PLOUGHMANS Wetland’s success as part of the town’s stormwater harvesting scheme and as a recreation area is set to be re-created in the Blackmans Swamp Creek system.
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Orange City Council’s draft 2017-18 budget has set out more than $1.3 million in work during the next three years to build a wetland for Blackmans Swamp Creek and to rehabilitate it, in a move the council believes will close a gap in its award-winning stormwater harvesting scheme.
Of all the waterways feeding into the scheme, only Blackmans Swamp does not have its own wetland.
Mayor John Davis said the wetlands in the Ploughmans Valley, Somerset and Brookslands areas played a crucial role in taking the water running off suburban areas during a storm and cleaning it up by letting it move slowly through an area with lots of plants and sunlight.
“The $1 million allocation will see work get underway on a new wetland closer to the stormwater storage ponds,” he said.
“After the creek leaves town and is boosted by occasional flows from the eastern Orange stormwater channels, the water would reach the wetland where it could accessed and pumped to the storage ponds.”
Cr Davis said there was currently a small weir, which only allowed for pumping after heavy storms, and the added wetland would even out the peaks and deliver cleaner water.
With residents surrounding the existing wetlands modifying their houses to take advantage of the water frontage, by opening their front fences or creating accesses from the rear of their properties onto the recreation areas, Cr Davis said it was exciting to be able to create a similar effect elsewhere.
“It’s better to develop it rather into something like this than leave it as open space – you basically get water views and it makes living a little more country,” he said.
“Orange is fortunate to have such huge access to walking trails and parks.
“Young people are certainly taking more of an interest than we did when we were at school.”
The expenditure will be split, with $200,000 spent in 2017-18 and $800,000 spent in 2019-20.
The council will also spent $20,000 in 2017-18 and $330,000 in 2018-19 to rehabilitate the banks of the creek near the proposed wetland.
The money will stabilise and fence the rural sections to keep livestock away.