Dr Carolyn Brumley made us all feel the heat with her presentation on; Climate Change: A growing threat to wastewater systems and waterways in Australia.

At the start of November we held a webinar on “Climate Change: A growing threat to wastewater systems and waterways in Australia.”, we were joined by Dr Carolyn Brumley, Senior Principal Scientist from Senversa discussing why we need to pay closer attention to the risks that treated wastewater might pose to receiving waterways as climate change continues to unfold.

Some key points from Carolyns presentation were:

• Climate change is expected to ​reduce flows in many natural surface water systems​, affect sewerage infrastructure and effluent treatment​ and cause peak rain events and subsequent sewage overflows​.
• Under hotter and drier conditions​ water treatment plant discharges will become more concentrated receiving waterway volumes which will be lower​ and licensed dilution ratios may be difficult to achieve​.
• Wastewater treatment facilities are the focus of EPA Vic under future climate conditions​
• With hotter, drier conditions, the use of recycled/wastewater ​may be beneficial to aquatic ecosystems by providing additional flows​ however they may be detrimental due to the contaminant levels.

We had an influx of questions during the presentation which is a great indication of an engaged audience, and they took us into overtime so a big Thankyou to Dr. Carolyn Brumley for presenting us with this very informative Webinar.

If you were not able to make it on the day or have missed any of our Webinars, we post all our webinars on the HydroTerra website. Visit our Webinar Library