The Stuffed Owl, Launceston.
THE is an undeniable truth in regard to questioning the current melee surrounding the disgusting state of the Launceston end of the Tamar river.
The noticeable decline in the state of this old watercourse in the past five years is truly remarkable. Since the present round of dredging was commissioned the river has virtually collapsed with the eastern embankment of Home Reach overwhelmed and undermined by the pressures placed on this once stable shoreline by the mud, but primarily water being ignorantly placed there.
An exercise into costing to repair the damage this assumed sound decission making has caused can easily be calculated by using the current cost of an attempt to close pile the North Esk, only a megre distance of around 350 metres was reached when funding collapsed, as did the close piling retainment wall, all at the extraordinary price of $3.5 Million.
Using this figure of a million dollars for each 100 metres, and with the now collapsed eastern embankment requiring a distance of 2 kilometres, my equasion of this is a $20 million repair bill just on this score alone, the wasted dredging costs can’t be discounted but without a serious enquirey it’s a certainty no one will ever know and as proved, without the ability available to oversee the contractors, this operation would undoubtably fall on its face along with all previous “do it yourself” river improvements. To talk of apathy is to talk of Launceston!!!!
