Toxic Fish and Sewer Surfing
How deceit and collusion are destroying our great beaches

In October 1973 a confidential report by the Board’s consultants, Caldwell Connell Engineers, had included this statement:

A meeting of personnel involved in various aspects of the study was held at the Australian Museum on the morning of October 18, 1973 to discuss the findings and develop recommendations . . . It was agreed that, while the data only represented analyses of individual specimens, levels of heavy metals and pesticides detected in this small number of samples were such as to suggest that a potential public health threat or environmental hazard might exist within the study area . . . Examination of the gut contents of a number of species of fish in the outfall areas shows that they derive a large percentage of their diet from food particles in the sewage. These fish, in turn, may constitute a significant proportion of the diet of persons who regularly fish in these areas.

It was concluded that more intensive studies of heavy metal and pesticide levels in the marine environment off Sydney should be undertaken as a matter of some urgency and that the studies should deal initially with the flesh of edible fish (Caldwell Connell, 1973).

The intensive studies recommended were to include further and more comprehensive surveys of fish, surveys of consumption of fish by people who might be at risk, finding whether sewage or industrial wastes in stormwater were the source of heavy metals and pesticides in the ocean, and the evaluation of ways of reducing the levels of those substances. These studies were never carried out. Caldwell Connell went on to complete and publish their million-dollar feasibility study into the extended ocean outfalls, which did not mention the 1973 study. They stated in that study that a detailed investigation of levels of pesticides and heavy metals in the marine environment was beyond their scope (Caldwell Connell, 1976). They designed the outfalls to meet SPCC standards for concentrations of heavy metals and pesticides allowed through the outfalls. (These are discussed in chapter 2 pp. 39-41.) These standards were set in 1974 upon request from the Board and its consultants-dearly an attempt to avoid investigations that could have had embarrassing results.

It is not known whether the results of the 1973 study were given to the SPCC at the time, but the standards they set did not incorporate any further fish studies. The Board did not begin monitoring its discharge, nor did it change its trade waste policy. In fact, when part of the study was published in the Environmental Impact Statements in 1979, the Board actually stated that: ‘Whilst the statistical significance of the 1973 survey is not able to be clearly established the results are encouraging in that they indicate that no serious environmental problem existed even prior to the full implementation of source control of restricted substances . . .’ (MWS&DB, Bondi EIS, 1979). This sort of statement in an Environmental Impact Statement is misleading at the very least, given the concern of those involved with the survey. At least two other studies of contamination of fish near the outfalls, undertaken by the Fisheries Research Institute, were not mentioned in the Environmental Impact Statements nor were they published elsewhere. In one study (shown in Figures 3.2 and 3.3) seven out of eight blue groper and one red morwong out of eight sampled from Manly waters were above the NH&MRC maximum allowable levels for mercury. Yet the Fisheries Research lnstitute made no mention of these results in their submission approving the Water Board extended outfalls in 1980.

Figure 3.2 Mercury in North Head fish, 1973–89

The levels of mercury in fish caught near the North Head outfall are getting progressively worse. The blue groper taken in 1973 was below NH & MRC maximum recommended levels but by 1979, 7 out of 8 were above those levels. The red morwong were nearly all below the NH&MRC maximum in 1979 but were all over that maximum in 1989, ten years later.

Information from: Caldwell Connell, 1973; FRI correspondence to SPCC, December 1985; SPCC, Vol I, 1989; Water Board Scientific Services, Report on Heavy Metals in Red Morwong, February 27, 1989.)