Two algae outbreaks within a month which have affected the taste of Warrnambool’s drinking water have been described as unusual, but a permanent fix would cost millions.
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Managing director Andrew Jeffers said that while it was a “bit unusual” to have two algae incidents so close together, it was also unusual to have such long spell of warm weather in which algae thrives.
Mr Jeffers said that historically a taste-and-odour event caused by the algae might happen every two years, depending on the season.
“We monitor for it but by the time you pick up on it in the monitoring, it’s already into the system,” he said.
Despite the algae issues in mid-March and last week, the water corporation assured customers that the water was safe to drink.
“Water reservoirs are alive, there’s fish, there’s an ecosystem. Taste and odour-causing algae are in there all the time,” Mr Jeffers said.
“What happens under certain seasonal conditions is it will get more predominant and it moves beyond the taste threshold of humans.
“Some people will pick it up early and some people wont notice it at all.
“There is technology to put in, which is really expensive, to resolve that but at this stage our customers are saying generally price affordability is important – whether it’s worth investing large quantities of money to solve a short-term problem.”
Wannon Water does, however, have a project planned to improve the taste of the water which does not require a massive capital expenditure and should also help with the algae taste issue.
Wannon Water branch manager of communications and engagement Garrath Darkin said water was drawn from a number of storages, and if the taste of algae was detected in one they could switch to another while they tackled the issue.
“That’s why it came good again and then we’ve had another incident in there so we’ve been able to flip that around really quickly and resolve it quickly,” he said.
Wannon Water also has plans to investigate the costs of improving the water quality in Port Fairy, Heywood and Portland.
Part of that investigation would include assessing if there was a business case for improving water quality.
“It has deep artesian bore water, you can tell that it’s bore water,” Mr Jeffers said.
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