A range of concerns have been raised from filling wetlands to proposed four lanes for Ewingsdale Road as part of the planning proposal before Byron Shire Council this week for 268 Ewingsdale Road, the former Sunnybrand/Ingham chicken site.

Turning the West Byron housing development site into a wetland for excess effluent from the Byron Bay Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) is a possible solution to its increased output, says Greens MP Tamara Smith and Byron Shire councillor Cate Coorey.

Council is currently implementing a project that will further ignore the reuse option and drain effluent down a shorter flowpath to the Belongil estuary. But what do the community want the sewage treatment plant in Byron to achieve?

Many of Byron Bay’s problems involve water and are closely connected, whether acid sulfate fish kills, or stormwater flooding in the central business district (CBD), or management of the sewage treatment plant (STP) effluent.

I pause on the bridge over the Tallow. My senses are full of the changes with the recent equinox. The signs are all around.

It’s not a done deal. The swamplands that define Byron Bay are crippled but still alive. The NSW Joint Regional Planning Panel is still debating how mega-development of West Byron might harm the Cumbebin Nature Reserve and the Belongil waterway.

Crowds are still cheering how the sea floods 250 hectares at Steart on the mouth of the River Parrett, UK. This is the latest of five national ‘coastal realignment’ projects. Environmentalists worked with the local townspeople to undo a hundred years of hard seawalls with ‘soft engineering’.