Chris Hooper, Castlemaine
Many houses going in especially on hilltops and slopes means the ground being covered by the house, driveway, paths and paving. This means more run off. Rhonda Hall wrote in Castlemaine Mail October 7 about the need for new houses to have water tanks to catch the run off from roofs. She says there’s more run off now at the bottom of McKenzie Hill which has a large number of new houses on it.
Some new housing developments have tanks connected to toilets so rainwater can be used for flushing but the more water we catch less is going into the ground. Water in the ground is good, plus creeks need the run off too. But, the more we clear or build and make non permeable surfaces the more run off we’ll have maybe in excess.
The hill at the back of Campbells Creek has many new houses on it now and I’ve heard there’s excessive run off. The new housing on the hill behind Dudley Street and Munro Court to the north of town causes excessive run off to creeks below. This is one reason I don’t like the council plan for Camp Reserve. There’s too much hard surface which means radiant heat and a lot of run off. With the heavy rainfall conditions we’re having we need more permeable surfaces and to slow the water flow.
