Memo to Sydney Water: It’s time to be upfront with the public about PFAS and our drinking water

In itself, the discovery of more cancer-linked “forever chemicals” in Blue Mountains water supplies is not surprising: the impact of PFAS on drinking water has been an emerging problem for several years, and the Herald last year revealed the presence of the substances in the nearby Medlow Dam.

Jamieson Reservoir at Leura, where forever chemicals have been found at five times the incoming safe level.Credit: Sitthixay Ditthavong

The Medlow discovery, which was only made after the Herald shamed the government into testing supplies, led to the hurried installation of a $3.4 million filtration unit at the Cascade Water Filtration Plant in Katoomba, which supplies drinking water to nearly 50,000 residents across the area on the World Heritage List.

What is alarming about the latest developments, though, is the continuing shameful attempts by Sydney’s water authorities to keep the problem away from the public gaze.

As the Herald’s investigative reporter Carrie Fellner revealed on Monday, the latest reservoirs affected by elevated levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances are the Jamieson Reservoir on Cousins Lane at Leura and the Shipley Reservoir, near Blackheath. The cancer-linked chemicals have been detected at between two and five times the incoming safe levels.

The discovery only came to light because a community health campaigner, John Dee, found the results on the Sydney Water website. “I’ve had to stumble on it myself. Nobody has been told,” said Dee, who convenes the local Stop PFAS action group.

“Why has Sydney Water only started this wider testing now?” he asked. “What is Sydney Water doing to make sure that there is no PFAS residue left in these reservoirs?”

All good questions. But don’t expect Sydney Water to be proactive in providing answers. The agency is developing a bad history of ducking, diving and dodging on this growing problem. As one example, the agency would not directly answer a simple question from the Herald this week about how many residents were affected.

Then there’s this bit of spin from Sydney Water’s website: “We can reassure you that PFAS levels in all treated water samples we’ve tested are well below the values specified in the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines.” This is misleading at best. While the samples may be below the current guidelines, Sydney Water neglects to mention that new drinking water standards will soon come into force, lowering the threshold for what is deemed acceptable levels of PFAS. The samples from Jamieson Reservoir are five times above those incoming limits, and the Shipley Reservoir two times over.

Sydney Water insists consumers have nothing to fear from the latest discovery, even though it has drained the two reservoirs. Sydney Water said the reservoirs were “rarely used”, and when they did provide “very limited supply”, it was blended with water from elsewhere, meaning tap water samples were safe. That may be the case, but the agency’s history of obfuscation on this topic makes its assurances hard to swallow.

This problem is not going away. Sydney Water should recognise that secrecy and a lack of transparency leads to fear and anxiety. It must be more upfront with the public about where it is testing and what the results are.

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