Greens member John Brown has had enough and is calling for an independent inquiry into how Maitland Council allowed destruction of the Bolwarra Wetlands Reserve.

Mr Brown, a former Bolwarra Landcare member, said he was fed up with receiving a lack of response from council after asking them why hundreds of trees had been ripped out, Landcare signs removed, seating taken away, a pathway destroyed and ‘No Trespassing’ signs erected – cutting the link to school and sports ovals, forcing kids onto a busy main road.

He said the few replies he had received were conflicting, full of jargon and in one instance, plain wrong.

Mr Brown received an email from mayor Loretta Baker on October 9 saying “the site has never been rezoned” but in a letter to a councillor obtained by The Mercury, general manager David Evans said council resolved to support a rezoning proposal in June 2010.

“Following that, I received an email from the council that they had passed on wrong information and were busy trying to find the correct information,” he said. “This was only the start.”

Council did not provide an answer to The Mercury’s question about whether the site had been rezoned.

It all stems from the decommissioning of Bolwarra Treatment Works in the 1990s when the site owner Hunter Water leased some of the area to Maitland Landcare.

After volunteers spent hundreds of hours planting native trees around the waterway, the wetlands was opened in December 1993. 

The land was sold in 2004, but Hunter Water’s Jim Bentley said in a Newcastle Herald Letter to the Editor in July 2017 that when it was sold “the majority of the site was zoned to protect the area’s natural assets including the Landcare site”.

Council later approved plans to subdivide land adjacent to the reserve.

Council strategic planner Josh Ford’s report at the time stated the wetlands site contained work undertaken by Landcare volunteers and money provided by council.

He said “therefore potential development in this area would not be in the community’s interest”.

But in August last year, Bolwarra Landcare members watched as bulldozers moved into the reserve to demolish trees planted by volunteers. 

“Some volunteers contacted councillors and council staff to complain about the damage and destruction,” Mr Brown said. “There was little to no concern shown at the time by those contacted.”

Mr Brown said he spent 12 months trying to get a response from council as to why this was allowed to happen, and even paid for a Freedom of Information request which he said “found that earlier council decisions had affirmed that the wetlands area had been removed from any development application”.

Mr Evans said part of the reserve was cleared to comply with bushfire requirements and to provide an area for development which is permissible in the zone with consent. He said he was “in the process of providing a response to John Brown”.

But Mr Brown pointed out that despite slight changes to zoning names over the years, the zoning objectives for the wetlands have always been to maintain conservation.

Mr Brown also questioned why council would waste time and money overseeing the Landcare project, only for it to be demolished years later. When he asked council how much money had been spent he was told “council is unable to accurately say how much was spent at Bolwarra specifically”.

Mr Evans said most of council’s investment was ‘in kind’ support through the use of tools and trailers.

Mr Brown said he had given up hope of council providing answers and believed only an independent inquiry could “clear up how our city lost a valuable community and environmental asset”.