Almost a million litres of contaminated pool water are being sent out to the town’s sewerage lagoons for disposal.

A blue pipe snaked from the town pool today into a sewer inlet with a council worker keeping watch.

It is all part of the much longer than expected clean-up of the contaminated town pool.

The Katherine Times is still waiting on responses from the Department of Defence to questions about the disposal of PFAS.

PFAS removed from the town’s drinking water by the new treatment plant is to be transported from Katherine and stored at the Tindal RAAF Base.

The Katherine Town Council says filters, sludge from tanks and other contaminated residue from the pool will be placed in drums and disposed of at Tindal.

The department told us they are creating a PFAS holding area at Tindal using shipping containers..

Decontaminating Katherine’s town swimming pool will take much longer than expected.

It could be almost another month before the pool re-opens to the public.

The pool was unexpectedly closed on October 5 after a PFAS reading of 0.84 micrograms per litre was made public.

The recommended safe level for recreation use is 0.7.

Katherine Town Council had hoped it would only be a fortnight until the pool could be re-emptied and refilled with clean water.