Well back in the late eighties and early nineties things were pretty bad......or sewage was the issue of the times...whereas climate change is now dominating all our environmentally concerned energy. Check out Toxic fish and sewer surfing for some background info.
By the mid nineties Cronulla was in a particularly bad condition. Even further housing development was restricted by a sewage plant which was full to the bursting!: this is explained in an article in the SYDNEY Morning Herald from February 1995:
Housing developments in Sydney's southern suburbs may be severely restricted following a Sydney Water report which reveals that the Cronulla Sewage Treatment Plant is operating at near full capacity.
The draft report, Managing Waste Water in Sutherland Shire, which forms part of the investigation into the upgrade of the sewage plant, says: "The treatment plant is currently running at near full capacity and will not be able to cope with the additional waste water produced by a growing population unless proper planning occurs for a waste-water solution." The paper estimates the cost of upgrading the Cronulla Sewage Treatment Plant to tertiary standards, together with building a short ocean outfall, at $137 million. This is the method favoured by Sutherland Shire Council.
Upgrading the plant for sophisticated treatments which would allow the limited reuse of effluent may cost up to $1.5 billion.
The document, which also canvasses cheaper alternatives such as secondary treatment combined with a medium-length ocean outfall, will be released for public comment on Sunday.
The Cronulla sewage plant takes waste from about 190,000 people, but the document says that by 2010 there will be at least 220,000, and possibly 240,000, people living and working in the shire.
The paper says that the population growth was likely to occur in the Menai area, where an estimated 26,500 people now live. By 2010, there may be 49,000 living in the area.
The Council and the people of Cronulla suspected that the government was trying to get away with just installing an Ocean Outfall a few kilometres off the shore, instead of further treating the sewage. They would be happy with nothing less than tertiary treatment of the effluent:
There was even a protest group.......lets see what we can find out about that.
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