Water wrangle

By Kath Gannaway
THE people of Powelltown have vowed to fight a new application to VCAT which would allow 24 hour operation of a water extraction plant.
More than 60 people packed the Powelltown Hall on Wednesday night to talk with new owners of a lease which allows water to be taken from underground water supplies on a property at 1590 Little Yarra Road on the edge of the town.
The Powelltown Residents’ Water Association (PRWA) and local townspeople fought and lost a bitter battle at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) a few years ago to stop a permit being granted for the water to be extracted.
The proposal at the time was for a water bottling plant and there was talk of jobs for local people.
PRWA president Ian Martin said the company, which had the lease, had not acted on it.
“We were under the assumption it was all dead and buried until someone was notified that a new owner of the lease had applied to VCAT to modify the permit,” he said.
The new owners of the 55 year lease, Brian Carey and son, Tim Carey, who operate a similar operation to what is now proposed for Powelltown, called the meeting which Brian Carey said was aimed at sharing information on what they are proposing. While Mr Carey says the changes they are asking for are cosmetic, Mr Martin, said they could have a huge impact on both the viability of the town’s water supply and on residents’ lifestyles.
Where the original permit allows for one to two collections a day between 7am and 6pm, the new application is for up to six trucks operating 24 hours a day.
Water will be transferred straight from the ground into trucks and at most two jobs will be created.
Mr Martin said residents are not only concerned about the truck movements but had real concerns about the amount of water which could be removed.
“We are looking at a 60 per cent reduction in rainfall over the next 50 years on Melbourne Water’s predictions and we have to be concerned about that,” he said.
While Mr Carey and a hydrology expert on his team assured the meeting the amount of water they planned to extract would have no detrimental effect on the water supply, Mr Martin said no-one was reassured.
“There is big money in buying and selling this type of lease and as water becomes more scarce it’s obvious the value of the lease will increase,” he said.
“We have his assurances but who knows what will happen in the future.
“We can only go by what is written and proposed and we are prepared to fight to ensure the conditions of the permit are not detrimental to Powelltown.”
Kim Marriott, the Shire of Yarra Ranges Shire manager of planning services, said the shire had refused the original application but had not made any decision on the application which will go before VCAT on 13 October.
“The only way we would support it is under the same sort of stringent conditions that applied to the previous permit,” she said.
She said she expected the matter would go before the council before the VCAT hearing.