Council tells landowners to clean up grass

The city’s environmental health and local laws manager Susannah Milne said the council had hired contractors to clean up 59 properties so far, up from about 28 this time last year, but the increase was largely due to an increase in the number of inspections rather than higher levels of non-compliance.

“We estimate we’ve probably done over 2500 inspections and we’re still going,” she said.

“We’ve probably issued about 750 notices on people and what those notices do, they tell people what they need to do and give them a time frame and then we reinspect at the end of that time frame to see if they’ve completed the works.

“If they haven’t completed the works, the first stage is to remove the risk so we send a contractor in and to date we’ve sent contractors in to 59 properties, so we’ve had a pretty good level of compliance overall.”

Ms Milne said the city would then bill the property owners to recover the cost of the contractor, but fines would only be issued as a last resort, with between roughly five and 12 landowners ultimately fined each year.

“If they repeat offend and they haven’t got a legitimate reason for not complying we then send an infringement notice,” she said.

“We’ll definitely probably be issuing fines, we’re just not at that stage yet.”

Ms Milne said while increased rainfall had been a boon for farmers, it also increased the amount of grass they had to clean up on their properties.

“There’s more grass and there’s more vegetation, it’s been one of the most successful harvests we’ve had in a while so it’s kind of a catch-22,” she said.

“If it was drought we wouldn’t be having this problem.”

To avoid receiving a clean-up bill or fine from the council, Ms Milne urged landowners to take action as soon as possible.

“We always say to a person ‘Cut it and then you have to make sure you maintain it and sometimes a person, particularly absentee landowners, they can cut a block and think it’s fine but since they don’t live there or they don’t see it, it can become an issue again,” she said.

The warning follows a similar entreaty from the Country Fire Authority, with operations office Bruce Quarrier saying recent rains had pushed the grass fire index “well above average”.

“In years gone past, particularly small landholders have been hanging on to their grass for stock, this year paddocks just aren’t being eaten out as quickly as they have in previous years so if you’ve still got long grass and your stock aren’t coping it’s a good time to consider cleaning up,” he said.