Six of the eight Rous County Council (RCC) water authority councillors – Mustow, Cadwallader, Humphrys, Gordon, Rob and Bruem (who are reps drawn from Ballina, Lismore and Richmond Valley Councils) – have voted to progress a new dam over the religious site, and 25 grave cemetery of Lismore’s Widjabul Wiabul residents.
Their vote has also stopped RCC rolling out its already adopted Water Strategy for at least two years while RCC now reinvestigates the dam. Any dam will then take a further five years to build. As such, these six councillors are sabotaging rolling out water supply for our growing population.
There is a long way to go to see if these six people get their way for RCC to store our drinking water over the dead bodies of Aboriginals.
The good people, Council staff and other councillors of the Ballina, Lismore and Richmond Valley Shires, now have to live with the ugly decision that this minority of their Councillors have brought to their respective Council Shires.
Cultural genocide is alive and well in the Northern Rivers, and our Aboriginal residents will need the broad communities’ support to stop this disgrace, and to stand up to these Rous Councillors with their fake representation of their respective Shire residents, that is supposed to require equitable representation of all residents.
Ballina, Lismore and Richmond Valley need new public information signs – as these councillors are all a part of the RCC; perhaps they could create a generic sign for their various Shires boundaries, i.e. ‘Public Notice: If entering this shire BE WARNED – the shire stinks.’
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. 
