Urunga tidal pool fully funded

Dredging starts 

A win for a swim – finally

Thanks to the dredging, the area is now swimmable at low tide, but the infrastructure to make it more accessible won’t be there until Easter, which is mid April.

NSW Crown Holiday Parks Trust, which operates Reflections in Urunga, put out a tender for the “Design & Construction of a jetty & floating pontoons for public swimming facility at Urunga” on November 21.

It closes on Monday December 17, and project manager Andrew Stone said they hoped to award the contract by the end of next week, just before Christmas.

He said the successful tenderer would have a window of opportunity from the end of February until Easter 2019 to complete the work, which involves installing a walkway from the beach out to the deeper water plus two floating pontoons 25m apart.

The original tidal pool, known as the Urunga sea lido, was an enclosed swimming area built in the mid-1970s. It was demolished in 1999 when its deterioration made it a safety and financial liability.

In subsequent decades, many locals campaigned for it to be replaced and many grant applications were prepared seeking funding for the project.

A feasibility study was completed in 2015, but money to properly survey the site and dredge it was only secured in February of this year, when Bellingen Shire Council’s application for $112,000 from the Department of Industry’s Tourism Driver Demand Infrastructure Program was successful.

The grant of $535,000 announced on April 6 for the infrastructure came from the NSW government’s Regional Growth - Environment and Tourism Fund. 

NSW Crown Holiday Parks Trust collaborated with Bellingen Shire Council to make the application and is contributing $75,000 towards the project.