The first Peter Marshall knew of a fire trail being built along the back of his property in Majors Creek was on his return from a few days in Canberra.
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Mr Marshall returned to his Seymour Street home to find his back fence razed “and dumped in the water”, he wrote in a letter to the editor.
The fire trail’s construction along Majors Creek Gully has met with mixed responses from the community. The trail recently received $188,470 in funding from the National Bushfire Mitigation Program. The funds will be used to update the trail in a bid to improve access for firefighting vehicles.
Mr Marshall said, far from being consulted, he and his neighbours were given no warning that a trail would be built.
“Until it was finished up to our boundary, we knew nothing whatsoever,” Mr Marshall said. “[We knew nothing] until we came back after a couple of days in the Canberra and the track had been cut, laid.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Industry said the Majors Creek Community Protection Plan was approved in September 2015 after consultation with the community and the NSW Rural Fire Service.
The spokesperson said a “short section of fence located on vacant Crown land was removed to allow the work to proceed”.
Mr Marshall said he did not own the Seymour Street property at the time of the consultation, nearly two years ago, and while it was possible his fence sat slightly on Crown land, it was obviously part of his property and kept valuable working dogs contained.
“It’s possible – and it happens in country towns – that the borders aren’t completely properly surveyed,” Mr Marshall said. But “it was obviously a fence associated with our properties.”
Mr Marshall also questioned the value of the project, saying the location of the trail had been poorly chosen and its design was ineffective. In his letter, Mr Marshall wrote that swampy ground would “only allow access by CAT 7 trucks”, while the original fire hazard of reeds and rushes in the gully remained. He later said the Soil Conservation Service site manager had told him the the fire trail was “only rated for CAT 7 vehicles”.
“The logical thing to do would have been to have actually dealt with the hazard,” he said.
“If there’s a western wind blowing a big fire from those reeds, then the truck is going to be caught between the … fire and the creek, and destroyed.”
The spokesperson for the Department of Industry said Soil Conservation Service had been engaged to design and implement the works in accordance with the approved Community Protection Plan from 2015 and fire trail policies, and had taken into consideration the flow of water during normal rain events.
Mr Marshall also said the wetlands could have been rejuvenated and Majors Creek made almost impregnable to fire at a much lower cost.
He was so concerned about the trail exacerbating erosion into the gully that he called the NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA).
The EPA attended the fire trail site on July 17 and 18, a spokesperson said. The Authority required the site to have proper sediment and erosion controls installed immediately and a sediment and management plan to be developed for the remaining fire trail construction works, the spokesperson said.
The EPA would continue to monitor the works on the trail, they said.
But work had been done to ensure that appropriate erosion sediment controls were in place, said the Department of Industry spokesperson.
While the trail has raised some eyebrows, others in Majors Creek support it, calling the project a valuable step towards improving the village’s fire safety.
Richard Kid has lived in Majors Creek since 1988 and says he is glad to have the trail’s fire protection and access to the gully to help control weeds.
“I’m in favour of the fire trail, certainly,” Mr Kid said.
“Not only does it give you that fire break, but it gives you access to a lot of the noxious weeds that grow along there, blackberry and broom.
“I didn’t feel I needed to be consulted because it’s not on my land, it’s on Crown land.”