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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-07-31 Daily Xml
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Recycled Water Audit

Mr BROWN (Playford) (15:31): I rise to speak today about the issue of clean drinking water, something that many in this chamber take for granted but something that residents of Mawson Lakes, including myself and my family, are now rightly concerned about. Following an application under the Freedom of Information Act, I was given access to internal SA Water documents that show that in 2018 SA Water had been alerted that a home in Mawson Lakes had for some years been sourcing its drinking water from the Mawson Lakes recycled water system.

This means that the occupants of this house had been drinking and bathing in water that the minister confirmed during estimates is sourced from recycled sewage. Further analysis revealed that the purple pipe from the house was connected to the mains potable water system and the pipe used for drinking water into the house was directly connected to the recycled water system. Documents also showed that, following the discovery of this misconnection—as it is called by SA Water—SA Water acted quite quickly to rectify the fault, and for this they are to be commended.

They also quickly convened what is known as an RCA meeting, which I am advised stands for 'root cause analysis'. This is a meeting of relevant experts who decide not only how an incident could have occurred but how to rectify it and how to make sure it does not happen again. The cause of the incorrect water connection to the home in Mawson Lakes remains unknown. Documents show that a conclusion was drawn that it seems so unlikely that an incident of this nature could have occurred by accident that it could in fact have been deliberately done by persons still unknown.

When the RCA meeting came to recommend solutions to ensure that such incidents did not recur, one of the most important recommendations was that a widespread audit be conducted of recycled water connections in the Mawson Lakes area. This suggestion was found by the group of experts to be not only appropriate given the circumstances but also cost-effective in nature. Sadly, no such follow-up audit appears to have been conducted. I am aware that the properties on either side of the home involved in this case have been checked, but it appears to have stopped right there.

I think that the Minister for Water needs to inform the public of who decided that such an activity was not worth the money and why they thought it so, given that SA Water is returning an increased dividend of millions of dollars to the Treasury. How many more instances of this type of mistake do we need to see before SA Water will finally decide to offer residents a free audit to give them peace of mind?

I would ask all members to contemplate this: you and your families could have spent years drinking recycled effluent instead of ordinary, decent drinking water. I urge the minister to change his mind about these audits and listen to the residents of Mawson Lakes, who are rightly concerned for the health of their families. I also urge the minister and indeed the government as a whole to stop penny pinching, stop fattening up SA Water and deliver peace of mind for my constituents.

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