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Australian water company backs off over fluoridation.

A private action in the NSW Land and Environment Court has forced Rous Water to suspend tendering for new fluoridation plants.

Doug Cross 19th July 2010

In a significant development in the fight to stop the fluoridation of water supplies provided from the Knockrow, Corndale, Dorroughby, Clunes and Marom Creek water treatment works, in New South Wales, Rous Water Authority has been advised by its lawyers not to proceed with the acceptance of tenders for the construction of the new plants.

Rous Water’s technical services director, Wayne Franklin, told the local Council that it would be unwise to proceed with the project until the New South Wales Land and Environment Court has decided on the action brought by Mr Al Oshlack, a resident of Lismore, on the grounds that the Authority has not considered the full environmental issues raised by the production and distribution of fluoridated water.

NSW law specifically states that in this Court ‘environment’ is regarded as including people. Therefore any activity - such as the addition of ‘fluoride’ to drinking water - that may be capable of causing adverse effects on people must be subject to a detailed assessment of the environmental risks involved.

I have recently submitted a detailed Affidavit to the Court, detailing the deliberate fraudulent under-reporting of the extent of dental fluorosis that inevitably results from water fluoridation, and of the hidden financial costs to sufferers

of fluorosis. This hard-hitting and fully documented Affidavit is confidential to the Court, but will be published once it has the protection of a Court document.

In this case, there is a remarkable parallel to the scandalous under-estimation of the costs of implementing a new fluoridation project on which South Central Strategic Health Authority attempted to rely, over the notorious Southampton fiasco here in the UK. As Mr Oshlack has pointed out, the costs that the NSW Health Authority had accepted were far less than the real costs of the development.

Rous Water is still under a legal obligation to fluoridate its water, much as a British water undertaker would be bound to comply with an order (sorry, ‘request’!) to fluoridate by a SHA. But in very similar fashion to UK companies, it could also be caught between two conflicting sets of legislation if the Land and Environment Court finds that the practice poses unacceptable risks to that confoundedly difficult and complex component of the environment - the people who actually live there!

I am waiting to see the outcome of this new legal challenge to the lunatic fringe’s fluoridation ambitions with great interest.

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