MidCoast Plans Include Dredging

A recent funding bonanza is set to benefit local boaties, with MidCoast Council securing $1.3 million in NSW Government grants to deliver improvements to waterways across the MidCoast region, the council said in its latest release. 

In the NSW Boating Now program, council’s Natural Systems team was successful earlier this year in applications for six different projects, attracting a total of $718,757 in state funding.

Added to this is council’s contribution of $211,586 from the Environmental Levy, delivering a range of enhancements to improve the safety, access and amenity of some of the region’s most popular boat ramp facilities.

In a second funding application, $493,450 has been secured through the ‘NSW Rescuing our Waterways Program’, and will be used to undertake maintenance dredging of popular navigational channels at Tuncurry, Harrington backchannel, and Farquhar Inlet.

Commenting this, Council’s Manager of Natural Systems, Gerard Tuckerman, said: “Continuing with our planned maintenance dredging is critical to sustaining recreational and commercial boating opportunities in the Manning River and Wallis Lake, both of which are important to tourism and the future growth of the region.”

Matching funding by MidCoast Council for these important dredging projects will be made through the Environmental Rate and the Harrington Marina Levy.

And making it a trifecta, an additional grant of $80,000 has been secured through the NSW Department of Primary Industries’ Recreational Fishing Trust Habitat Action Grants for three riverbank restoration projects on Oxley and Jones Islands in the lower Manning and Lansdowne Rivers.

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