The local media has had a number of stories over the last month about “belt-tightening” at SDRC.

Council is considering selling 9 local parks, to save $8,000 a year in maintenance costs (“Plea to save our parks: residents react to sell-off plan”, Stanthorpe Today, 23 December 2021).  This has sparked protests from residents who use the parks and regard them as essential for amenity and environmental balance, and who have launched a “Save our Parks” petition.

Council has also cut community grants from $5,000 to $2,000 (“Half as much but twice as many”, Stanthorpe Record, 28 January 2022), with only $83,000 “left in the pool” (“Tightening purse sees council consider grant caps”, Stanthorpe Record, 24 December 2021).

To put this all in perspective, in just one year (from December 2020 to November 2021) SDRC has spent close to $130,000 on legal fees relating to the Emu Swamp Dam project.  Mayor Pennisi said the Council would have to spend money seeking legal advice on any proposal, including the Emu Swamp Dam proposal (“Group raises dam concerns”, Stanthorpe Today, 23 September 2021) , but I strongly disagree with this. 

Firstly, Council is only paying for external legal advice because it is entering into agreements with a private company, GBIP and is selling council assets to GBIP. This sort of legal advice would not be required for projects that are being done by, or funded by, Council itself or the State government (like the Connolly Dam pipeline). 

Secondly, Council could have taken a leaf out of GBIP’s book, and not incurred the expenditure until after the project had reached its “GO” phase.  It’s hard to tell with a project that is so shrouded in secrecy, and which is not open and transparent, but my understanding from discussions with people who are selling land or water to the project is that their contracts are all conditional on the dam going ahead.

To put it in perspective, Council could have used that $130,000:

• for 16 years of park maintenance for the parks they intend to “rationalise”

• to keep community grants at their current level of $5,000 (an extra 43 projects at $5,000 instead of $2,000)

• or even on “roads, rates and rubbish”

If Emu Swamp Dam never goes ahead, that $130,000 will be completely wasted.  Add these legal fees to the $2.6m already spent by various Councils on the Emu Swamp Dam proposal, and the cost of this water nearly doubles.