FROM
FOREWORD NOTE
The Tasmanian Ratepayers Association is NOT the organiser of the
Public Meeting to be held at the Tramsheds Function Centre Inveresk at
7pm Tuesday February 9
Nonetheless Lionel Morrell has agreed to speak at the meeting.
IT is confronting to experience Third World conditions in a First World country, but we did with water and sewage overflows at Invermay a few days ago....... Having just spent up to $60 million on flood levees and another lot of money on the Margaret Street pump station the city still can't stop sewage spilling on to our street in times of heavy rainfall, because it is a combined stormwater sewerage treatment process....... This peculiar system combines sewage and stormwater when the treatment outfalls are overwhelmed. Swell....... The combined system is supposed to prevent sewage spilling on to our streets but it failed at the weekend....... This is a health nightmare....... Taswater and the Launceston City Council can explain this any way they like, but the bottom line is, when it pours we are at risk of sewage contamination because we have a system that is either too expensive or too complex to fix....... It's like the good old days of the night cart....... If this happens during summer, the health ramifications are alarming....... What does a business do when the damage is more than excess stormwater, soiling the carpets and structure?...... It is up to the councils to ensure that TasWater has the capacity to at least improve basic hygiene.......Councils were relieved of quite a financial burden when they devolved water and sewerage functions to TasWater....... They collectively own TasWater and plunder its profits each year for dividends - $30 million in the past year, even after revenue from rates, fees and federal grants. Then they sit back, while the population suffers either poor boiled-water quality in regional councils or raw sewage overflows in 21st century cities....... If you were one of those wealthy Chinese tourists trying to admire the cascading Gorge from King Street Bridge, the local stories of raw sewage would tend to spoil and soil the clean-green image somewhat....... READ THIS AT THE EXAMINER ... Read the readers' comments
Apparently the recent rain in Launceston on one day amounted to the largest recorded rain event for the city. So down where the 'Swampies' live every drop of that rain falling on the inside of the city's new levies has to be pumped out and sometimes in to the convergence of two flooding rivers.
Its a somewhat arrogant assumption that there will always be room for it and all the more so given Launceston's paranoia about the spectre of inevitable 100 year flood. In fact that is so much the case that 'the council' made a video alerting everyone to this risk. SEE THE COUNCIL VIDEO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BhpDFekiMM
However as The Examiner Editorial tells us about the health risks and they are substantial. The 'Swampies' have never been front of mind at the council it seems. But they're a proud lot and they're the very best even if a pretty ordinary lot with a great deal to deal with.
You only have to get off the main roadway through 'the swamp' to see that when a dollar is spent at council it usually isn't spent in 'the swamp' – at least not on the kind of infrastructure provided other places.
The fact that on 'the swamp' the sewerage and storm water share the same pipes, and rest on or below sea level, and very often on or below the 'water table', says a great deal about the mind space the 'the swamp' holds at Town Hall.
Except that is until there's a 'football deal' to be done ... or a business imagines it can turn a buck if the place is prettied up a bit etc. etc.
Whilst 'the swamp' flood risk is real "we don't live there", in fact "its not a place to live" and a bit of "collateral damage here and there" is to be expected 'in business'.
If there was actually a land shortage 'the swamp' might have seen some engineering brainpower put to work to 'tame the geography' . However, the population is relatively stable and there is ample land, so why invest in infrastructure in 'the swamp' when it might be better spent somewhere else?Well that's how it seems to go.
It has been a long time this way. If anyone is imagining that, so far as Launceston Council is concerned, that anything is is going to change all that much they are likely to be disappointed. This whole thing is like an unravelling tangle of who knows what.
As they say in the movies, "watch this space!"
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| Click on the map to enlarge it |
You only have to get off the main roadway through 'the swamp' to see that when a dollar is spent at council it usually isn't spent in 'the swamp' – at least not on the kind of infrastructure provided other places.
The fact that on 'the swamp' the sewerage and storm water share the same pipes, and rest on or below sea level, and very often on or below the 'water table', says a great deal about the mind space the 'the swamp' holds at Town Hall.
Except that is until there's a 'football deal' to be done ... or a business imagines it can turn a buck if the place is prettied up a bit etc. etc.
Whilst 'the swamp' flood risk is real "we don't live there", in fact "its not a place to live" and a bit of "collateral damage here and there" is to be expected 'in business'.
If there was actually a land shortage 'the swamp' might have seen some engineering brainpower put to work to 'tame the geography' . However, the population is relatively stable and there is ample land, so why invest in infrastructure in 'the swamp' when it might be better spent somewhere else?Well that's how it seems to go.
It has been a long time this way. If anyone is imagining that, so far as Launceston Council is concerned, that anything is is going to change all that much they are likely to be disappointed. This whole thing is like an unravelling tangle of who knows what.
As they say in the movies, "watch this space!"
T Vale
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