WHILE DOZERS ARE DOWN PROTESTERS SWOOP FOR CLEAN-UP
BLACK Swan Lake supporters used Clean Up Australia Day yesterday to pick up litter around the precinct and celebrate the halt in works to fill it.
Black Swan Lake Community Action Alliance spokeswoman Tammy Hogan said up to 25 supporters had attended the event.
“We’re walking around looking for rubbish. We have rubbish bins. But we are not going where they filled in the lake,” Ms Hogan said.
“The dirt in the pile (dumped on the lake), due to the rain, is sinking. All the work has stopped. It’s like a rubbish tip. There is a rubbish pile and it’s attracting ibis.
“We’ll have a treasure hunt and a bit of a celebration later.”
Regular lake visitors said the recent storms had a severe impact on the water quality of the area.
“There is a bulldozer very, very close to the edge of the water. It’s pretty muddy and horrible,” a resident said.
“There are ducks, moorhens and flocks of ibis coming in. We haven’t seen the swans today. Some of the silt is going through the silk curtain they’ve put up.”
The BSA believes a threat of legal action by its lawyers to seek an injunction through the planning and environment court to stop works by the Gold Coast Turf Club has been successful in halting the dig.
But Gold Coast Turf Club chairman Brett Cook said work on filling the lake had been temporarily halted due to weather.
Mr Cook said the fill-in job had stopped at the site for about a week and a half.
“It’s just because of the wet weather that we had a week ago. We are waiting to source new material. With all the rain we had we have had to wait for evaporation. We’re still going ahead,” he said. “I know they are trying to put an injunction on us but we will deal with that as we go. That has got no legs. They won’t be able to stop us.”