Across much of the past week, residents of Broken Hill have taken to social media to raise concerns about the quality of tap water across town, noting its brown and murky appearance, with some also noticing foam and particles in the liquid.
Essential Water – the company which provides Broken Hill and surrounding towns’ water supplies – assures residents, “that despite some instances of water discolouration, their water is safe to drink”.
That response to the situation has angered locals even more, with one resident, Miles Clothier, demanding more appropriate and, well, transparent answers.
“It’s not discolouration technically, it’s coloured water, because water’s not actually coloured,” Mr Clothier says.
“A better explanation other than ‘it’s safe to drink’ would be nice, if they actually said why it was coloured this way. Is it because it’s floodwater or is it because it’s something else that they’re having to treat it with, or what is it?”
Essential Water says the water in Broken Hill does meet the guidelines outlined by the National Health and Medical Research Centre’s National Water Quality Management Strategy: Australian Drinking Water Guidelines 6 (2011). However, in the document, it states “the guidelines are not mandatory standards”.
“They say that it meets the standards of Australian drinking water, but the standards aren’t actually mandatory, they’re just guidelines so they could or could not meet them and it wouldn’t matter anyway,” Mr Clothier said.
“There’s something going on that’s not quite right and saying that it’s safe to drink just doesn’t put your mind at ease because you don’t drink water like that normally.
“Maybe it is safe to drink but it would be nice if they explained why it is safe to drink and why it looks like this. They can’t just say ‘oh, it’s floodwater’ , because the water’s dirty all the time, all year round anyway, it’s not clean.”
The issue is having an effect on some supermarkets too as aisles become bare of pre-packaged water.
“A lot of people didn’t drink Broken Hill water before and I was one of those people because it wasn’t a great taste so that could probably happen again because it’s a real shame not to be able to drink water out of your tap.
“Bottled water is expensive, it creates waste. I have those bigger 15 litre bottles which I can refill but all of the shops have been cleaned out of water basically.
“You pay for it [tap water] and you expect it to be a certain way and when it’s not and you haven’t had any real explanation as to why, it puts a bad taste in your mouth.”
Head of Essential Water, Ross Berry, pointed to the Murray Rivers and its floodwaters, telling the Barrier Truth, “a change in the river’s organics and tannins from leaves and other vegetation yellowing some water” is the explanation behind the appearance of the water.
“The discolouration from the tannins do not affect the quality of the water, however they are extremely difficult to filter,” Mr Berry said.
At Tuesday’s monthly Broken Hill City Council meeting, Mayor Tom Kennedy said he’d noticed, “a lot of concern amongst the community about the colour of the water”, and pointed to the possibility of chlorine lacking in the water, though that is not the advice from Mr Berry and Essential Water.
“A lot of the time when water doesn’t look very nice it doesn’t necessarily mean that water is unsafe,” says the Mayor, “but when the water is of discolouration it does mean that chlorine could be lacking in that water. The chlorine is activated to fight whatever’s causing that discolouration.
“I’ve been heavily involved in water for a long time. The way the chlorine is put in the treatment plant, heat can dissipate chlorine, but so can solids and so can other materials in the water. The chlorine’s activated when there are impurities in the water. What you want to do is make sure that there’s chlorine at the end of the pipe.
“If there’s no chlorine left at the end of the pipes when they test them, it means that the chlorine’s being used during the piping system and you’ll find that’s why Essential Water over the past few weeks have been flushing out their pipelines.
They flush out the pipelines to make sure that the chlorine makes it to the end points.
“Essential Water needs to get on top of this. They’ve dismissed a lot of concerns out there in the community.”
“[Essential Water] need to let the community know what’s going on, but for everyone, the way things look usually is the way people judge if is it safe or unsafe and Essential Water needs to get on top of this. They’ve dismissed a lot of concerns out there in the community.
“If the Council was to do the same sort of thing as Essential Water has done, I’d be receiving a lot of phone calls, put it that way.”
Essential Water has confirmed it has increased flushing in the reticulation system to generate a quicker turnover of water, is using water from Stephens Creek to alter the organic composition of the water, and has engaged water treatment specialists to optimise the water treatment plant and investigate strategies to resolve the issue.
“As the water discolouration is caused by the flooding in the Murray, it’s more difficult to treat but we expect the discolouration to dissipate over the coming weeks, taking a few months to disappear,” Mr Berry said.
“Most importantly, we can assure the Broken Hill community that the water is safe and drinkable as always. Essential Water team members live and work in Broken Hill and drink this water daily.”
Customers with concerns about their water can contact Essential Water on 13 23 91 and request an Essential Water team member to attend their home or business and have their water tested.
