter region. We were established more than 130 years ago ‘for the public health’ and take seriously our obligations as custodians of drinking water for the communities that we serve.

We are responsible for drinking water management from catchment to tap, owning and managing two surface water dams (Chichester and Grahamstown), several aquifer water sources (the Tomago, Tomaree and Anna Bay Sandbeds), and drawing from the Paterson, Allyn and Williams Rivers. Construction is presently underway on our region’s next source augmentation, with our new desalination plant at Belmont anticipated to be operational by 2028.

Our drinking water is regulated to meet the National Health and Medical Research Council’s Australian Drinking Water Guidelines, via conditions imposed in our Operating Licence issued by the Government and regulated by the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART). We are required to maintain, and fully implement, a Drinking Water Quality Management System that is consistent with the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines, to the satisfaction of NSW Health. Our compliance with our Operating Licence, including our performance against the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines, is audited annually by IPART.

As the region’s wastewater service provider, we are responsible from toilet or sink, through treatment to the release of treated water back to the environment, including the management of biosolids. Our wastewater operations are regulated in accordance with our various Environment Protection Licences, and NSW Biosolids Guidelines, as set by the NSW EPA.

Both Hunter Water, and myself personally, have an extensive history dealing with PFAS – particularly in relation to contamination emanating from the historic use of firefighting foams at RAAF Base Williamtown, which sits atop a portion of the Tomago Sandbeds aquifer.

In 2015, the NSW Government publicly advised that PFAS chemicals had been detected in water leaving RAAF Base Williamtown, and established the Williamtown Investigation Area. An Expert Panel was established, and I represented Hunter Water as a member.

Hunter Water’s role was coordinated as part of the NSW Government’s response. Our responsibility took several elements:

• Firstly, for the local community surrounding the RAAF Base: Former Premier Baird and Parliamentary Secretary Scot MacDonald, directed Hunter Water to connect properties within the Williamtown Investigation Area to Hunter Water’s reticulated water network, to provide access to safe drinking water. Via this program, 350 properties in Williamtown, Salt Ash and Fullerton Cove were connected to our network. This $4.9 million project was initiated by the NSW Government and later funded by the Commonwealth.
  

• Secondly, Hunter Water developed a comprehensive plan to safely manage the Tomago Sandbeds drinking water source for our whole community, via the PFAS Operating Strategy for the Tomago Borefield. This Strategy was developed based on the best national and international advice, and was reviewed and endorsed by the PFAS Expert Panel, which at the time was chaired by the NSW Chief Scientist. The Strategy includes an embargo on two Pump Stations in proximity to RAAF Base Williamtown (pump stations 7 and 9), and comprehensive water quality monitoring prior to water being supplied to customers. The current Strategy was approved in 2018 and continues to comply with the ADWGs.
  

• And thirdly, we have implemented an extensive PFAS testing and reporting program, for the borefields, and also across our water network.

Under this program, Hunter Water samples for PFAS in our catchments and untreated water, at all six of our drinking water treatment plants, and at 83 locations across our drinking water network. A summary of results is published on our website each month for transparency with our community. Additionally, each quarter Hunter Water and NSW Health review all PFAS results from across our drinking water system.

This data set is extensive, with more than 4,000 samples collected within our drinking water distribution system since 2016, which is representative of the treated drinking water we provide to our customers. A further 4,000 samples have been collected from our catchments and raw (untreated) water at the water treatment plants.

Over time, our understanding of PFAS chemicals continues to improve, as does the sensitivity of laboratory testing. In our treated water sampling, we do infrequently get low-level positive detections of PFAS, and of the 4,000 samples taken, approximately 150 have reported low-level detections. We have documented procedures for responding to PFAS detections, including engagement with NSW Health. If it is of interest to the Committee, I can talk you through an example of this.

Through this comprehensive testing and monitoring program and the controls we have in place, our customers and community can be confident that their drinking water remains safe. Our drinking water meets the current Australian Drinking Water Guidelines for PFAS, and our analysis indicates that it will meet the requirements of the proposed ADWG guidelines.

Briefly, and for completeness with respect to our role as a wastewater service provider, our wastewater network collects sewage from homes and businesses across the region. Like our water treatment processes, our existing wastewater treatment processes are not effective at removing PFAS chemicals should they enter the sewer network. As a result, our focus has been on preventing PFAS from being disposed of by our customers within their wastewater discharges. This has required proactive, and at times difficult, engagements with our commercial tradewaste customers, the most prominent example of this is the former Truegain Australian Waste Oil Refineries facility at Rutherford.

The management of wastewater for PFAS chemicals is an emerging area of regulation, and we work closely with our peer agencies as the regulatory landscape adjusts to the latest science, both at a Commonwealth level via the draft PFAS National Environmental Management Plan 3.0, and state level with the NSW EPA. We support submissions from other utilities for regulation to better mitigate PFAS chemicals at their source, which will go some way to prevent them from entering the water or wastewater, helping to prevent the need for further technically challenging and costly treatment actions.

Finally, I understand that the Committee is interested in the resourcing, capacity and coordination of PFAS responses by agencies, and the financial and water security impacts of taking contaminated water sources offline.

For Hunter Water, with the exception of the Williamtown reticulation program that I referenced earlier, our PFAS response is fully funded by our customers through their water bills. These costs are not insignificant. In the most recent financial year, we invested in the order of $235,000 in undertaking PFAS sampling and testing alone, with similar amounts incurred each year since 2016.

We consider this to be a prudent investment in the safety of our region’s water supply.

Further, there is a quantifiable cost borne by our customers through the existing embargo of two Bore stations I mentioned within the Tomago Sandbeds aquifer. The Sandbeds are our drought water reserve, providing especially valuable water during dry periods. The embargoed bores can provide a combined yield of around 1 billion litres (GL) per year on average and up to 10 million litres (ML) per day during peak production, representing about 10% of accessible storage from the Tomago Sandbeds.

The cost of permanently losing access to this water to our community is in the order of $50-$150 million, and would require us to bring forward our region’s next source augmentation to maintain our water security.

Thanks for inviting us to present to this Inquiry. We welcome the opportunity to address questions from the Committee.