'Getting worse': unsafe water plagues remote residents

Remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are dealing with inadequate drinking water, sanitation, and access to hygiene, but a lack of data hides the true extent of the problem. An explainer from the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, released on Friday, said "water quality issues are long-term, persistent and, in some cases, getting worse in remote communities". The University of Sydney's Professor Stuart Khan is a co-author of the explainer, titled Closing the Water Gap - Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities. The School of Civil Engineering head said there is evidence remote communities deal with mineral and chemical contaminations from sodium, uranium, fluoride, arsenic and nitrate that exceed safe thresholds set by the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines. Evidence indicates the water is also susceptible to microbial contamination, which can cause serious health issues. "We do identify these problems with both chemical contaminants in some drinking water supplies but also susceptibility to microbial contamination," Prof Khan told AAP. "When you end up with bacteria in water, it potentially causes all sorts of illnesses, skin infections and eye infections, gastroenteritis - so vomiting and diarrhoea - and some of these illnesses can be very dangerous particularly for young children and the elderly." Prof Khan said Australia's water quality data exclude communities with less than 10,000 households, which means remote areas get overlooked. "We don't include those smaller communities because the data is harder to collect," he said. "They are by definition a long way from larger centres, so collecting water samples on a regular basis, getting to the laboratory in a timely manner and proper data analysis and collection, all of that is more difficult when you're dealing with smaller, remote communities. "The statistics refer only to communities with more than 10,000 connections and by doing that we overlook about eight per cent of the Australian population. "We can't actually put our hands on our heart and say (remote communities) have great water quality because we don't know that." Concerns have also been raised over water security for remote residents, with traditional owners from the Northern Territory travelling to Canberra on Thursday to plead for stronger conservation laws to establish a national environment watchdog. They are worried about the impact of the Northern Territory's largest ever water allocation on waterways such as the Roper River. The plan could mean 210 billion litres of water per year may be extracted from the aquifers that feed the river. Prof Khan said there is no silver bullet solution to ensure safe water in remote communities, but understanding the extent of the issues was the first step. Residents need to be engaged to find the most appropriate and culturally sensitive solutions, tailored to each community, he said. "It's not a 'deliver something on the back of a truck and forget about it' solution, it needs to be an ongoing relationship with those communities that ensures we have ongoing, sustainable solutions in place," Prof Khan said.