Cr Michael Lyon, The Pocket
It saddens me when well-respected figures resort to misinformation and misdirection to make their point. Dailan Pugh’s letter of last week is guilty of this and it does him no justice, nor did his presentation to Council about the fish kill when he called for the prosecution of staff for the tragic event.
When will certain people in the ‘green’ community learn to work together and support each other to achieve better outcomes? We are all human and susceptible to making mistakes under pressure, even if our intentions are good.
Dailan, I didn’t praise staff for their actions at the time as you seem to claim in your letter. Indeed, as you disingenuously requested at the end of your letter, Council acknowledged the failings that led to this event at the last meeting, and we published the monitoring reports as per your request. What I praised staff for was their diligence and effort in analysing what went wrong and coordinating with all relevant agencies and research partners to come up with a much more robust process to minimise the occurrence of these events in the future.
Rather than blaming well-intentioned people for mistakes we do better to focus on getting things right which is exactly what Council has done.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
