{"id":403524,"date":"2026-01-10T05:23:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T05:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/403524\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T05:23:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T05:23:14","slug":"nt-town-of-katherine-home-of-australias-best-tasting-tap-water-nine-years-after-pfas-detected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/403524\/","title":{"rendered":"NT town of Katherine home of Australia’s best tasting tap water, nine years after PFAS detected"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nine years since learning its drinking water was contaminated with “forever chemicals” known as PFAS, the territory town of Katherine is now sipping Australia’s best drop.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Katherine was awarded the Best Tasting Tap Water by expert judges at the annual Water Industry Operations Association of Australia (WIOA) competition late last year.<\/p>\n

The regional NT town’s water was pitted against samples from each Australian state in a blind taste test, with judges evaluating the colour, clarity, odour and taste of each sample.<\/p>\n

\"Water<\/p>\n

The water supply in Katherine was contaminated with PFAS, a chemical internationally recognised as toxic to humans and animals.\u00a0 (ABC News: \u00a0Lillian Rangiah)<\/p>\n

Only nine years ago, Katherine residents learned their groundwater had been contaminated with PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances)<\/a>, a group of chemicals recognised as being toxic to humans and wildlife.<\/p>\n

They are resistant to decay, meaning they can stay in the environment for decades, accumulate in human bodies over time<\/a>\u00a0and have been linked to cancer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Katherine, the chemicals came from the firefighting foam used in drills at the nearby Tindal Air Force Base, and\u00a0other Defence bases around the country until the early 2000s.<\/p>\n

They leached into the Katherine River, spreading to the underground aquifer and above the surface into the town’s\u00a0tap water supply.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Katherine’s water supply is a blend of rainwater and groundwater, processed at a Power and Water facility.\u00a0 (ABC News: Lillian Rangiah)<\/p>\n

The Australian Department of Defence trucked in clean water for bore-reliant properties, scientists conducted a major study on the health effects of PFAS <\/a>and Katherine residents sued the Australian government.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Defence\u00a0also paid for a permanent PFAS decontamination plant to be built at the NT-government-owned Power and Water Corporation’s Katherine water treatment plant.<\/p>\n

After years of delays, the plant started running last year \u2013 prompting Power and Water to enter Katherine’s tap water into the WIOA competition for the first time.<\/p>\n

\"Dan<\/p>\n

Dan McIvor says the award was the result of huge effort and dedication by Katherine Water Services. (ABC News: Lillian Rangiah)<\/p>\n

Dan McIvor, the senior field supervisor for Katherine Water Services, said the award represented the culmination of a “mammoth” amount of work and dedication \u2013 combined with a secret weapon.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It’s called Katherine Gorge,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Everybody knows how beautiful that place is.”<\/p>\n

Water expert Stuart Khan, head of civil engineering at the University of Sydney, attributed Katherine’s success to its unusual “designer” water supply blending two different sources.<\/p>\n

Most of the blend comes from rainwater which flows through the world-famous Jawoyn country landmark known as Nitmiluk, or Katherine Gorge.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Nitmiluk, or Katherine Gorge attracts around 250,000 visitors a year. (ABC News: Michael Franchi)<\/p>\n

That’s complemented by small amounts of mineral-rich groundwater from the Tindal Limestone Aquifer, which also discharges into the striking, electric-blue natural springs at Mataranka, south of Katherine.<\/p>\n

“The Katherine River is a very soft water supply, so there are low concentrations of things like calcium and magnesium in it, whereas the groundwater is a harder water supply with higher concentrations of some of those ions,” Dr Khan said.<\/p>\n

“A really good tasting water supply has just the right balance.”<\/p>\n

At the Tindal RAAF Base, Defence is still pumping groundwater through its own PFAS water treatment plants and back into the ground,\u00a0which removes the toxic chemical.<\/p>\n

It also supplies rainwater tanks and alternative drinking water sources to bore-reliant properties.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Microplastics made of resin act like magnets inside the massive pressure vessels brought in from the US. (ABC Katherine: Roxanne Fitzgerald)<\/p>\n

Katherine pioneering PFAS solution<\/p>\n

In 2016, Katherine was one of the first Australian towns to discover its drinking water was contaminated with PFAS.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Answering your PFAS questions<\/a><\/p>\n

As Australians figure out how to live with so-called “forever chemicals”, we’ve asked leading PFAS experts to help us understand the risks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We were really in our infancy in terms of understanding how to be able to treat PFAS from drinking water,” Dr Khan said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It really required some innovation and some new commercial solutions, such as the ion exchange resin that is being used in Katherine to achieve the right outcome.”<\/p>\n

Now, interstate areas affected by PFAS contamination, such as the Blue Mountains, are learning from Katherine’s experience.<\/p>\n

Dr Khan said one of the key issues Katherine\u00a0and other water treatment plants now faced, was figuring out what to do with the leftover PFAS that accumulated.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Power and Water said that issue would only arise once the level of PFAS waste reached a certain “saturation point”.<\/p>\n

\"Beakers<\/p>\n

The ‘designer’ water supply is tested and blended at the newly opened treatment plant.\u00a0 (ABC News: Lillian Rangiah)<\/p>\n

“Power\u00a0and\u00a0Water\u00a0will work the Department of Defence to transfer waste\u00a0and\u00a0resin to a suitable processing facility\u00a0and\u00a0waste disposal site,” a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

Dr Khan cautioned the PFAS needed to be incinerated \u2013 something which he said Australia did not yet have the capacity to do.<\/p>\n

“You’re dealing with contaminants that don’t break down, so if you’re going to put them into a landfill, you need to manage that landfill forever,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nine years since learning its drinking water was contaminated with “forever chemicals” known as PFAS, the territory town…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,166926,214203,44,18120,89683],"class_list":{"0":"post-403524","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-contaminated","11":"tag-forever-chemical","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-pfas","14":"tag-water-supply"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}