About a hundred residents gathered at Walka Water Works on Sunday to voice their concerns about the future of the nature reserve.
Walka Water Works at Oakhampton Heights was closed for the majority of 2022, only partially re-opening in December after widespread asbestos contamination was discovered in February last year.
Maitland City Council was successful in a $10 million grant from the NSW Government earlier this year and then and another $5 million from co-contributions between Council, Crown Lands and Reflections Holiday Parks to remediate and clean up the pumphouse and associated works as well as start planning for a holiday caravan park.
Stage 1 of work at the site will include the partial restoration of the 1887 Pumphouse building, including the ground floor of the main building to allow for activation, and the Eastern Annexe to reopen it for weddings and functions, remediation and partial upgrades to the car park, improvements to the Pumphouse lawn as a wedding and event site, onsite accommodation including access road with 10-12 cabins and 40 powered sites, camp kitchen and BBQ area as well as sewer, water, electrical and civil works.
The plan is that Reflections Holiday Parks would operate overnight visitor accommodation which would begin with eco-cabins, glamping tents and powered sites.
In a bid to voice their opposition to the plans for Walka Water Works, residents formed the ‘Save Walka Community Alliance’.
President Michelle Keith said they believe putting a caravan park in the middle of the community’s precious nature reserve will ruin it.
“Walka Water Works was designated as a wildlife reserve in 1986,
“The biodiversity at Walka is amazing and they’re going to put a caravan park in the middle, how does that work? How will that impact the birds, the water quality for the water birds?
“Residents are very concerned about Walka, it is the heart of Maitland and has been for a very long time. The heritage building and the whole site has an incredible history that goes back to the 1800s.”
Walka Water Works was added to the NSW State Heritage Register in 1999 as it was a major political and engineering achievement in the late 1800’s. It was the first in Australia to have a water treatment system, that is, from the original river water source to the Walka lake reservoir to filtered kitchen tap water. At the time, no other in the country came close to the sophistication of the scheme.
The Alliance invited Maitland Council including Mayor Philip Penfold to join them at a gathering on Sunday morning, concerned Council isn’t listening to their concerns at all.
But, the Alliance is now frustrated no one turned up.
Speaking to the NewFM Newsroom, Mayor Philip Penfold said he has invited the members of the Alliance to speak with him but no one has responded.
“Council have repeatedly asked to sit and meet and discuss the concerns with the group but it appears they just intend to protest rather than sit and have productive conversations which is disappointing. We’ve offered to have them involve themselves in the community liaison group and sadly they’ve turned that down as well.
“Council is happy to engage with those who want to engage and have proper conversations but as far as participating in protests that’s not what we’re about,” Mayor Penfold said.
Michelle said Council has asked them, but they want a meeting with all of the concerned residents not just a select few.
“We want to meet with him but the community wants to meet with him as well. How is it a fair consultation with the community when you only meet with one or two people. The members in our Facebook page want a community meeting, but the Council has not put out that olive branch for us and said well lets get together at Walka and have a conversation.
“We’re not against having activities out there, we just don’t want a caravan park in the middle of it.”
Mayor Penfold said the great bulk of the project is to get Walka back open to the public and cleaned up with the rest still a long way off including the caravan park that will only take up about 4 per cent of the land.
“It’s early days, the studies still need to be done and a DA prepared and there will be further consultation as that progresses.
“Those plans will be produced and consultation opportunities will arise in the coming months.”
