Friday, 5 March 1999
Environmental Improvement Charge

"Retain Environmental Improvement Charge for Environmental Improvement (Regional Parks & Environment) in the future". Doug Lithgow

Ratepayers with properties connected to the sewer prior to February 1989 have paid an Environmental Improvement Charge for ten years. The scheme finishes in 2009.

The current charge is forty dollars ($40.00) per annum but was as high as $69.00 before July 96.

For the first five years it was called the Environmental Levy.

Moneys collected are matched by the Government and used for the Hunter Sewerage Project.

The project is a $310 Million backlog scheme to bring sewerage service to 20,000 properties.

The subsidy to each fringe area property is $310M divided by 20 000 or $15,500 per property.

Each 1989 Newcastle ratepayer will pay over $900 subsidy to fringe area sewerage schemes.

The Sewerage Scheme is now ten years old and needs to be reviewed and revised so that the funds collected can be more equitably distributed to the various Council areas from which the subsidy has been raised. The State Government should also increase its share of the cost of the fringe area sewerage project until it is completely funding the scheme in its final years.

The funds collected for Environmental Improvement should be spent directly on environmental improvement and managed by an authority with input from the community. The moneys could be directed to the improvement of regional parkland and for specific environmental projects.

The people of NSW through the State Government bear the full cost of extending sewerage schemes for Sydney and the ratepayers of the Lower Hunter should be afforded the same respect.

A campaign to bring pressure to bare on the NSW State Government so that Newcastle ratepayers are treated fairly and all moneys collected under the environmental improvement charge go to environmental improvement.

Justice also demands that those areas which have contributed and received no benefit should be able to obtain environmental improvements through the funding of environmental projects from the Environmental Improvement Charge in the future.

Doug Lithgow
President. P&PM Inc.

Parks and Playgrounds Movement resolved 3-3-99 to campaign to have the moneys collected by the Environmental Improvement Charge managed by an authority with a broad input from the community to ensure that moneys are directed to the Environmental Improvement of regional parkland and for specified environmental projects.

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Douglas Lithgow
Parks & Playgrounds Movement Inc

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