Playford Street Racecourse Creek clearing
Sue of Fannie Bay asks who made the decision to close the Parap Pool for maintenance in the middle of the school holidays and the hottest time of the year?
The answer is the City of Darwin (COD) and as a resident next to the Playford street Racecourse Creek / Drain I can report on my totally unsatisfactory recent experiences with the City of Darwin.
There is a perfectly functioning creek (now classified as a drain by the COD) that runs between Playford Street and the Darwin Turf Club. It provides a habitat for frogs, birds and wildlife. It has not been maintained by the COD for many years and during that time it has effectively managed stormwater dispersal, including during Cyclone Marcus.
In 2014 the former Lord Mayor and officials visited my home after some large trees were cut down by the COD under the excuse of “tree roots create mosquito breeding sites in the drain/creek”, so the trees have to go. The former Lord Mayor said future trees and native grass would be encouraged to grow in the area and trees won’t be felled again.
However, on 7 December 2021, COD contractors turn up and start chain-sawing down trees in the creek/drain area and using a crane to lift them out. The COD advised this was to remove coffee bush – but no coffee bush was being cut – just trees, on the banks, floor and tops of the drain / creek.
So, undertakings given by the former Lord Mayor and staff to ratepayers are just ignored by the current Lord Mayor and staff - how unimpressive.
COD stopped work after my complaint and sent out a flyer on 14 th December to neighbours and residents briefly explaining the intended works are to enable the creek drain to perform at its design capacity and then recommenced tree cutting and chipping with assurances from the COD that trees on the top and sides of the bank will be left to minimize visual impacts and provide erosion control.
Then on 4th and 5th January, an unsupervised contractor walked up the creek/drain with a chainsaw and cut down many Acacia trees on the sides and top of the creek/drain. The COD response to this broken undertaking were to call these trees “weeds”. See pictures of felled trees.
And as a major stakeholder in the area and next to the Playford street drain/ creek, presumably the Darwin Turf Club were not consulted by COD prior to starting these tree felling works which has removed the treed buffer zone between the DTC facilities and the neighbours.
Then COD advised on 7th January, that once all the tree felling and clearing is complete, that the bottom of the creek/drain will be dredged. This fact was conveniently omitted from the COD notice to residents on 14 December 2021.
I wonder what the next instalment will be in this horror movie that shows the COD greening our city policy in action?
Meanwhile contractors are busy cutting trees, lifting them out with a crane and chipping them at a cost of $1000s per day. Yes, this is your rates at work. At the same time, COD has the tree seedling give aways and major landscaping programs to encourage a greener city and more flora and fauna – while at the same time destroying trees and habitat adjacent to Playford Street.
No COD Alderman, Lord Mayor or official has come to inspect these works and or discuss them with residents adjacent to these activities. The COD attempts to justify the works by saying they need to re-instate the creek/drain to its full capacity, presumably to protect houses from flood damage. But despite Cyclone Marcus and other big rain events, houses have not flooded. Sure, minor flooding of local roads can occur under huge rainfall events, but when the tide goes out, so does the flood water in the creek/ drain. It really is that simple.
COD are wasting ratepayers’ money on a make work project and removing habitat and also removing the visual screen between the neighbours and the Darwin Turf Club Grandstand, carpark and Stalls area. So much tree debris from one tree cutting exercise was left in the drain / creek that it recently washed down to Buntine Avenue, which is the entrance to the DTC from Dick Ward drive, and it acted as a beaver type dam, totally blocking the 2 large pipes there. This caused the road to flood and the water nearly went into Silks.
Hence claims by the COD re their expert technical monitoring and supervision of this project are just nonsense.
And where is the COD Erosion Control and Sediment Plan to prevent sediment moving off site and to prevent erosion on the banks now that the trees have gone? Where are the NT EPA in this matter, who approved these works, the COD itself it seems and why are these works not shown on the COD projects web site? Where are the hydrology studies used to justify these works and where was the public environmental approval process for these works? Or is the COD now above the law and it doesn’t care about sediment moving offsite, its greening policy and impact upon neighbours?
If the City of Darwin were sensible, they would stop wasting money, stop destroying habitat and the stability of the creek/ drain and work with the residents and the Darwin Turf Club to re-instate the trees and shrubs that have been unnecessarily removed. The residents are not against weed removal and tree removal in the base of the creek for stormwater flow.
But my guess is that the COD will keep doing what they are doing and wasting your rates as it appears to be someone’s pet project.
This work is NOT in the interests of ratepayers and should be stopped.
Geoff Farnell
