Sydney Surfing Safer With Mouth Shut

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32209, 30 January 1970, Page 18

Sydney Surfing Safer With Mouth Shut

(By MAX LAMBERT, N.Z.P.A. staff correspondent)

SYDNEY, January 28. It is a good idea to try to avoid getting a mouthful of salt water while splashing around in Sydney’s surf these days.

The chances are that the the water is badly contaminated by sewage bacteria. A recent test showed 1 that at one of Sydney’s 22 ocean surf beaches, contamination was more than 80 times above the level at which health authorities consider water fit to drink.

The ever-present pollution of the city’s beaches is getting steadily worse. Seven Outlets

About 140 million gallons of untreated sewage is now pumped into the sea off Sydney daily from seven outfalls. The amount grows yearly as the population spirals. During the cooler half of the year the city is swept by northerly, southerly and easterly winds, which carry the sewage out to sea in a deep ocean current moving in a southerly direction. But during the peak swimming season between October and March, there are frequent sea breezes which blow the vile-smelling sludge dlose inshore.

It was just such a breeze which pushed a huge band of semi-processed effluent ashore at Maroubra beach earlier this month, spreading a 3ft-wide strip of filth from one end of the beach to the other. I The mess on the beach was I aggravated by grease. 1

Water Board officials said that the grease—thousands of gallons of it—had been illegally dumped into the eastern suburbs sewerage system which serves one million people and innumberable industries. The board’s inspectors have not yet discovered who was responsible.

The pollution attack at Maroubra sent surfers scurrying from the water, almost forced the closing of the beach for several days, and brought the seriousness of pollution home to Sydney-siders. Treatment Works

The Mayor of Randwick (Aiderman A. C. Molloy), subsequently warned that Maroubra, Malabar and Coogee beaches might have to be closed within five years unless the Commonwealth Government made special grants to speed up completion of sewage treatment works.

And the Challis professor of biology at Sydney University, Professor L. C. Birch, made a similar prediction. All Sydney’s beaches would be closed by 2000 if the State Government did not spend an extra s3om a year to treat sewage.

The State Premier (Mr Robin Askin) says that his Government is anxious to spend more on treatment and this year had made a record amount available to the Water Board.

But it cannot give more or authorise greater borrowing without cutting down on health, education and transport. Mr Askin says that he will discuss pollution of Sydney

beaches with the Prime Minister (Mr. John Gorton). He believes special Commonwealth aid is the only answer. The water Board has completed a treatment plant at Bonda, one of the three main outfalls, but plants' at the Malabar and North Head are some years away yet. A start has been made on them but experts say only a massive infusion of extra capital can speed the work up. Meanwhile Sydney bathers will have to put up with pollution.