I went to Roma today to attend to some business and I ended up driving around on the north side of town. As I was driving back in along northern road, I noticed MORE new homes being built on the low lying land behind RomaVilla Winery. I commented to my friend in the car how foolish I thought it was to be continuing to build in the floodprone land along the creek after the couple of floodings it had received. He pointed out that these homes where being built on raised banks above the flood level and that what the developer had effectively done was built a levee bank altering the flow of floodwater through the town.
I made some enquiries to discover that the approval for this multi stage development was given by the former Roma Town Council prior to amalgamation and that, in spite of the fact that the community does not want it and that it would not be approved under the current planning arrangements, there is NOTHING that the current council can do about it. One must be careful what one says in public, for fear of retribution, but, to Paraphrase Shakespeare in Hamlet, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”. How and why this approval was granted will always remain one of life’s mysteries but Councils should NEVER approve these kinds of developments. There is no defence for this, you can’t defend the indefensible!
The decision to allow this development to proceed was disgraceful. It has placed greed before the good of the community. How is it a good thing to allow one person to profit in such a way as to inflict suffering on many others? There are times when you need to place the good of your community before the profit of individuals.
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