If you glean all your opinions from Facebook, you are in danger of becoming like our politicians – armed only with a single dimensional sound bite. There are very few matters which cannot do with more scrutiny than is offered by social media.
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Sadly we have become all too adept at taking the easy route, the quick opinion, the vox pop, the sound bite.
Pambula Merimbula Golf Club’s request for help with the renewal of its irrigation system is an easy decision about whether ratepayers should subsidise a private organisation’s infrastructure, on the face of it.
Many probably believe there are most important things to spend our money on.
However the golf club takes, and has for the last 30 years, about 20 per cent of the grey water from the Merimbula sewage treatment plant. If it didn’t get used on the golf club this grey water would be dispatched to the nearby ocean outfall or via dunal exfiltration systems.
Given the current ocean outfall is relatively close to the beach and we have a tourist industry, any grey water that doesn’t end up in our ocean has to be a good result.
The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) has been on council’s back for some time over it’s method of grey water disposal at Merimbula which is why council has been looking at a “deepwater ocean outfall” at an estimated cost of $35 million.
The golf club is not the only organisation that takes grey water from council’s sewage treatment plants, nor is it the only club with an ailing irrigation system. Both Eden and Bermagui clubs have old systems.
Clearly if council is seen to give assistance to Pambula Merimbula, other clubs will ask for help too. And it’s not just golf clubs; grey water is supplied to the Sapphire Turf Club, Oaklands Farm, Coral Park and Wolumla recreation ground, among others.
There has also been a desire to see grey water used at the Pambula Sporting Complex to replace the use of potable water.
Council does not currently charge for its grey water but if it ends up giving subsidies to clubs for their irrigation systems, it may well have to consider a financial return. So like most things, financial assistance for the golf club’s irrigation system is not as simple as a Facebook rant. It needs to be put in context of the bigger issues of our wastewater and sewage.
We wish councillors wisdom as they consider this when it is discussed on Wednesday.
