'No more Band-Aid solutions': Wagga councillor calls for a scientific report on Lake Albert's toxic water

Wagga City councillor Georgie Davies wants to get to the bottom of what’s going on with the toxic water in Lake Albert.

The Deputy Mayor will present a Notice of Motion (NOM) at Monday night’s meeting calling for an independent, expert, scientific report into the causes and possible solutions to the Water Quality Issues at Lake Albert.

In recent years, the lake on the southern side of town has been plagued by outbreaks of the toxic cyanobacteria, commonly called blue-green algae, and the recreational waterway is routinely closed.

“We’ve been presented with various sorts of solutions to address the blue-green algae, and every time that happens, I feel like we’re just flying in the dark,” said Cr Davies.

“We can say it’s because of the sediment, or the nutrients flowing into the lake and things like that, but we don’t actually have a solid understanding of the real reasons why the blue-green algae is occurring and a proper understanding to make a really informed decision.”

Cyanobacteria is common in Australian waterways and can produce poisonous toxins that can cause skin irritation and illness and is harmful to pets.

Cr Davies said residents were fed up with the closures and wanted the lake to be functional and usable all year round.

“It’s such an important part of Wagga and it’s so disappointing that every single summer it’s closed for extended periods of time at exactly the time of year when people want to use it because of these outbreaks,” she said.

“We can’t be sitting on our hands doing absolutely nothing, but at the same time we can’t just waste of money doing these things that we’re not sure are actually going to fix it in the long term.”

Council has tried several approaches to deal with the problem and this year an ozone-based solution called Hydro2050 will be trialled at a cost of $300,000.

The six-month trial of the Hydro2050 solution will involve the installation of five ‘units’ at key locations on the shore to oxygenate the water.

The technology creates tiny nano-bubbles that deliver a concentration of ozone to the water system, an approach that has proved effective as a chemical-free solution to destroy toxic algae and bacteria.

If successful, the use of the system would need to be ongoing.

Cr Davies said that she hoped the trial was a success, but feared council was just taking another shot in the dark.

“Why don’t we actually invest money in getting a really thorough, expert, scientific, independent investigation so that when we are looking at new solutions, we can understand whether it is a good idea or not because of this work that we’ve done,” she said.

Solar-powered buoys were installed in 2018 to use ultrasound technology to disrupt the blooms but it was felt that they were only partly effective and unable to deal with the scale of the problem.

Last year a six-month trial was undertaken with a product called Waterzyme that introduced an organic enzyme into the lake in the hope it would starve the algae of sunlight and cause a cellular breakdown.

The trial cost $150,000 and was labour-intensive as volunteers scouted the lake in boats, spot-spraying patches of cyanobacteria by hand. Like the ultrasound buoys, there was some success but not enough to remove health advisories from the lake and its use was discontinued.

“I feel they are all just very, very expensive Band-Aid solutions and they’re not actually looking at the root causes of the blue-green algae and addressing that,” said Cr Davies.

“Until we have that piece of work in front of us with all of the possible answers, we just are completely flying blind.”