Sydney Water and the Hawkesbury City Council operate the four water treatment plants in the Hawkesbury. They take in wastewater and sewage from across the region. Out the other end come two treated by-products: recycled “grey water” and sludge, also known as biosolids. 

The recycled water and sludge that these facilities produce are not tested for the cancer-causing PFAS chemicals - a group of nearly 15,000 Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances. PFAS are referred to as forever chemicals because they do not break down in nature lasting hundreds, possibly thousands of years. Currently, there are no publicly available test results for PFAS on these waste products.

The North Richmond Water Resource Recovery Facility (WRRF), Richmond WRRF - run by Sydney Water - and South Windsor Sewerage Treatment Plan (STP) and McGraths Hill STP discharge treated water into South Creek and watercourses, which flow into Redbank Creek and Rickabys Creek.

Recycled water from the Richmond plants is used for irrigation by local institutions, including Western Sydney University and Richmond Golf Club. HCC sells recycled water for irrigation and toilet flushing, as well as using it to irrigate public reserves, including Berger Road Lake Reserve, Berger Road Reserve, Bounty Reserve, Bradley Road Reserve, Colonial Reserve, Mileham Street Reserve, and Cox Street Reserve.

Along with areas around at least a dozen other military bases across the country the Hawkesbury drew a short straw and became one of Australia’s PFAS hotspots. The contamination came from RAAF Base Richmond where now banned firefighting foams that contained PFAS were used for decades. PFAS has run off the base onto the Hawkesbury River flood plain, into groundwater and soil and into the river, coming back and forth with the tide and regular floods to spread across the region.

“The big thing is that a very, very, very small amount of PFAs goes a long way,” Associate Professor Ian Wright, a scientist at Western Sydney University says. “It's hard to visualise this, but it's like one eye-drop in 20 Olympic swimming pools that’s dangerous at that level. And the RAAF base used a lot of PFAS foams over a very long time.”

Once PFAS gets into the food chain it stays there. As well as contaminating fodder that grazing animals eat, it can also, like mercury, biomagnify when animals such as chickens eat insects and platypus feed on invertebrates. Wright explained, “This means that lower level bugs eat the plant, then the chicken eats the bug, and the concentration builds up at higher concentrations, each level you go”.

PFAS are not just harmful, they can be deadly and have been found by the World Health Organisation to cause a range of cancers, including kidney, testicular and thyroid, yet the Australian Department of Health claims the evidence is “limited”.

The Australian Cancer Atlas, a project of the Queensland University of Technology and the Queensland Cancer Council, shows that the Richmond area has a prevalence of thyroid cancer that is 41% higher than the national average, although without further studies direct causation with PFAS cannot be concluded.

Richmond resident Joanna Pickford was advised that her property had been contaminated by PFAS in 2018 and eventually gained a settlement from the Department of Defence as part of a class action on behalf of 30,000 people who live close to three military bases that was settled for $132.7 million, one of four similar suits.

“I have hypothyroidism [an under-active thyroid], so does my daughter. I got it when I was 40 and my daughter caught it when she was 26. I've had two male cats that I have had from kittens, both had thyroid problems, and one of them died from thyroid cancer,” Pickford told the Post.

As the Federal government moves to dramatically lower the acceptable amount of the cancer-causing chemicals in drinking water, the NSW government has belatedly offered financial assistance for regional councils to test for the so-called forever chemicals. But this is only for drinking water and any testing for wastewater plant products remains largely absent in the emerging national conversation about PFAS.

“We don't know where PFAS is, because we're deliberately not testing for it. What is driving this? It's negligence because it is of great concern to people. I found it bizarre that the water industry has been so resistant to grappling with this problem”, Wright says.

“If we're using recycled water in urban environments, and particularly in environments that might run off back into waterways, and particularly drinking water supplies - which in this case in the Neapan-Hawkesbury River - we should definitely have a good understanding of PFAS concentrations in recycled water”, said water engineer Professor Stuart Khan, head of the University of New South Wales Civil Engineering School. 

PFAS in biosolids is arguably even more concerning with about 500,000 tonnes of human waste used annually for fertiliser across Australia, introducing the chemicals directly into the food chain. Yet its producers don’t want to know.

“Council is not required to test treated water for PFAS,” the HCC spokesperson said, adding that biosolids were taken away from the plants and used as fertiliser.

“Sydney Water covers the cost for biosolids to be reused in agriculture, forestry, and compost markets,” a spokesperson for Sydney Water told the Post. 

In June, 2024 environmental action group Friends of the Earth released the results of a Freedom of Information request that showed Sydney Water has been testing for PFAS in biosolids - but not recycled water. Of the ten places where testing took place and elevated PFAS was found, Richmond yielded the highest concentration of PFAS.

The Hawkesbury has dodged a bullet as biosolids are banned for use in the Sydney basin; instead they are sent into regional NSW.

In Australia the wheels of government turn slowly, particularly in the case of PFAS. In September 2022 the draft National Environmental Management Plan 3.0 was released by the Department of Climate Change Energy the Environment and Water. It includes updated guidance on how PFAS should be monitored and managed, including in recycled water and sludge. Consultation on the plan closed in Feb 2023 but since then, nothing.

In Europe relatively new EU regulations are being implemented by member states like the Netherlands and Germany. In the US, the Federal EPA released a PFAS action plan that included EPA Method 1633, a testing protocol developed to detect and quantify 40 specific PFAS in various environmental samples, including wastewater, surface water, groundwater, soil, biosolids. As well, many states have developed guidelines and begun testing biosolids for PFAS, given the risks of leaching into groundwater or being taken up by crops.

As Australian governments at last begin to face up to the vast problems that PFAS presents, a focus on contaminated waste is essential. In the meantime, more than 1.2 million litres of recycled water is being fed back into the river system that supplies the Hawkesbury’s drinking water, or watering on a field or park near you.