I had the block surveyed and then chose the best position for my house which was about 100 metres from and 35 metres above the Towamba river (locally known as the Kiah river).

I then submitted my request for a building permit and in time had council approve it, after which I built my family home.

Prior to my purchasing of the property it had been a garbage tip for the previous 50-60 years that I cleaned up with a dozer and a tip truck, removing all the accrued garbage and 11 car bodies.

In the late 80s my mother and I purchased the surrounding blocks to my house. Two of them are one acre in size, the other is a five-acre block and all came with building approval, I was told.  My mother in due course applied for a building permit and eventually built her house on one of the one-acre titles where my youngest daughter resides now, the other one-acre title remains undeveloped at this stage.

The block has a history of residential dwellings, shire workshop and maintenance depot, garbage depot, and a recently built bushfire brigade shed.

It is 85-90 per cent cleared, has a history of over 100 years of intensive cattle farming, stock feed cropping, and vegetable growing.

In addition, the BVSC has a series of subterranean bores that drain the Towamba River even during times of drought, to supply the Bega Valley Shire with water.

And they now call it an environmentally sensitive area that is somehow now too small and too fragile to build a house on.

Prior to purchasing the block, we were led to believe by council that the minimum block size was now 40 acres and yet we have a whole rural sub-division next to our blocks on the river that range in size from five acres up to approximately 25 acres on Jim McMahon Drive. 

 Where is the consistency? 

Clyde Thomas, Kiah 

It was no surprise to me that the Magnet featured Don Ross with his usual anti forestry self-interested opinions. It seems the majority of Wonboyn ratepayers don’t agree with him, so he starts a self-appointed sub-committee. 

Some people seem to think their ownership of the area extends way beyond their property boundaries.

The EPA did not find any evidence to connect the logging (thinning) in the Wonboyn catchment to the discolouration in the lake in December 2014. The expert on lake estuaries at the February 2016 meeting, Peter Scanes, from the Office of Environment and Heritage explained that sea grasses in lakes come and go in cycles.

The claim that log trucks are destroying the road is BS. A short section has been flooded a few times between 2014 and 2016, with up to a metre of water over some parts.

Water then lay beside the road for weeks after the floods, no doubt effecting the sub grade on that short section.

The pink discolouration has only happened in one flood.  Before the December 2014 flood, thousands of metres of pink gravel was brought in for road upgrades.

After the December 2014 flood, which cleaned away all the spoil along the side of the road, there hasn’t been any problems with pink discolouration after more recent floods, some bigger than December 2014.

His claim about deforestation doesn’t hold up, as the Wonboyn Lake has most of the catchment covered in forest, compared to the Pambula and Merimbula Lakes.  How much deforestation has occurred on and around the Wonboyn Lake Ratepayers Association members properties?

People who actually know how to fish have had great catch and release, as well as catch and eat fishing experiences over recent years.