These lakes were once so clean you could swim in them. Now they are fetid – and residents are being told to pay to fix them.   

The Age
December 27, 2025


Hundreds of households that live around a chain of artificial lakes in Melbourne’s south-east are being asked to pay a significant extra charge on their water bills to deal with recurrent outbreaks of toxic blue-green algae.

People once swam in Patterson Lakes’ three “Quiet Lakes”, which were flushed with 730 megalitres of bore water every year to keep them healthy under a deal struck between the developer and the water authority.


The lower amount of bore water being flushed into the lakes has led to the growth of algae.   

But residents say a severe curtailment of the volume of bore water flushed through the lakes by Melbourne Water has left the water severely polluted, compromising people’s health and wellbeing.

Once home to turtles and multiple species of fish, the lakes have become infested with carp and turn algal green during dry periods.

Melbourne Water has proposed adding an annual tariff to Quiet Lakes residents’ household water bills, beginning at $153 in 2025-26 and rising to $335 by 2030-31, to flush all three lakes with bore water and improve water quality.

The proposal is contained within Melbourne Water’s 2026 price submission to the Essential Services Commission, which will rule on the water corporation’s proposed charges to customers next year.

Melbourne Water has cut the volume of groundwater pumped through the lakes annually from 730 megalitres to 20 megalitres.


The Quiet Lakes owners and residents association, which represents about 300 Patterson Lakes households whose properties back onto the three lakes, has urged the commission to reject Melbourne Water’s tariff proposal.

The association argues Melbourne Water has mismanaged the three lakes for decades and is responsible for the decline in water quality and recurrent algal bloom outbreaks.


Its submission states that in 1991, Melbourne Water cut the volume of groundwater pumped through the lakes annually from 730 megalitres – which flushed the lakes every three months and maintained a swimmable standard of water quality – to 20 megalitres.


It also closed off the outlet from Lake Carramar, the southernmost of the three lakes, to the tidal lakes that connect to Patterson River and Port Phillip Bay, turning the lake into a stagnant body of water.

“The residents abutting the Quiet Lakes, especially Lake Carramar, have suffered for over 30 years with toxic water containing cyanobacteria which is harmful to humans, wildlife and fauna,” the submission by association president Alison Yates argues.   

“Under the management of Melbourne Water, the Quiet Lakes were transformed from a residential community enjoying a lifestyle built around lakes, in which they were safe to live beside and in which they could swim, into a seething mass of blue-green algae which included several toxic varieties.”

Melbourne Water proposes to introduce bore-flushing to Lake Carramar at a cost of $300,000 to improve its water quality.

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“Bore-flushing will be provided at Lake Carramar with the cost shared equally across customers at all three lakes,” its submission to the Essential Services Commission states. “This enables the lake network to be managed as a complete system rather than separate entities.”

During consultation with residents, it also proposed optional additional charges for carp control, algae treatment and reducing phosphorus levels.

Heather Smith and her husband have lived in a house on Lake Carramar since 2012, and she says there have been summers when the algae problem was intolerable, although recent years have been better.

“It gets quite green if we have hot sunny days for a few days. The other two lakes don’t suffer from it like we suffer from it,” Smith said.

“I would pay a reasonable charge because I want cleaner water”: Residents Heather and Ken Smith at their Patterson Lakes home.


Smith said she would be prepared to pay the additional tariff if it would improve the lake’s water quality.

“I would pay a reasonable charge because I want cleaner water,” she said.

“You don’t get much for a free lunch, you might as well suck it up and pay what you have to pay. But that’s just me, others probably don’t want to pay a cent.”

The three lakes were developed when a swamp was drained to build a housing estate in the 1970s. The houses around the Quiet Lakes are a beacon for retirees.

Tidal lakes an rivers are self cleaning near ocean entrance. Good fishing and prawning too.

I would never swim in those artificial lakes -

I bet they are full of dog turds.

Jasin wrote on Dec 29^th, 2025 at 12:58pm:



The Yarra river was always brown - a stinking turd river.

Jasin wrote on Dec 29^th, 2025 at 1:09pm:



Are you sure?

River or lake water is very easily polluted -
just one turd or one dead animal and millions of litres of water are polluted and undrinkable.
That's why our water catchment areas have to use filters and massive
amounts of Chlorine to make our water drinkable.

The top soil however is remarkable -
a turd is turned into rich black soil after 3 to 6 months.

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Great burly for fish and mud crabs.

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Not if it was connected to the sea by more than just one direction of total flow.
It could also be a mosaic of shallow Aquaculture mini lakes fed by a massive network of canals and waterways bringing more moisture into the interiors of the outback which could result in more rainfall and more rainfall from accompanying forests that can now prevail, cooling the land.