Our Werribee Vision

Dreams Rise from Sewage

Claire Miller, Environment Reporter

The Age: 11/05/2001
Page 5: Copyright of John Fairfax Group Pty Ltd

Werribee sewage farm could be transformed into a model eco-city supplying Melbourne and Geelong with 20,000 new jobs, renewable energy and ample clean water, under a plan before the State Government.

The Werribee Bioregion Project would put into practice the principles of the government's "triple bottom-line economy" policy, which encourages investment in economically viable, socially responsible and ecologically sustainable development.

The project brief from the Melbourne company Natural Capital Management estimates that for a capital injection of $500million, the 120-square-kilometre Western Treatment Plant would earn its private and public backers $200million a year. The project has won enthusiastic support from corporate leaders such as Jack Smorgon, the head of Smorgon Steel and the Committee for Melbourne, as well as unions, universities, and the cities of Melbourne, Geelong and Wyndham.

ACTU president Sharan Burrow said it was a great idea that could be adapted to breathe new life into depressed regions around Australia. "It is the sort of 21st-century development the ACTU is proud to be associated with," Ms Burrow said.

Natural Capital Management's chairman Rob Gell said the environment had been degraded "so complexly" that its recovery depended on sophisticated solutions. The key was turning wastes into riches by combining a suite of existing green technologies to achieve maximum efficiency.

For example, the biochemistry of selected plants would clean polluted water and contaminated soil on the site. This would free up land for development and provide about 300 megalitres a day of high-quality, recycled water.

While Melbourne Water aims by 2010 to recycle 10 per cent of the 500megalitres a day flushing through Werribee, "we need to be looking at systems that will reuse 60 to 80 per cent", Mr Gell said. "We have to make reuse the major component, rather than a little bit on the side."

The plants cleaning the soil and water would also be harvested as a perpetual source of bio-mass to burn in generators producing up to 30 megawatts of renewable energy - enough to light more than 30,000 homes.

At the same time, the generators' heat could warm greenhouses, run a desalination plant and operate "bio-digestors" (effectively big composters turning sewage into fertiliser). Grease recovered from the treated sewage could be made into bio-diesel to fuel machinery and transport.

Wildlife habitat is an integral component of the overall land-management plan. An aquatic botanic gardens is envisaged along with low-impact tourism for the site's wetlands, which are listed with the United Nations as internationally significant for migratory birds.

The City of Wyndham's director of economic development, Greg Aplin, said the project would change perceptions about Werribee. He said for the first time the site would be regarded instead as a valuable environmental resource underpinning industries for the future.

A spokesman for the Environment and Conservation Minister, Sherryl Garbutt, said the government was very supportive of the project's aims, but it was considering the merits of several proposals for the site. "But we think its general aims have a lot of potential," she said.