EXPRESS The
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
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Mareeba United Football Club held their end of season presentation night on Saturday, after a stellar season in the top flight. Pictured are “Player of the Year” award winners Ben Fresta, Nicole Ghensi and Wayne Srhoj. Turn to page 23 for a complete wrap of the evening.
MSC cleans up on waste water treatment plant By Carl Portella
T
he township of Kuranda hosted the first ever meeting of the Mareeba Shire Council (MSC) on Wednesday, October 15. Item 16 on the agenda, was the much anticipated decision on the Mareeba Waste Water Treatment Plant, which was one of the main topics in the de-amalgamation debate last year. Initial figures indicated that a new waste water treatment plant for Mareeba would cost Mareeba rate payers in the vicinity of $34 million, later reduced to $27 million. At the meeting, MSC Mayor Tom Gilmore
outlined the time frame for upgrading the existing waste water treatment plant that would service the community’s needs until 2035, along with the potential capacity to be further expanded later to cater for further growth. The indicative cost of the upgrade is in the vicinity of $15 million, however this will be more accurately predicted once the process design work is completed. Tenders for this design have been called and council will be awarding the tender very shortly. With the increase in sewerage charges by $150 in the January budget, council will have an estimated $8 million in funds to put towards the
upgrade by the time the project gets under way. The balance of the required funds will hopefully be covered by government funding, or in the worst case a loan. Council is developing this alternative way forward to achieve its objective in improving the waste water treatment process and environmental performance. By doing so, it will achieve and exceed the conditions of the current Environmental Authority, while at the same time limiting the impact on the ratepayers. The refurbishment will also provide opportunities for council to add process technology to improve effluent quality in the future.
“We had a very close look at what the alternatives were, a new plant was out of the question without major subsidy from State Government,” Mayor Gilmore said. “But having discovered that we are able to refurbish and meet and exceed the Environmental Authority’s licence conditions, when our staff cleverly came to council and said look at this, this is what we think we can do and we ascertained that yes, we can do it.” It is anticipated that the tender process and construction will start in August 2015 and begin verification testing in January 2017.
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