00:00Sticky, smelly and downright disgusting.
00:05These debris balls closed beaches up and down the coast last summer,
00:09sparking a long and complex clean-up.
00:12When it comes to sewerage, we don't want to get things wrong.
00:15People don't like to think about it, they don't like to talk about it,
00:18but when it stuffs up, people really know.
00:20The debris balls were a mix of fats, human waste and other substances,
00:24and an investigation identified the deep ocean outflow at Malabar as the source.
00:29A major overhaul of the Malabar wastewater treatment system is now a priority,
00:34with a $3 billion 10-year upgrade planned for the entire network
00:39which services 2 million people.
00:41It's part of a wider $13 billion capital works program
00:45funded by higher water bills and approved by the state's pricing regulator.
00:50The price increases that have already flown through to customers,
00:54that's what's funding this work.
00:56The Malabar deep ocean outflow is more than 30 kilometres away from this water treatment plant,
01:01and it gives you a sense of just how complex the plan is.
01:05There's no single point of error.
01:07Rather, the entire wastewater network from Sydney's south-west to the east needs upgrading.
01:13The upgrade could see treated wastewater diverted to industrial uses like cooling data centres,
01:20and recycled water could one day be used to top up Sydney's drinking supply.
01:25I've been to places where they use recycled water as part of their drinking water supply,
01:31and I've drunk the water there and had no issues,
01:33but it's not something that is on the table really for Sydney right now.
01:38For now, the focus is on future-proofing a system, parts of which are more than a century old.
01:43.
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