15 June 2006

For the past three years the Water Directorate and AWA have proudly sponsored the Conference Attendance Award for young water industry professionals. The aim of this award is to assist a water industry professional from a regional NSW water authority with up to 5 years experience to attend the AWA’s national water conference.

A strong field of five young water industry professionals nominated for the 2006 award.  This year, Clayton Miechel, Port Maquarie-Hastings Council was the recipient of the award.  Clayton's report on Enviro 2006 is reproduced in full below.  I am sure you will agree that Clayton was a very worthy recipient of this year's award.  Nominations for the OzWater 2007 Conference Attendance Award will be called in December.

ENVIRO 06 CONFERENCE ATTENDANCE AWARD REPORT

Firstly, I would like to thank the Executive Committee of the Water Directorate for their generosity in covering travel and accommodation costs as part of the conference attendance award, and the Australian Water Association for providing a gratis conference registration. In this brief report, I would like to summarise some of the key points that I have taken with me from the Enviro 06 conference.

At the heart of the event are the exhibition booths where it would have been possible to spend the entire three days, with every major player in the water and environment industries having a display. These displays present the chance to find out about the latest innovations, products and services available.

Along with the exhibition, a large part of the conference is the technical presentation streams with 24 different topics to select from. The technical presentation streams that I attended included Young Professionals, Wastewater Treatment State-of-the-Art in 2006, Disinfection and Water Reuse.

Appropriately, I kicked off my time at the Enviro 06 conference by attending the Young Professionals stream where I found myself amidst a group of other young water and environment professionals, working in diverse fields such as consultancy, utilities and various levels of government.

The CEO of IYP, Cameron Neil, spoke on the topic of young Australians as agents of change. A theme of this was that young people are concerned about the environment, however he was advocating a shift from education about the environment towards educating on what actions are required to minimise our negative impacts on the environment. That is, we need to transfer what we know into how we act to achieve sustainable consumption in our communities. Anna Skarbek then went on to discuss ways that as young professionals we can tackle these issues by engaging with our government, with the sentiments “a well presented idea that is good policy will not be ignored”.

In the Wastewater Treatment session, Jurg Keller began his presentation by highlighting the dangers of making bold predictions and citing a few humorous examples, such as a quote from around the 1940’s predicting that the future global market for computers would be only five units, he then himself made the prediction that by 2025 there would no longer be any wastewater treatment plants. This immediately raised my curiosity as I listened intently to see how he was going to qualify such a statement. Firstly, the case study for the Fosters brewery was presented where large water savings have been achieved through reuse, significantly it was highlighted that the drivers for the water reuse were largely economic.

Then thermal hydrolysis of sludge prior to anaerobic digestion was discussed (and was further discussed in later presentations). This involves ‘pressure cooking’ the sludge at high temperature and pressure to produce a superior biosolid product and enhance biogas production during digestion. The biogas production can actually provide the energy for the treatment plant and provide excess energy for other purposes. By combining the principles of water reuse, biogas production and a useful biosolid product, Jurg Keller was able to close his presentation by stating that indeed we would no longer have wastewater treatment plants by 2025, we would have Resource Recycling Plants.

The disinfection stream presentations involved discussions on various methods of disinfection such as Chlorine, UV, Ozone, Bromine and Heat. Disinfection by-products for the various forms of disinfection were examined The question was posed that if water supply utilities maintain a chlorine residual in the water supply up to the tap of the customer, what by-products could be formed depending upon the use of the water? This was an interesting point that provoked various responses from the audience with the final agreement being that there is no need for any alarm at this stage.

Perhaps the hottest topic in the water industry in Australia at the moment is that of potable water reuse. My final day at the conference was spent listening to various speakers discussing this issue with a largely unanimous consensus that the major barrier to its implementation is not technological but that of community acceptance. Greg Leslie from the UNSW provided great clarity in highlighting the somewhat ‘bizarre’ state of affairs when discussing incidental potable reuse compared with planned potable reuse. There are several cases here in Australia (and all around the world) of water for drinking supplies being drawn from water bodies downstream and in close proximity of treated effluent discharge points. The question then is “Why is it acceptable for this practice to occur but not for a controlled and planned potable reuse to be implemented?”

In summing it all up, the experience of attending such an event as this has not only provided new knowledge and perspectives on the current climate of the water industry, but has also instilled an eagerness to contribute to the industry. I am confident that the result of my attendance at this conference will be beneficial to my employer, Port Macquarie-Hastings Council, and myself. The Water Directorate’s Young Engineer Conference Attendance Award is a great concept and I hope that it is continued into the future.

Clayton Miechel

Project Engineer (Sewerage Section)

Port Macquarie-Hastings Council

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