Public meeting led to sewerage scheme
A public meeting was held at Rogers Park, Woy Woy, on March 13, 1977, to discuss a sewerage scheme for the Woy Woy Peninsula.
Former Shire President Ron Hyndman addressed the meeting.
Ron was head of the Pelican Island team that swept the council elections in 1971.
Only two sitting councillors survived.
Ron's priority was to get a new sewerage scheme and outfall.
Once that was certain, Ron Hyndman resigned from the council.
At the meeting, Ron claimed a Woy Woy loan was used to construct a Passvere Ditch at Wyoming which discharged sewerage into Narara Creek.
This was a loss of $1 million of Peninsula loan money and also a loss of sewerage priority.
He said that an interim scheme of a Passvere Ditch for Woy Woy was not on.
A motion was then moved for a presidential meeting altering the priority of sewerage.
Federal member Barry Cohen said he would urge the Australian Government to get more meaningfully involved in the sewerage problems of the Central Coast.
Shire president Malcolm Brooks said the Snake Gully site was not suitable because of the elevation.
He said a feasibility study was needed for an interim scheme for Woy Woy.
He said he would oppose anything but a treatment works with 10/10 effluent, ie the best possible effluent.
Department of Public Works had offered the services of a skin diver to investigate the pollution of the sewer outfall at Mt Ettymalong.
There was a need to reappraise the regional sewerage scheme.
Also that there would be no subsidy if the scheme linked up with the Metropolitan Sewerage and Drainage Board.
State member Keith O'Connell said that the cost of sewerage at Somersby would have to be met by the industrialists who settled there.
Also that it was essential that the Council asked the NSW Government for reappraisal of the scheme.
Candidate Don Leggett, who was to become shire president in September of that year, said that the State Pollution Control Commission had not investigated pollution of the Woy Woy area, with the exception of the Mt Ettymalong outfall.
At the end of the meeting, motions were passed calling for
*
A Presidential minute of reappraisal of the scheme, with an alternate proposal for sewerage for Woy Woy within four years.
* The support of State member Keith O'Connell, and
* If upon refusal by council, the appointment of an administrator.
This was carried.
Keith Whitfield, Woy Woy