15 September 2015

Brown Hill Creek: no decision

After nearly five hours of debate Unley Council was no closer to making a decision on the damming (or not damming) of Brown Hill Creek. It was refreshing to see some new faces making a deputation and highlighting aspects of the project that suited each person own agenda. Option D (widening) was debated first with it eventually losing 6 votes to 5. Then followed Option B2 (dam) which also lost  6 votes to 5. Cr Hewitson refused to vote for either option and instead had the opportunity to put his own motion and this lost 3 votes to 8. Those in favour of a dam are Hudson, Sangster, Rabbitt,Salaman and Boisvert: those against Lapidge, Hughes, Koumi, Smolucha and Palmer.  Cr Palmer, Smolucha nd Hewitson have always said in the public arena that they supported a dam and yet, in this instance voted against one.
It is certain that we need a whole lot of additional information and that more water saving initiatives could be included in the project but I had hoped that these would be included as the project moved to detailed design.
What next?
Council will again debate the matter on the 29th September. It could be all over in 3 minutes if we simply ask the Stormwater Management Authority to make a decision or we could be there for 5 hours again and still get the same result.

3 comments:

  1. Stay on course Jennie and force a decision by your brother councillors.
    It was a total sham on the night.

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  2. Thanks for the update. As a creek owner we seem to be offered two alternatives: ruin the catchment with a dam or ruin the creek and lose the trees. Why do we need a dam? Wouldn't wetlands in the catchment retard the flow sufficiently in the event of a major flood and then the water with reduced velocity could enter a cleaned-out creek (cleaned out of weeds etc but saving major trees, etc)? Darren

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  3. Wetlands in the catchment were never considered, they may have been too expensive or too far upstream to te possible.

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