Health authorities are warning people to avoid swimming in Hobart’s River Derwent after the failure of a wastewater treatment plant. Run-off from the Cadbury chocolate factory in the Derwent Valley is responsible for pushing the plant offline and it could be weeks before it's fixed.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00With the sun shining on the first day of school holidays, this Hobart beach should have been
00:08overflowing with swimmers, but a sewage spill into the River Derwent kept many out of the
00:14water.
00:15I was about to go for a swim and then my wife got a phone call from someone who said, oh,
00:22apparently there was a sewage spill out Cadbury's way.
00:26TAS Water says overly sugary water released from the Cadbury factory at Claremont forced
00:33the closure of the Cameron Bay sewage treatment plant.
00:37In simple terms, it's killed the bugs that eat the sewage and this has meant that only
00:43partially treated water is now entering the Derwent.
00:47A health advisory was issued this morning for residents to avoid swimming in the River
00:52Derwent between Austen's Ferry and Old Beach in the north and Sandy Bay across to Howrah
00:58in the south.
01:00But a lack of signage meant some swimmers were unaware.
01:03No, no idea, we just came down, thought it was a nice day and yeah, jumped straight in.
01:08I had no idea.
01:09Yeah, went for a swim just now.
01:11The union that represents Cadbury workers is questioning why the factory's waste water
01:17treatment plant wasn't upgraded two years ago.
01:21This was avoidable.
01:22If that had been upgraded, there is a strong likelihood that this may not have occurred.
01:26In a statement, a spokesperson for Cadbury's parent company, Mondeley International, said
01:31they recently undertook a $3 million upgrade to their water treatment plant.
01:36They said they are working with TAS Water to fully investigate and resolve the matter.
01:42More water quality tests will be done over the weekend and early next week.
01:47We expect that that will enable us to give further advice on which areas of the Derwent
01:53can be once again used for activities like swimming.
01:57But TAS Water says it could take up to a week to fix the sewage plant.