Community feedback sought for Draft Wastewater Management Plan

Published on 08 June 2021

Council is seeking community feedback on its Draft Wastewater Management Plan, which will help ensure prevention of public health, environmental and local amenity issues related to wastewater systems in Yarra Ranges.

The Plan, and related Action Plan, identifies the risks and outlines the criteria and processes for inspections and assessments of new applications for onsite septic systems.

The Environment Protection Act 1970 states that councils are responsible for the management of individual wastewater systems that discharge less than 5,000 litres of wastewater a day.

Yarra Ranges Mayor, Cr Fiona McAllister, said that the Draft Plan would help strengthen Council’s ability to manage these systems, as well as the issuing of permits and assessing land development applications in relation to wastewater.

“Our municipality contains approximately 22,000 active wastewater systems, which is the second largest amount of any council in the state,” Cr McAllister said.

“As such, it’s even more important for us to have a Wastewater Management Plan to show how we’re preventing any potential issues from arising that may impact our community and environment due to wastewater systems.

“I encourage our community, particularly those of which who utilise septic systems, to take a look over the Draft Management Plan and Action Plan, and let us know your thoughts or any suggestions you may have if there’s something in there that we haven’t covered.”

Community members have until Wednesday, 30 June to provide feedback on the draft documents, which can be viewed at https://shaping.yarraranges.vic.gov.au/draft-wastewater-management-plan.