Is your drinking water safe?

Recent news reports indicate that many areas in Australia suffer from poor drinking water. Often this is due to industrial contamination, environmental factors or poor maintenance of water resources. One example of environmental contamination and poor maintenance is from a recent ABC news report of major water quality issues in the town of Bombala. [1]

Bombala Residents reported the water smelling like compost or pond water, making it undrinkable, and containing so much brown sludge that it stained laundry and left clothes smelling like a swamp. The local baker complained that his batch of white bread loaves came out looking like wholemeal!

Residents also reported the water smelling like a swimming pool and causing sore eyes and itchy skin after showering. This was attributed to the volume of chlorine used in an attempt to make the water more palatable.

The people of Bombala were faced with the dilemma of having water that was undrinkable due to the smell, or ingesting a possible chemical cocktail.

The Snowy Monaro Regional Council acted by employing divers to remove 70 cubic metres of sludge, a 40 year accumulation, from the town’s reservoir tank but a former Bombala water plant manager said that the sludge was likely to re-accumulate in a relatively short period of time.

Droughts, Floods and Bushfires

Another environmental problem faced all around Australia is water contaminated as a result of bushfires and extreme weather events such as droughts and floods. Droughts in particular cause major problems for water supplies, not just in water running out, but in water running low. As water supplies run low and evaporate, salinization of the water and the growth of toxic algae become problems.

Image by Bogomil Mihaylov

In 1998, Sydney experienced an event known as the “1998 Sydney water crisis“ where drinking water was found to be contaminated by cryptosporidium and giardia pathogens after two years of drought conditions followed by heavy rainfall in August and September causing large volumes of low-quality raw water to enter the dam. [2] In August 2007, Sydney’s Warragamba dam experienced a massive algal outbreak due to drought causing the dam to fall below 30% capacity followed by extreme flooding which stirred up nutrients in the dam’s sediment. [3]

Melbourne and Brisbane experienced similar problems caused by drought followed by flooding in 2009 and 2011. Over the years, Sydney has spent an estimated $2 billion and Melbourne 5.7 billion on desalination plants to cope with water affected by extreme weather events. [3]

Image by PXHere.

Issues caused by droughts, floods and bushfires are not restricted by the boundaries of states and territories. Bushfires followed by rain wash huge amounts of contamination into catchment areas which may cross over state lines. In 2003, Canberra was forced to construct a membrane bioreactor treatment plant at a cost of $40 million to combat contamination caused by bushfires in the Brindabella Mountains followed by heavy rain washing contaminants into the Cotter Catchment area. [4]

Ironically the measures necessary to treat water contaminated by extreme weather require huge amounts of energy which in turn is having a negative effect on our climate, causing more droughts and floods in the long term.

Personal Solution

So, can we or should we trust that the water supplied to our towns and cities is always going to be safe or healthy for drinking? A quality water filter like the EZEK EZ-AQUA 250B Benchtop filter or the EZ-AQUA 250BU Undersink Water Purifier allows us to take personal responsibility for the quality of the water coming out of our taps without resorting to bottled water which often isn’t any better than plain tap water and adds to the plastic burden to our oceans and landfill.

EZEK EZ-AQUA 250B Benchtop Water Purifier

Both EZEK systems contain three cartridges which tap water is filtered through before we drink it:

The water first passes through a Polypropylene Filter (PP-250B) which removes larger particles like dirt and rust.
Then, a coconut shell granular activated carbon filter (GC-250B) removes heavy metals and volatile organic compounds like chlorine, gasoline, benzene, formaldehyde and fluoride, as well as odour.
And finally through a biological filter (BF-250B) to remove bacteria and other microorganisms. EZEK’s BF-250B has an unmatched efficiency of 99.9999% making it one of the top filters in the market. Most other filters only guarantee 99.99% efficiency.

Call us today on (02) 8840 5177, or email us at sales@ilanwater.com.au, to discuss our range of water filtration systems to provide clean and great tasting drinking water at your home or office.
Australia-wide delivery available!

Is your drinking water safe?