A WOMAN who spent her late husband’s estate on a property in the Dungowan Valley has claimed Tamworth Regional Council (TRC) should have come clean sooner with its plans for residents downstream of the dam.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Judy Scot-Savage bought the Ogunbil Rd property, located 11km from Dungowan Dam, just a month after councillors first discussed behind closed doors its response to a report outlining the consequences of dam failure.
Mrs Scot-Savage said she may well have proceeded with the purchase of the 40-acre property even if she had known it would potentially be rezoned as a floodplain, but maintains she deserved to be fully informed.
“I think I should have been afforded the opportunity to have all the information in front of me when I was going to spend all the money that my husband’s death had brought my way,” she said.
“My husband died and living at Hanging Rock, because it was remote, was just becoming a little bit difficult to get into town, so I moved a little bit closer to town on an easier-to-look-after property.
“I can see what they were thinking – that it would upset people if they had known what was happening – but I do believe that people are more upset now they’ve found out it was all done covertly.”
The council first went public in Augustwith its plans to relocate 11 houses and build flood shelters on about 40 other properties in response to a report by Hunter Valley Australia identifying new safety issues regarding the dam.
Councillors first considered the matter in closed council last December and again in June, when it formally adopted the plan – costed at between $2 million and $18 million – in favour of more expensive options to upgrade the dam.
TRC’s director of water enterprises Bruce Logan said the months between the council first considering a course of action and finalising its decision were spent determining who was going to be affected and costing its potential options.
“They’ve raised that issue with me before and my response now is the same as then; the council considered the issue confidentially because they didn’t want to worry people that didn’t have to be worried,” Mr Logan said.
“They also wanted to have a course of action available. I felt that the best approach would be to have some options available so we could discuss what council was considering doing – and that’s what we did.”
