Valuable objects from diamond rings to wallets, smart phones to false teeth could be making their way through Bendigo sewers and into landfill without anyone knowing about it.
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That’s thanks to a major upgrade to the city’s waste-water treatment plant which has met the demands of a growing population and improved the quality of water being discharged into Bendigo Creek – but sacrificed human oversight.
Next month Coliban Water celebrates 25 years since upgrades to the Bendigo Water Reclamation Plant at Epsom which enabled the service to grow from 25,000 connections serving 62,000 people to 43,000 connections serving 108,000 people.
Chief engineer on the project Neil Burns said the upgrade effectively amounted to building a new plant, which pioneered biological nutrient removal technology in Australia.
“It was the first purpose-built BNR plant in Australia,” Mr Burns said.
“The plant generated a lot of interest from water corporations from around the world and the first Australian Conference on Biological Nutrient Removal from Sewage was held in Bendigo.”
But Mr Burns – who has worked for the Bendigo Water Board and Coliban Water for a combined 40 years, and is now in the position of Coliban’s community infrastructure development specialist – said the upgrades meant valuable objects were no longer fished out of the sewers.
“False teeth, glasses, phones, wallets… people get a bit inebriated, or get ill, and all sorts of things come out off their mouths – and also from the top pocket of their shirt – and go down the toilet,”
- Neil Burns, Coliban Water
“Even things like diamond rings.
“But you tend not to find too much at the treatment plant anymore because the removal of those sort of things is now pretty much all automatic – it just goes into a big, covered skip and is carted away.”
Solid items are filtered out of the effluent stream by bar screens, he said. Automatic rakes clear solid objects caught in the bars, which are placed on conveyor belts, taken to the dump and buried without the items being assessed.
“You wouldn’t want to run your fingers through it,” Mr Burns said.
“[But] back in the ‘good old days’ much of that process was manual, you had people there raking stuff from the bars.
“Now it’s all automatic which reduces the OHS risk and means the system just works better.”
A growing problem which is blocking our drains
But one emerging trend is placing an added strain on the process, leading to blocked pipes and issues with pumps.
“Nowadays wet wipes are being used as a easy way to clean things up and being flushed down the drain,” Mr Burns said.
“But they don’t break down like toilet paper does and that’s an extra burden on the system.”
He reminded people of the thee Ps which are the only things that should go down the toilet – pee, paper and poo.
