The NSW Office of Water is insisting that Palerang Council needs a trade waste licence for the sale yards and the truck wash-out combined. According to the Business Papers presented to Council at the last meeting, that requirement means that Council will need to find somewhere between $300,000 and $600,000.

The Office of Water is involved because the saleyards and the truck wash-out both send effluent to the Braidwood Sewage Treatment Works which eventually flows into Flood Creek. Waterways are the assets that the NSW Office of Water has the job of protecting.

The problem for the saleyards is that its effluent, mainly rainwater with manure, has been put into the same trade waste licence as the effluent from the truck wash-out which is mainly manure with some water. This higher concentration, along with the risk of other pollutants like hydrocarbons (eg oils and diesel) means that the truck washout will need a different solution to the saleyards.

But what we have now is a demand for compliance, no matter how much it costs, where modern standards are applied only in risk assessment. Modern land management practices can point us in the direction of a much better solution. Animal manure is not only a contaminant — it is a nutrient.

We need to deal with the two facilities separately. The Braidwood saleyards does not have a problem with its effluent. It is less concentrated than ordinary domestic sewage. There is no problem there from a water quality point of view. Also, let’s not complicate the trade waste issue with doubts about the saleyards’ future viability. That is an issue for another day. Personally, I think that continued complacency about creeping centralisation will end in tears — ours.

The State and Federal politicians who pop in every now and then are always looking for something sensible to stand for. Well, tell them to stand up for the Braidwood region, its farmers big and small and its quality livestock industry.

If they don’t get it, their arguments and the outflow from the truck wash-out might be made up of entirely the same stuff.

Cr Paul Cockram

Mongarlowe