When it comes to what flows out of Yass taps, the verdict is clear – unlike what actually comes out of the taps. By 2028, this will hopefully be just a murky memory. Photo: Facebook.
It’s been a few weeks of big news in the Yass Valley, a rural community about an hour’s drive from the nation’s capital that is usually best known for its fine wool and even finer wine.
While big (news) does not always mean better, the town voted in a new bunch of civic-minded souls to sit on the council. They, in turn, sacked their CEO – in a confidential session so the rest of the world could only guess why.
But wait, there’s more. People are still really cranky about the $50 million loan the previous council took out to fund itself a new civic centre, complete with state-of-the-art library, admin centre and other bells and whistles. The existing council chambers, ratepayers were told, was no longer fit for purpose.
Fair enough, was the original consensus, but not for long. As the town’s other claim to fame – a claim it would rather not have – worsened, so did general attitudes about building the new centre. The other claim to fame? The majority of residents, 85 per cent according to council’s own survey, do not drink their own tap water. Why, because it regularly looked like something you’d find in a toilet bowl, pre-flush, with a matching aroma.
But after years of complaining, of people trying to outdo each other’s rudeness on social media with comments about the smelly brown water, of threatening not to pay their water rates if the council didn’t clean up its (water) act, there was some sparklingly refreshing news this week – the Federal and State Governments have both allocated $18.1 million, count ’em, $18.1 million, to build a new water treatment plant for the town.
Work will start in July next year with completion scheduled for 2028.
Everyone was smiling. All the politicians who had some sort of role in lobbying the government purse-holders to fund the water treatment works. The business people who worried that no-one would invest in a stinky town. Parents and carers who were becoming very confused about whether their child was actually clean or not, post-bath.
But not everyone was so chuffed. The supermarkets and hardware stores where sales of bottled water and water filters had paid for their kids’ education for the past decade or so, were less so.
People also talked about the timing of the announcement with an election looming. But we’re having none of that.
Clearly, such an investment in a town like Yass cannot be anything but for the best. With its mixture of old pioneering families and newbies who’ve come across the border for a better life, it’s all good.
Unlike many rural communities, it still boasts farms that haven’t been cut up for development, it produces the sort of products, from art to wine, that are in high demand everywhere else – and it has some of the best people around, people who are just about to clean up. Literally.
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