Kaitlyn Buaneye was eight months pregnant when she first learned she wasn’t supposed to drink the water, but it wasn’t until after her son was born she found out why.
Her mother, Patricia Riley, a Nyikina woman and Pandanus Park community leader, had been investigating drinking water contamination in the Indigenous community in northern Western Australia.
“That’s when my mother got the results that there were nitrates in this water, and it was unsafe. Especially for newborn babies and pregnant mothers,” Buaneye says.
“I was drinking it when I was pregnant with my son.”
In the six years since that shock, the 25-year-old mother of two says making the 600 metre walk every day to collect water from the filter system at the community office has become difficult, especially in the heat.
“I think that’s the reason why most people just give up and drink the tap water,” she says.
The 125-person community 168km east of Broome in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, draws its drinking water from two bores near the Martuwarra (Fitzroy river).
Tests in 2015 revealed nitrate concentrations at levels of 80mg/L – below the 100mg/L safety guidelines recommended for adults by the Australian drinking water guidelines, but above the 50mg/L limit for pregnant women and infants up to three months old.
An audit report released in June found groundwater contamination in Pandanus Park and dozens of other remote communities across the state was getting worse.
‘Your drinking water could be poisoning your children’
Nitrate contamination represents a risk to infants as it can cause methaemoglobinaemia or “blue baby syndrome”, which prevents the blood carrying oxygen.
Authorities say that on the current health advice the water is perfectly safe to drink for older children and adults but Dr Christine Jeffries, a paediatrician working in the Goldfields region of WA, says this advice needs an update.
Jeffries has been researching the health effects of nitrate consumption since she became aware of the problem while investigating high rates of kidney disease among remote communities in the region in 2007.
She and her sister-in-law, Annette Stokes, began the western desert kidney health project after noticing 12 children at a basketball game who showed early signs of kidney disease.
At first, they thought the issue was genetic but soon found non-Indigenous people who had moved to the same communities experienced similar problems over time. After eliminating several possibilities, Jeffries says they finally looked at the water and found a recurring feature: nitrate pollution.
“The water was a complete surprise. It never occurred to us that in Australia, your drinking water could be poisoning your children,” Jeffries says.
Nitrates are produced when organic matter – everything from vegetation to human bodies – breaks down. Often the cause of nitrate pollution is run-off from fertilisers such as in the US state of Iowa or leaking sewerage, as recorded in Gaza.
But in the Kimberley nitrate pollution occurs naturally. Vegetation, such as on the edge of rivers or waterways, dies and the nitrates created seep down into an aquifer. Because this process can occur over thousands of years, the landscape above can change dramatically while the ancient water beneath remains.
Adults and older children have been thought to have the stomach bacteria to break down low levels of nitrate, though the National Health and Medical Research Council is reviewing the nitrate factsheet in the drinking water guidelines.
Dr Mary Ward is a senior investigator with the National Cancer Institute in the US and contributor to a 2018 review of the medical literature on nitrate in drinking water.
It found evidence of a relationship between long-term exposure to low levels of nitrate over a 10-year period and elevated risks of “colorectal cancer, thyroid disease, and neural tube defects”.
“While there have been several studies since our 2018 review, our conclusions still hold,” Ward says. “Taken together, these studies add to the evidence for adverse health effects related to nitrate at levels below the current regulatory standards in the US and EU.”
However, Ward cautions there are still few well-designed studies available to draw firm conclusions on several risks.
‘I’m not just fighting for Pandanus’
Prof Anas Ghadouani, program chair for the environmental engineering project at the University of Western Australia, says there are relatively cheap measures that could be taken to mitigate possible long-term effects.
“Technical solutions to this already exist,” Ghadouani says. “We can do this now. It is not rocket science.”
Successive state governments have been slow to address the issue in Pandanus Park and other communities. In some cases, the cost of providing basic services to remote communities has been used to justify closing them down.
Ghadouani says reverse osmosis filtering systems for farming use cost $20,000, less than the cost of kidney dialysis for one patient for a year.
“Expensive is all relative,” Ghadouani says. “When someone says ‘expensive’, I say ‘what’s your benchmark?’ With a little thought you could have a very good system.”
Prof Stuart Khan, from the school of civil and environmental engineering at the University of NSW, says cleaning nitrate from water can be tricky, requiring tailored systems to prevent wastewater washing back into the aquifer and trained staff to run them.
“If we had a program that was helping to deliver those skills into regional and remote communities, that would be ideal,” he says.
In some ways, Pandanus Park is proof that something can be done. Media coverage of the community’s situation prompted a New South Wales-based charity, the Yaru Foundation, to donate a water filtration system in 2018.
What was reported at the time as a “solution” was only intended as a stopgap measure while the state government worked on a sustainable, long-term fix.
The filter system delivers water only to the community office, and Pat Riley says travelling there to fetch water every day is not always possible for elderly people or the ill.
“We want clean, pure water that goes directly to our houses that we can drink,” she says.
Paul Isaachsen, assistant director-general of governance with the WA Department of Communities, says Pandanus Park’s needs are being met by the filtration system and the bottled water supplied for pregnant mothers and young infants.
He says $12m has been spent to build water treatment plants in other communities.
Systems have been installed at Jigalong, Mount Margaret, Barrel Well, Jameson, Cosmo Newberry and Tjuntjuntjara, with three more under construction in Warburton, Kiwirrkurra and Parnngurr.
“Other communities like Pandanus Park are to be considered as funding becomes available,” Isaachsen says.
However, a recent audit report found the department may seek an exemption to avoid having to provide safe drinking water to some communities under its management.
Water Corporation, WA’s water utility, has already received exemptions from having to provide safe drinking water to nine remote communities with nitrate contamination issues.
Isaachsen says regulations allowing the department to apply for exemptions are not yet in force, but it “will consider whether any exemptions are required” when they are.
Riley says a permanent solution is long overdue.
“They just give us bottled water,” she says.
“They constantly send us bottled water – always bottled water. I’m doing this out of my heart, because this is my home. I’m not just fighting for Pandanus, I’m fighting for the rest of the communities in the Kimberley region.”