Management gave workers and contractors just two days notice of the planned cuts, sending a notification out on Thursday informing them that domestic water and amenities such as showers would be shut down from 6am on Saturday until 4pm on Monday.

“Where Possible work involving chemicals should be avoided,” it warns.

“Toilets may be flushed by using buckets filled from the washdown water or fire water system.”

ETU NSW assistant secretary Justin Page said it was incomprehensible that AGL management thought it was safe for work to proceed at the power station without access to appropriate water supplies.

“There are numerous serious hazards on this site, including contaminated and waste water, carcinogens, known biohazards, high silica coal, fly ash, and asbestos that employees come into contact with daily,” he explained.

“By cutting water supplies and telling workers not to use shower facilities to ensure water is available for the emergencies showers, employees are effectively being told to take these serious hazards home to their families.

“Telling workers to flush toilets using buckets filled with washdown water or water from the fire hydrant system, and to seek out bottles of antiseptic hand rub from the office ‘if required’, are not only unsanitary, they appear to breach the relevant codes of practice.

“This is major corporation operating in a first-world country in 2018 — it beggars belief that they could possibly put this plan in place and think it adequately protected the safety of workers.

“The union is demanding that Saturday’s water outage be immediately cancelled, a full investigation conducted into whether an appropriate risk assessment was done during planning for this project, and an assurance that the planned upgrade work will not go ahead until domestic water supplies can be guaranteed.”