Concerned Millingandi residents Marianne Kambouridis and abalone diver John Smythe have started a petition calling for any tertiary treated effluent to be used as a bi-product for making wetlands, an irrigation system for farmers or storage for times of drought.

They point to Byron Bay as an example where wetlands have been constructed by council to minimise the impact of the sewage treatment plant on the surrounding ecosystems and create a natural habitat for the support of local flora and fauna.

The call appears to be resonating with some local people and around 800 signatures have been collected so far.

Ms Kambouridis said they recently had a stall at Pambula market “and collected 400 signatures in three hours”. A number of local businesses have also signed the petition.

“Almost all of these people had no idea of the proposed construction and impact this will have on our beach during the dredging and laying of the pipe for 3-6 kms,” she said.

“A few of us became aware of the issue late last year and felt that council needed to look at alternatives,” Ms Kambouridis said.

Council has been under pressure from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for several years, to find a way of dealing with the treated effluent from the Merimbula sewage treatment plant.

Some of it has been used for irrigation of the Pambula-Merimbula Golf Club and also at Oaklands. In times of low rainfall it can be a successful way of using much of the treated effluent but when it rains irrigation isn’t required and so the excess has to be stored or disposed of, and currently that is via a beach outfall at Merimbula.

The EPA requires council to have a way of dealing with the treated effluent it can’t use and council is currently working with consultants on the planning for a deep water ocean outfall at Merimbula.

“We are concerned with the sheer waste. As members of our community, we all have a duty to advocate on the behalf of our environment. We do not support an outfall when we have so much to gain from alternative methods of irrigation, wetlands and reuse. We need to harness this bi-product and not refer to it as waste,” Ms Kambouridis said. 

She added that the group of concerned residents felt that council had not explored all the alternative methods of discharge.

In 2011 council asked for those interested to be on the ocean outfall focus group. The News Weekly understands that there has in the past, been calls by some members of the focus group, for council to investigate alternatives to an ocean outfall but they have been told it is the best option.

In its Effluent Options Study council said that a deep water ocean outfall was “the favoured effluent disposal option of the Focus Group, offering the greatest relative environmental benefit through improving receiving water quality and ecology and having the least construction impacts and operational greenhouse gas emissions”.

The deep water ocean outfall was also considered to provide the greatest preservation of Aboriginal cultural heritage, aesthetics and recreational amenity, council said. 

But Ms Kambouridis said she disagreed and was concerned that council was planning on spending “an estimated $30 million in the construction of an outfall”. 

In fact it is likely the total cost will be more given the passage of time since the estimates were made and council will need funding from either federal or state government to enable the project to go ahead.

In the meantime Ms Kambouridis plans to keep the issue live by presenting the petition at the next council meeting.