The future of the East Lismore Sewage Treatment Plant is still unclear, despite Ministerial meetings in Sydney and the issue being raised in Question Time last week during the final state parliamentary sitting week for the year. 

The sticking point is how much funding Lismore City Council will receive to fix the sewage treatment plant to make it operational, and within EPA guidelines, or rebuild it so it is out of danger of being damaged in the event of future 14-meter-plus flooding.

Former Flood Recovery Minister Steph Cooke asked whether the State Government would fully fund and deliver the complete refurbishment and rebuild of the East Lismore plant. Minister for Recovery and Minister for the North Coast, Janelle Saffin, said the project “will be done”, but also said the original announcement was not intended to cover “betterment” or growth for increased population.

She told Parliament that some councils had wanted to “build to betterment and projecting for numbers increasing in the area,” but that “when it was announced, it wasn’t announced for betterment or for population projection.” She also said she and the Mayor had “differing memories” about the commitment made in 2022.

However, the original 2022 media release issued by the then State Government stated the exact opposite. It said the $145 million fund would “repair and upgrade critical water and sewerage infrastructure” and would include “upgrades that will help futureproof this critical infrastructure.” Lismore City Council’s allocation explicitly listed a “new East Lismore wastewater treatment plant” as part of the works.

That point of difference is now adding more uncertainty to a project already delayed for more than three years. Mayor Steve Krieg says what happens next remains unclear.

“It's still the great unknown. I watched the clip of that particular question get raised, and it was good to hear the Minister actually say that it will happen. Exactly what will happen is the great unknown,” he said.

“Disaster recovery should never become a political football or used for any particular gain, but it's something that I will continue to fight for and advocate for because it was something that was promised and we're still years off the delivery of that project, even if the funding rolled out tomorrow.”

Krieg said the treatment plant remains the only major piece of critical infrastructure still unfunded and untouched.

“It's the last big piece of infrastructure that hasn't been funded and hasn't even been started with works there. Back in 2022, the instruction from all the state government agencies was to get it back to operational with the plan to rebuild that particular sewage treatment plant down the track.”

He said the delay and confusion around funding is not something Council controls.

“For whatever reason, and I can't answer that, it's something that the state and federal governments need to answer, but the original promise of rebuilding that, there is a sticking point around the funding and who's going to fund it and how much funding.”

Last week, the Mayor travelled to Sydney to meet with Ministers again, but says the messages remain mixed.

“There's mixed stories. To redo this project properly is expensive. You can't hide away from that, you're looking at around 90 to 100 million dollars to completely rebuild this treatment plant.”

“As a council, we're always under the impression that that would be funded and we would be able to rebuild it so that it is flood resilient, to be able to withstand that 14.5 to 15 metre flood if we ever saw something like that again.”

But he says the funding currently on offer falls short of the standard required by regulators.

“What's on offer currently is funding to basically patch it up, and even with the money that they have, and they being the state government, have said is available for that project, it would not be up to the requirements of the EPA.”

“So quite simply, the funding that they've set aside is not enough to get to where we need to go.”

With the rebuild still not underway nearly four years after the floods, the biggest unanswered question remains the same: who will fund the full project, and when will it start?