The 5.5-magnitude earthquake in June 2012 rattled Latrobe Valley households for a matter of seconds, however it took weeks to die out from workplace lunchroom and water cooler conversation.
Fourteen months on, it returned with peculiar fashion in New South Wales parliament, where it was blamed for the emergency discharge of 63 million litres of untreated wastewater which flooded into a popular Sydney surf beach.
Speaking at NSW parliamentary budget estimates hearing last month, Sydney’s metropolitan water authority, Sydney Water, identified the earthquake as the trigger of a “power failure at the Malabar Wastewater Treatment Plant” just before 9pm, 19 June, 2012.
While on-site emergency generators kicked in, a “system failure” intervened, and millions of litres of untreated wastewater was released from a cliff-face at Malabar Beach, adjacent to a popular rock-fishing spot discharge point.
A call made last week to GeoScience Australia from The Express regarding the likelihood of an earthquake in Victoria causing a power failure in Sydney was initially met with disbelief.
“It was very confusing for us as at first, as our estimated damage radius for the earthquake was about 20 kilometres, so the dots didn’t join up,” seismologist Jonathan Bathgate said.
However once GeoScience discovered Sydney Water sourced its power supply directly from the Latrobe Valley, through the national electricity market via NSW energy supplier Ausgrid, the pieces fell quickly into place.
When the earthquake hit, the Valley’s power stations were forced into emergency response mode after generators were tripped offline.
While the Australian energy market operator praised the generators’ quick response, distribution grids had been affected and believed to have caused numerous failures across the power network.
So obscure was the connection, a subsequent investigation by the NSW Environment Protection Authority found it would have been impossible to anticipate the Malabar Plant failure, and soon after closed the case.
“It should be noted that it is around 14 years since the last bypass incident at the Malabar Plant,” a Sydney Water spokesperson said.
Calls to local Malabar businesses by The Express revealed the sewage incident itself had been working the grapevine at the time of the event, however they were last week surprised to hear of the earthquake connection.
