Gundaroo Against Sewerage Plan (GASP) and the Gundaroo community will host a public meeting in response to Yass Valley Council’s plan to implement a sewage-treatment plant (STP) in the village.
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The meeting will be held at the Gundaroo Soldiers’ Memorial Hall on Monday, April 16 at 7.30pm.
Member for Goulburn Pru Goward will attend the meeting to discuss the matter with members of the community.
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The chair of GASP, Abram Hays, said the meeting would be an opportunity for the community to obtain more information about the process involved in having a sewerage system approved and to express its concerns to Ms Goward and the NSW Government.
Among GASP’s concerns are the below:
- Lack of evidence for the need for an STP
- Residents voting overwhelmingly against one
- No plans for water to run the system
- The STP costing $8 million
In a statement, GASP said the current onsite systems, almost 90 per cent of which are performing well and have decades of use left in them, being scrapped at considerable cost to residents.
Mr Hays said the council was not listening to either the community or its senior staff, and was blindly pursuing the proposal for reasons that are not obvious or transparent.
In a statement to the Tribune, the council said the resolution from the council meeting in December 2017 was to conduct further investigation and community consultation into a potential sewerage system for Gundaroo and for an expression of interest for grant funding be lodged with the NSW Government.
“Concerns raised by the community will be addressed once further investigation occurs over the next 6–12 months,” the statement said.
Following the Kyeema and Faithful Street zoning (in Gundaroo) approvals by the State Government in March 2018, the council said landowners could pursue larger lot sizes or private sewerage systems.
However, prior to the approvals, the council took the position that they would own any sewerage system.
Asked if the initial position about community-owned systems has now been relaxed should a council-owned plant does not eventuate, the council said it believed it was “in the best interest of the Gundaroo community to have one council-controlled sewerage system available for the entire community, as opposed to a number of privately owned systems only available to a small portion of the community.”
The council’s director of planning, Chris Berry, has been reached for comments.
GASP Inc is a community group formed after the plan to build the STP was announced just before Christmas 2017.
It represents the views of around 150 members of the Gundaroo community.
For more information:
- Abram Hays: 0413 495 544 or nosewerageingundaroo@gmail.com.
