In Tasmania we have all watched the State Government inexplicably take water management away from Local Government and pay the new bureaucrats extraordinary salaries to run a new water authority. We are discovering, as the plan unravels, that the promise of a better water future is a mirage – or is it a smoke and mirrors demonstration.
It turns out that researchers in Melbourne – Monash & Melbourne Universities – have been telling urban planners for some time that the "environmentally responsible" thing to do with stormwater is not to pipe it into rivers from urban landscapes as has happened on Trevallyn. ... click here to read more
What these researchers are saying is not so dissimilar to the proposition that was put to Launceston Council's engineers in respect to the "Trevallyn Stormwater Separation" folly. These people where placed in the invidious position of implementing a flawed planning decision that in the end they had no influence over. Worse still it cost Launceston ratepayer something in the order of two million dollars!
The rationale for the project and its method of implication had no credibility at all –nor did it ever have any. It may be misguided but it seems that there is no evidence that it had, or has, any credibility at all. Furthermore, there is very good evidence that the environmentally responsible thing to do is ‘treat’ urban stormwater before releasing it to a river system – either via a sewerage plant or via the landscape or wetlands, using it on site etc.
In a letter to the editor at the time Launceston's General Manager, Frank Dixon, threw away the line "the council will be exploring opportunities to reuse rainwater" that underlines the follies deeply embedded in the Trevallyn Stormwater Separation project. It was a hollow promise, it makes no commitment to do just that and it is one that totally lacks credibility based on the evidence. Excuse the ratepayers if they might think that in regard to that project an opportunity "to reuse rainwater" was bureaucratically squandered.
Indeed, the Trevallyn Stormwater Separation project represents a misuse of ratepayer's funds on a number of fronts. It is painfully clear that this project has cost Launceston's ratepayers far too much. In the end it did not deliver cost effective nor environmentally appropriate outcomes.
Clearly there is a disconnect between the planning and the implementation of a project and clearly planners have never been in a position to change the direction or even challenge the wisdom or efficacy of any bit of bureaucratic folly that is costing ratepayers millions of dollars. The more one looks the less wisdom one finds in Government to do with water management.
Why did Launceston's ratepayers pay anything at all when the responsibility to do so is no longer Launceston’s? This project was a very large impost on all of Launceston’s ratepayers and you can bet that the new water authority will find ways to slug them for what they have already paid for.
The worst of it all is that storm water is being treated as waste water. Its quite clear that nobody on Council understands Launceston’s looming water problems it seems. If they do they have been sidelined.
Nobody is likely to get a rationale explanation for any of this because there just isn’t one. However, there is always the hope that we might find someway to cut through and get government – Local, State and Federal – to start to take notice of the research and implement sustainable water planning. There is no option but to do so really!
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