Stewart Russell describes an Australian experience
 
Australia is suffering one of the longest droughts in living memory. In spite of our wet summer, we may soon have to consider the techniques Australians are turning to as part of better integrated water management strategies. One of these is reusing highly treated wastewater.
Australia’s experience introducing its first water recycling schemes has been far from straightforward, not least because of public reactions to some proposals. It holds valuable lessons on how we understand public responses, and on the need for utilities and authorities to undertake serious consultation when planning new systems.

A yuck factor?

Australia already has several hundred schemes using reclaimed water. Most are small systems irrigating golf courses and sports grounds, but the list includes several large pioneering ventures for industrial and agricultural applications or supplying new suburbs through dual-pipe networks. Overall, though, recycling still makes only a small contribution compared to its acknowledged potential.
Among a public already responding conscientiously to water restrictions, and finding ingenious ways to save, there is widespread acceptance of the idea of recycling, at least for uses like watering gardens and flushing toilets. But research consistently shows a more cautious response to applications where personal contact is more likely. Not surprisingly, the level of concern has been highest where there have been proposals for supplementing drinking water supplies in inland towns where the reservoirs are nearly empty – notably in recent times in Toowoomba, Queensland, and in Goulburn, New South Wales. In a referendum last year Toowoomba residents roundly rejected a planned potable reuse scheme.
Popular discussion assumes these objections are explained by a ‘yuck factor’ – people cannot get past their disgust at the association with sewage. For some commentators, it reinforces their frustration that people are incapable of making rational judgements and are not persuaded by expert assessments of the health risks. The disgust explanation has been reinforced by psychologists who claim to demonstrate that, in the formation of attitudes, our emotions dominate our beliefs and values.
Much can be said about the adequacy of the yuck explanation, but most worryingly it offers little guidance on how people’s responses might change. Paradoxically, its proponents swing between despair that this gut reaction will be impossible to counteract, and calls for more effort to educate and persuade: perhaps people will see the light if they are provided with more facts and figures, or they will overlook the link with sewage if we find the right euphemisms and avoid pushing the wrong buttons.

Understanding before attitudes

Our experiments with integrated information and discussion sessions on recycling in different Australian communities has convinced us that opportunities for deliberation are crucial. People need to learn about the systems – disgusting aspects and all – to discuss the issues, and to develop their views in interaction with others and over time.
This is a point both about understanding people’s reactions and about engagement with them. It makes little sense, like much survey work that tries to measure public acceptance, to take a snapshot of ‘attitudes’, without reference to the level of understanding people have developed. It is especially pointless when there has been almost no public education and dialogue. We can only understand people’s complex and often ambivalent responses in the process of allowing them to grapple with the issues.
So we need consultation processes that allow understandings and views to develop. With notable exceptions, the water industry and authorities in Australia have been reluctant to engage with the public seriously and early in the planning process. It will be the only way to build a robust public evaluation of recycling and its role in a sustainable water future.

Need for consultation

In the wake of the disastrous rejection of the potable reuse plan in Toowoomba, many commentators bemoaned the media beat-up, the emotive slogans of groups like ‘Citizens Against Drinking Sewage’, and the failure of the public to understand the water treatment processes and the science that should have reassured them of its quality and safety. The yuck factor had triumphed. But we suggest the reaction owed as much to the lack of consultation, to the mistrust that a traditional ‘decide, announce, defend’ approach had reinforced, and to the siege mentality that gripped authorities as opposition emerged.
Nowadays the need for public consultation on infrastructure projects and sensitive scientific and technological issues is widely acknowledged, at least in the abstract. Its key principles have become almost a ritual incantation – transparency, openness, information, timeliness. The Australian experience with water reuse demonstrates they must be put into practice.

Stewart Russell works at the Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation at the University of Edinburgh.