Rosalie Woodruff MP | Greens Environment spokesperson
In GBE hearings today, TasWater confirmed there has been no infringement or fine issued for the 6,000,000Lt sewerage spill from their Macquarie Point Treatment Plant in August this year.
Zero fines have been issued for a spill that left raw sewerage flowing into the Derwent River for eight hours. This will be a shock to the many Tasmanians who live on its shores.
Taswater’s was initially notified of a power failure at the Macquarie Plant almost immediately by the contractor Golden Electronics - shortly after 12pm.
Despite this, Taswater took eight hours to send a person to check the fault. By that time, millions of litres of sewerage had flowed into the Derwent.
TasWater's explanation for this delay was that the contractor did not register the result of the alarm because a computer monitoring screen - which should have been relaying hundreds of points of changing data - remained frozen for eight hours.
Not even the TasWater executives could explain why this was not identified for hours.
It's shocking that the EPA haven't issued an infringement notice for a serious environmental incident where TasWater were so obviously negligent.