Main Outfall Sewer
The Western Treatment Plant (formerly the Metropolitan Sewage Farm or, more commonly, the Werribee Sewage Farm) of Melbourne Water, is a 110 km2 (42 sq mi) sewage treatment plant in Cocoroc, Victoria, Australia, 30 km (19 mi) west of Melbourne’s central business district, on the coast of Port Phillip Bay. The plant's land is bordered by the Werribee River to the east, the Princes Freeway to the north, and Avalon Airport to the west. It forms part of the Port Phillip Bay (Western Shoreline) and Bellarine Peninsula Ramsar Site as a wetland of international importance.
The discovery of gold in 1851 made Melbourne the richest city in the world at the time and thus, with a population of about 500,000 by the 1880s, also Australia’s most populous.
Melbourne was facing a big pollution problem. While it had been described by British journalists as "a city of magnificent intentions", it was also being dubbed Marvellous 'Smellbourne’ because of the city’s unsanitary waste disposal methods.
In those early days the majority of waste from homes (including kitchen, bathroom, and laundry wastes, along with the contents of chamber pots) were emptied into open drains that flowed into street channels and on to local rivers and creeks. Waste from farms and industries also flowed into these street channels, turning Melbourne's rivers and creeks into open sewers, causing cholera and typhoid to run rife.
In 1888 a Royal Commission was carried out to come up with a solution to Melbourne’s waste problems. The Commission’s findings led to an ambitious plan for the construction of a sewerage system - a system of pipes, sewers and drains built underground to carry sewage from homes and factories to a sewage treatment farm.
...
Wikipedia