An additional sewerage flowpath built by Byron Council to stop treated effluent flowing onto a private farm near the Byron Arts & Industry Estate appears to have failed, with a key drain completely blocked, and the farm still inundated with treated sewage.
$1.2M project
The $1.2M project was undertaken, with considerable fanfare, during the last term of Council.
The path was intended to provide an additional route for treated effluent travelling from the Byron Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) to Belongil Creek, providing relief to the Flick family, whose farm experiences near-constant inundation.
However, last week’s Council meeting heard that the Flick’s farm continued to be inundated and one drain appeared to be completely blocked.
Councillors voted to receive a report from staff about the issue at the next meeting, in a bid to determine the cause of the problem, and enable swift action to alleviate it.
‘Having a look at the drain onsite it doesn’t look like, in my view as a very lay person, that it’s been constructed properly,’ Mayor Michael Lyon told last week’s Council meeting.
‘It looks like some fill has been placed to create the drop under Ewingsdale Road. But one of the drains in that area is at two-thirds to three-quarter height, and the water isn’t going anywhere.
‘This has been an ongoing concern for the Flicks for decades, relating to flows from the STP. This project was part of alleviating that, and it was delivered with a bit of fanfare, and it doesn’t look like it’s meeting expectations.
‘To George Flick and to all the Flicks, apologies for the amount of time this is taking.’
The staff report, to come before the May 25 meeting, will include an evaluation of how often the flowpath is used, the amount of effluent transferred down it, its performance relative to initial program objectives, and any filing that has been done to grade the problematic drain.
‘If that was my paddock, I’d be pissed off,’ independent Councillor Alan Hunter said.
‘The only thing you could harvest there is cane toads.
‘We need to have a serious look at this. We’ve been mucking around with it for a long time. I’ve been on Council for 11 years, and we’ve been talking about it for 11 years.’
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