Leetsvale News August 2011           click here for September            Back

Ski Race Classic 2011

Don't forget that this year the Ski Race Classic will be held on Sat 27th and Sun 28th August. It goes from Windsor to Wisemans Ferry and return.

The website  is www.skiracingnsw.com.au

Boat sheds

Thanks to those people who helped with the boat shed numbers and to the occupier of boat shed 19 who has been identified. As more people have identified their sheds we now have three unknowns. They are 10, 11 and 17. An email about this will be sent to everyone to see if they can be identified. If not we will re-allocate them.

HSC Caravan Park Communiqué - August Edition

Ben Loiacono of the Hills Shire Council (HSC) sent an "all Parks" communique on 4/8/11. He stated, in part, that he would be inspecting the Parks from late August and into September. He will be here to inspect for renewal of the Park's Annual Registration (i.e our permit for the Park to operate) so, as usual, he will mainly be looking at whether we comply. However he also looks to see if site-holders are  complying, which means that you need to ensure that your site is free of anything stored under your vans or annexes. You also mustn't store  anything which is flammable. The walkways between the vans need to be kept unobstructed.

I am not sure if Ben's visit will include inspecting the smoke alarms.

Some people had the emails they wrote to Ben about their smoke alarms returned to them with a message that they were "unread". I spoke to the HSC and they said they would fix that problem so if anyone is still having problems could you email me?

UPDATE: The email address to send your stat dec about having a smoke alarm is now

                     council@thehills.nsw.gov.au

Ben also gave a Hendra Virus update and stated that it could be transmitted via flying foxes, horses and people. He noted that there have been no confirmed cases within the Greater Sydney, Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury regions, however he urged care should be taken when dealing with horses. This is the website for information should you come into contact with horses or flying foxes:

http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/factsheets/guideline/hendra.html

Water

There was a lot of discussion with the Hill Shire Council and water testing was conducted three times last year. The water bacteria counts all came back within acceptable limits (thanks also to Ron Ciccognani who conducted testing of his own early last year and sent the results to us) however having a bacterial count within acceptable limits did nothing for the odour or discoloration. Juliana Naidovski of the Hills Shire Council made some enquiries, as we did, into what was causing the water to be so unpleasant. She referred us to some websites and scientific papers. Graham also did a lot of research and found some good scientific papers dealing with the problem.

The problems are excess acidity from the surrounding vegetation and stratification, or "layering" of the water.  Stratification is a naturally occurring process which results from limited mixing of the water column. The deeper the dam the more likely it is to occur, with cold water and less oxygen at the bottom of the dam where there is little sunlight penetration and warm water on top.  Because of the difference in temperature, the surface water and the bottom water don’t mix, so the bottom water becomes trapped. It doesn’t have any contact with the air, which means there’s no way to replace the oxygen that is used up as plants die, settle to the bottom and decay. By late summer or autumn, there may be little or no oxygen in the water near bottom at all. It is these anoxic conditions which cause the chemical reactions responsible for the odours.

In the first instance we were instructed to lime the water after mixing it as much as possible to try and correct the acidity and then chlorinate it. This was done on a number of occasions with some limited success. 

However, a better solution is to aerate the dam, which of course churns up the bottom and makes it all look rather dreadful, increasing suspended particles and initially releasing odours. However that has to be done if the water is ever going to be treated back to health. We bought two aerators for the dam which are operated by electric pump, but they do use up a lot of electricity. Graham had them going at the end of summer and there was some good feedback, however time will tell if they will be effective.

Ideally it would be great to have a wind-powered aerator - perhaps one day?

Road Repairs

I hope everyone received my email letting you know that quotes are being requested to repair the roads. Meanwhile the crux of the message was to make sure you and your visitors exercise special care when using or driving on the roads.